[Closed] Skype for business?

I've just had a play and I can't immediately see how. S4B allows you to add a Skype contact, but I haven't as yet managed the reverse. And once added it doesn't seem to want to send messages.

There's this, though - might work?
https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/What-is-Skype-Meetings-App-Skype-for-Business-Web-App-1ff3d412-718a-4982-8ff2-a4992608cdb5

If you click on the http link, you'll be able to use the Webgui to join the meeting, if you have a headset on your pc you'll be bale to add audio, if not you'll have to dial in, should be a dial in conf number.

There is usually a web frontend to thier Skype infrastructure - I can invite externals to our meetings, with some restrictions. I've used it in Safari from a Mac, but assume IE, Firefox would work fine.

Warning - it depends on a Silverlight plugin to the best of my knowledge.

Alternately it'll almost certainly have telco dial in details attached, thoguh you won't get to see the Powerpoints (woo hoo!)

I understood that 'for business' was for conversations within an organisation - presumably hence the web connector to join in. Mine came bundled with Office 365, but I never use it, just normal skype.

I use it for business but have used it with external participants - they simply click on the link and follow the instructions.

I use it for business but have used it with external participants

Yes, it's called "federation." An organisation can have a whitelist of only the companies they want to allow to connect, of have an open federation so anyone can (unless blacklisted). You have special DNS entries which tell the other end how your organisation is configured for connectivity.

(I know more about the back end of S4B than how to actually use it...!)

Hmm, thanks all - got a link in google calendar but did not work.

S4B allows external contacts and can be invited to meetings. Depends how the admin side has been configured though. Have to allow external contacts and/or add trusted organisations.

Client I'm with has random people using mix of either Skype for Business or regular Skype, with the latter more popular. Had an issue with meeting being run on regular Skype and my S4B wasn't getting invited. Though the organiser hasn't accepted my contact request so might be why. Said they added me though.

S4B really is a shitty app though. Why is it lagging behind regular Skype? I only use S4B to keep my business Skype separate from personal.

S4B really is a shitty app though. Why is it lagging behind regular Skype?

Isn't it just a rebrand of Lync?

We have a mix of people running S4B and Lync in the organisation, if somebody sends an S4B invite, it opens in Lync so I assumed they were similar...

Google calendars are great at wrecking Microsoft object URLs. You may need to select the URL text and paste it into a web browser.

yep it's just Lync rebranded. In fact in a corporate environment you can apply a group policy to force it to reband itslef back to Lync. The original rebranding took place during one of microsoft's regular patch updates.

Isn't it just a rebrand of Lync?

Yes, it is I think.

OP - can you not download Skype for Business Basic? This is free and should work just like Lync.

EDIT with link:

[url= https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=49440 ]https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=49440[/url]

S4B is just Lync re-branded. I wouldn't say it's any more shitty than regular Skype - it seems much less likely to eat up my battery running one of my CPU cores at 100% for no reason. Also seems less likely to just drop the connection to my headset.

Yeah, it's a Lync re-brand. Just they've had it for ages now and could give it the face lift that regular Skype has or merge the two products. Plus desktop S4B is awful. Each "chat" opens up a new window with no history. History tab can view the history but one window per session and not necessarily in the right order. Really hard to follow.

Some Skype IDs are not resolved to a name and it shows a long ID instead, unless that person is online. Makes it hard to deal with requests to connect as no idea who they are.

S4B on Win Phone is terrible. It's like the desktop version but worse, and crashes a lot. On Android, not sure as not using my new Android as my work phone.

S4B Basic is a way of getting it without having an Office sub, but not sure if you still need a work associated account. Anyway, I still think you can join a S4B meeting from regular Skype. Just they may have to add your Skype as contact.

Answers above are correct, only thing I’d like add is to try connecting well before the actual meeting, maybe even previous day if possible to see if there are any problems. Skype for Biz web client for viewing and phone in for audio works usually well but typically people try to connect 30sec before meeting and panic when things are bit slow.
Oh and Microsoft has another meeting service called Teams which may or may not replace Skype for Business at some point.