Skype for Mac GA – 7 ‘Other’ Known Issues not mentioned

Good Evening All.

For the past 5 months I’ve been fortunate enough to be one of a few people/companies to test the in-flight builds of Skype for Mac. For the People who may be aware this used to be called TAP as in part of the ‘TAP’ program. These days its called the sprint program and like I say, myself and Modality Systems (the company I work for) are part of Sprint around various new and exciting elements of the Skype program. **there is lots coming down the line I promise 🙂

Anyway back to Skype for Mac. Today, Microsoft announced the release of the GA build .3638 of the Skype for Mac client. Also they also created a page of known issues with the GA build or rather issues that have been present in the builds for a long time while I’ve been testing/using. The list of public known issues is HERE

So why have I produced this blog post.? Well.. the list of public known issues isn’t the full story of issues.. yes there are more, so what I wanted to do was provide awareness and guidance around them. So in no particular order..

1, P2P desktop sharing still not available

Yes, desktop sharing today in the client isn’t available and will become a pain in the backside for you. Also to confirm this is both a two way issue as in if the other peer user tries to desktop share to you, that won’t work either.

Workaround is… bridge in a third person to your original P2P call and make it into a conference. In this scenario desktop sharing works.

2, Message from other IM users to you.? ‘Unable to send Instant Message’

For the past 5 months this issue has drove me to distraction, and has been reported many many many times to Microsoft product group but yet its still in the build including GA .3638. **note I’m running a newer build version to this .36xx and its still a bug in that as well. 

So what is the bug? Its hard to pinpoint to a actual sequence or task you are doing. A while back I thought it was linked to my Mac screensaver getting activated as I was always told from people who tried to IM me that the IM’s were getting bounced back AFTER say I’ve been for lunch or in a meeting i.e.: when the screensaver came on. However the issue is more wide spread than that and even in short periods of inactivity the same thing happens. At this moment what I do know is, if you actively using your Mac the bug won’t appear. However, if you leave your Mac for 10 mins the bug does appear. (its almost like the client looses connectivity to the server and therefore bounces IM’s back). NOTE: You still get the bounced messages as if there was never an issue, so you won’t know the person sending them is getting the undelivered message if they don’t tell you.

3, Skype for Mac is still a ring fenced entity within the office for mac suit. Other office products have no interaction with the client for things like click to dial etc

Not much to say about this apart from click to join, telephony numbers in word docs or sip names don’t automatically resolve and function within the Skype for Mac client.

4, Adding people to conferences from the Skype for Mac client, crashes the client

I think there is a slight underlaying bug again without good reason of activity or task, but what I still see from time to time is dragging a 3rd person into a P2P call or an existing conference will crash the client. **whats funny though, is the person you was dragging into the conference actually joins, but you get kicked out due to the crash of the Mac client.

5, No ability to mass delete IM conversations

Again not a big issue but certainly if your like me and have a gazillion IM’s going at once it is annoying that you can mass delete the IM history from the Mac client. It would be nice to ‘command A’ and delete all the IM’s in one fell swoop. Sadly you can’t.

ALSO, the ability to ‘command + del’ in rapid succession does not work either meaning you will have to select almost every IM thread before you can delete it from the IM window.

6, Headsets not certified yet (plantronics, Sennheiser and Jabra) randomly come off mute sporadically.

Headsets are a key part of the Skype for Business ecosystem, yet for all the ones I’ve used with the new Mac client (I would say 99% of certified endpoints) ALL suffer the same issue of when on mute in a conference call, the headset will whisper in your ear that you are no longer on mute. This can happen at random times, even when leaning back in your chair and not even touching the keyboard/Mac machine. What makes this bug even more of a challenge is that the Skype for Mac client onscreen visually has you still on mute.!! so the 64 million dollar question is. which ‘thing is right’ ?? the headset saying you OFF mute, OR the Skype for Mac client visually saying your still on mute.!! Arghh.. **to confirm the Skype for Mac client is always correct you do stay on mute even though sporadically the headset will tell you your not.

so the moral of this issue is, don’t believe everything you hear.. !

7,  Sound conflicts in calls when you get an outlook email through. **Makes the audible call appear robotic

Odd bug this one… You could be quite happy on a call of some type talking away, then you get a inbound email. What I have certainly found at this point is, my speech to the end user I’m talking to becomes robotic while I guess the sound notification from the email finishes. After this the audio in the Skype for Mac call becomes ok again, until the next email, then Robotic and so on……

The only workaround I’ve found is to turn of email notification sounds which then stops the interference with the Skype for Mac clients audio.

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That’s all for now, I hope you have a great experience with the Mac client, and it is a good client, and will be even better over the next few updates.

Iain Smith

Whats new in Skype for Business

Good Morning

Below is an interesting article about Skype for business and what it entails. We the MVP’s have been given the ok to publicly talk through what Sfb (as its know) has to offer.

This is an interesting read i wanted to share with you.

http://microsoft-news.com/take-a-look-at-the-upcoming-skype-for-business-client-on-windows/

Lync 2013 with Skype Integration and LinkedIn enabled

Good Morning All.

As of yesterdays announcement, Microsoft has officially announced that Lync 2013 and Skype now integrated and enabled for IM, Presence and Voice. Great news!!

To enable the integration between the technologies of Lync and Skype, there are a number of Prerequisites that need to be actioned. To find out what needs to take place, go to this blog posting by Justin Morris (Modality Systems, Senior Consultant) who has created a guide to the enablement of the Functionality.

http://www.justin-morris.net/lync-to-skype-connectivity-now-available/

Once you have completed the steps, and your Lync estate is enabled and working with Skype there is a couple of nice features which you can retrospect enable as well. For this blog posting in going to look at the integration with LinkedIn.

To enable LinkedIn to be part of your office suite, this is a very trivial task which you can complete by selecting the option within your Outlook Client (Version dependant).

Simply go to File, then the Accounts option in Outlook and select from the dropdown option of ‘social connector’. This will then present you with a number of social forums to which you can enable and integrate with outlook and by proxy your Lync 2013 client. For me im going to select LinkedIn Only.

Once you’ve completed the login process for the Social Connector, at this point in Outlook whenever someone external to your organisation emails you and their email address is associated with their LinkedIn Email address you will get there picture and awareness its from LinkedIn within the email content.

This in itself is a nice enough feature for outlook but with Lync the integration goes just that bit further. For instance now if we jump over to the Lync 2013 client and I search for one of my external federated contacts I still see there LinkedIn picture and presence. Again a nice addin for Lync

So all this is well and good but what does the Lync 2013 Client, Skype AND LinkedIn capability provide.?? Well if one of your LinkedIn contacts has their email address of their LinkedIn profile equal to their Skype Account email address (keep with me), you can simple search from within the Lync 2013 client to find them. (You don’t have to have these set as buddies in your Lync contact list. You simply search).

Example: In LinkedIn my associated email address is Iain.smith@northernlync.co.uk and within Skype my associated email address Iain.smith@northernlync.co.uk meaning we match.

So in my real life example, I have two people connected within LinkedIn called ‘Bob’ as you can see both Bobs are being pulled from my LinkedIn contacts and Bob Hadingham in this example has his LinkedIn email set equal to his Skype email address therefore with the powers of the Lync, Skype and LinkedIn interaction I can select Bob Hadingham and IM, see his presence, tag him for online status and Audio call him like you would any other user of Lync beit like you would a internal or federated contact.

I think this is a really neat feature and one I personally wasn’t expecting within the Skype integration with Lync.!

One thing to add though which is a small fly in the ointment is within my testing Lync  doesn’t seem to check for Skype/LinkedIn integration until you double click the person you’ve searched for. Again in our example Robin Chan of Microsoft  is showing his presence as unknown for his LinkedIn contact.

Now if I select him by double clicking the contact, Lync will go away and crosscheck his details to see if I can communicate with Robin.

As you can see, Robin does have his email addresses for LinkedIn and Skype matching, but Lync didn’t make me aware until I selected Robin. Bit of a shame, but I expect this will be addressed in a near future CU update for Lync. Now ive select Robin and close the Lync IM page and research for him Lync will now display the contact correctly.

So all in all, im pleased with the initial Lync. Skype and LinkedIn connectivity.

Regards

Iain Smith