Skype for Business Licensing Guide

Lately i’m getting a lot of questions about licensing for Skype for Business Server and Online. So i want to try to explain what kind of licenses you will need to have in the different scenarios.

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• Is E3 license enough for Skype for Business Server 2015 with Enterprise Voice?
• Do we need PSTN Calling plan with the use of Skype for Business Server 2015?
• Do we need to have Phone System (formally Cloud PBX) license when using Skype for Business Server 2015 in Hybrid mode?
• Do we need a server license to use Skype for Business?

To make one thing clear, Client Licenses are required to access all Skype for Business Online (Office365), Hybrid scenario’s and Server (On-Premises) features.

Review: Plantronics Voyager Focus UC

This headset is a more than a standard headset. The Voyager Focus has some advanced stuff build in. When you take of your headset while playing music, the music pauses. When you are in a Skype for Business meeting and you turn your microphone up or take of your headset it will mute you. This is all work of the Smart Sensors Plantronics has built in. The Active Noise Cancelling of this headset is working as you may expect.

New-OfficeWebAppsFarm : Office Online was unable to find the specified certificate

When configuring a new Office Online Server i run in to the following error while setting up the new farm with command:

    PS C:\Windows\system32> New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalUrl "https://oos.contoso.com" -ExternalUrl "https://oos.contoso.com" -CertificateName "Skypeweb"
    New-OfficeWebAppsFarm : Office Online was unable to find the specified certificate.
    At line:1 char:1
    + New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalUrl "https://oos.contoso.com" -Exter ...
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (:) [New-OfficeWebAppsFarm], ArgumentException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CertificateNotFound,Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Administration.NewFarmCommand

I imported the certificate chain in the computer personal store, i noticed the intermediate and root certificate where also placed in the personal store.

Microsoft Flow - Skype for Business Connector

I don’t know if you ever used Microsoft Flow, but i use it mostly for getting notification abouts some important rss feeds. In this example i will use a Weather forecast flow.

Microsoft released a new connector to send notifications to Skype for Business, (according to the microsoft docs site, it’s still in preview) you can choose 2 options:

• Create an online meeting
• Send an instant message

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Create an online meeting

When creating the trigger meeting you can enter sip addresses separated by semi-colun.

Update SQL Server 2014 SP2 constantly fails on Skype for Business Server

Recently i had set up a new Skype for Business Deployment, with a Front-end (Standard Edition) and Anywhere365. After installing Skype for Business roles, Windows Update popped up with SQL Server 2014 Service Pack 2 (CU 1) (KB3178925).

I tried to install the update using the Windows Update, but everytime i got the error code: 84B30002

When looking at the log files from SQL i did not found anything spectacular, the only strange message is “user has cancelled”

DNS configuration is preventing you from presenting content

It looks like the file is not automatically updating after DNS changes. Some users will get the following error:

You can solve this by deleting the “EndpointConfiguratation.cache” file.

• Sign out of Skype for Business
• Click File Exit
• Open File Explorer
• Go to “C:/Users//AppData/Local/Microsoft/Office/16.0/Lync/sip_@sipdomain.com”
• Select File: EndpointConfiguratation.cache and delete it.
• Launch Skype for Business client and sign in.

When you have a older version of Office running change the 16.0 to 15.0 or 14.0

What’s fixed in Cloud Connector Edition 2.0.1

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In Cloud Connector Edition 2.0.1, the following fixes were made:

Restarting Virtual Machines sometimes caused the service to stop if the restart order determined by Hyper-V was incorrect. This has been fixed. Calls for download security checks in remote PowerShell sometimes caused calls to the New-CsOnlineSession cmdlet to fail. This issue has been fixed.

During automatic updates, switching to a new version sometimes caused the running version to fail. This issue has been fixed