Skype photo not showing up in the client

This issue have been bothering me a while, but not enought to take it seriously, the problem was that everyone was able to see my picture, but not me, so, it was a weird behaviour. Sometimes when I clean the Skype Adress Book, the picture appeared for a few days, but then disappear magically.

So, after spending few hours trying to solve this problem, I found this magical post from Koen Zomers

The steps are quite simple:

1. Sign Out from Lync/Skype
2. Open the regedit
3. Go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Lync or HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Lync
4. Make a backup of the Lync Folder
5. Delete the Lync Folder
6. Sign in again in Lync/Skype

You will see that the deleted Lync folder have been created again, and finally your photo shows again. I hope that this problem won’t be reproduced again 🙂

 

Advertisement

Best practices when updating Lync Server

Cumulative Updates (CU) are kind of a service pack that comes out quarterly for Lync Server and the clients. It includes fixes and some times new functionality is added.

For Lync Server 2010 is it possible to download from the following url: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=11551

For Lync Server 2013, is the following: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36820

As you can see there are a lot of files to download and you could just download and update specific components or you can download the LyncServerUpdateInstaller.exe package that includes all the latest updates. So go ahead and download it and then copy the file to your Lync Servers.

To start the update process log in to your server. And start the Lync Server Management Shell

First, check that no users are talking on the phone or are in a meeting before you start the update. You can do this by running Get-CsWindowsService

The next command would be to prevent new sessions for a while and drain the active connections. This can be done running Stop-CsWindowsService –Graceful

As seen in the picture the services is now stopped.

3.Next thing would be to stop the World Wide Web service. By typing: net stop w3svc
4.Now Close all Lync Server Management Shell windows.
5.Install the cumulative update for Lync Server 2010 by running LyncServerUpdateInstaller.exe

This will start the update tool and you should se what updates are needed and what version is already installed. (As you can see in the picture I have already installed the latest update package and it shows a green checkmark at every line. If there were some services that wouldn’t be updated this would show a red stop mark instead.)

Restart the computer if you are prompted to do so
he next step is something that is almost always forgotten. To update the Lync Server Databases (this step is normally not done if you just used Windows Update to update your Lync server and should then be done manually after Windows Update has updated your server.)

1.Start the Lync Server Management Shell: (Click Start, click All Programs, click Microsoft Lync Server 2010, and then click Lync Server Management Shell.)
2.To apply the changes made by LyncServerUpdateInstaller.exe to the SQL Server databases do one of the following:
1.On Standard Edition Server and Enterprise Edition: Front end servers, once you have installed update for core components, the updated sql files will be dropped on the server. Then run the following cmdlet to apply the changes:

Install-CsDatabase -Update -ConfiguredDatabases -SqlServerFqdn -UseDefaultSqlPaths

If the RTCDyn databases are removed after you run the cmdlet without the UseDefaultSqlPaths parameter, run the following cmdlet to restore the RTCDyn databases:

Install-CsDatabase -Update -ConfiguredDatabases -SqlServerFqdn -DatabasePaths

7.Now when the database is also up to date, its time to start the IIS & Lync Server services. At the command line, type:
net start w3svc
Start-CsWindowsService

And that’s all!

Extracting Lync Contacts from XML export

Do yo want to export all of your onpremise Lync users? With the below script, you can do that. You will obtain a CSV with all SIP Adrress.

Hope it helps

# Lync 2010 export using dbimpexp
 # .Dbimpexp.exe /hrxmlfile:filename.xml /restype:user /sqlserver:SQLserverinstance
 # Lync 2013 export using powershell
 # Export-CsUserData -LegacyFormat -PoolFqdn pool.fqdn -FileName filename.xml

# Amend import file name
 [xml]$contact = Get-Content d:filename.xml

#output file
 $outputfile = “d:Contacts.csv”

$output = $contact.HomedResources.homedresource
 # Declare an array to collect our result objects
 $resultsarray =@()
 foreach ($user in $output)
 {
 $contactlist = “”
$contactObject = new-object PSObject
 $sipaddress=$user.userathost
 $user_contacts=$user.contacts.contact
 # Here we search the contact list and add the contacts to a new variable, separating each with a comma

foreach($buddy in $user_contacts)
 {$contactlist = $contactlist + $buddy.buddy+”,”}
 # Here we now add the users information to the CSV file, we’re just adding their sip address and contacts in this process
 $contactObject | add-member -membertype NoteProperty -name “SIP Address” -Value $sipaddress
 $contactObject | add-member -membertype NoteProperty -name “Contacts” -Value $contactlist
 $resultsarray += $contactObject
 }

#Now we’re saving the information to a single CSV file but you could save it individually.
 $resultsarray| Export-csv $outputfile -notypeinformation

Skype for Busines is here!

Skype for Business Server 2015 build has been officially released – the RTM version is available for download on MSDN

The download is 1.4 GB. Just a reminder, it is an in-place upgrade from Lync Server 2013 with no additional hardware requirements.

The TechNet documentation was released a couple of days ago and is available here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398616.aspx.

And lastly, Microsoft has already updated the Key Health Indicators for the new Skype release – available here: Key Health Indicators for Lync Server 2013 and Skype for Business Server 2015.

In a next post I will explain how to update from Lync 2013 to Skype for Business 🙂