Skype For Business > Moving Online

[mitchell1981]

Hi All,

 

We currently have a Skype for Business Server running our telephones. All Polycom phones running Lync Phone Edition. We also make use of the Skype for Business App. It is heavily integrated with Exchange 2016, and we are using voicemail, etc.. through this. We are connected to the world via a Gamma SIP.

 

Has anyone with a similar setup, made a successful transition to Office 365 and Skype for Business Online? We've been looking at this, but the complexity is concerning me. I was going to start by moving Exchange, but I can't find much information on how the Skype side of things would work.

 

If anyone has done this, did you find a guide to the process, or have support from any experts who know how to get this working? I ultimately want to move fully over to Office 365, but the telephone system is holding me back.

 

Thanks.

[ReadTheNetwork]

Hi Mitchell1981,

 

We've got a hybrid at our school. So I think when I looked at the S4B online we'd have to pay more for this service, that's why we have it on site. Our environment for S4B is:

An on site exchange server for members of staff who have voice mail.

An on site Skype server

Azure AD on site

 

Everyone has the cloud online version of Exchange as their email account (including members of staff who have voice mail)

Then the Skype server will save the voice mail onto the online Exchange server which forwards the email to the cloud based Office 365 Exchange (using the *@####.onmicrosoft.com)

 

If you're going down this route of using the on site Exchange server to for voicemail only, then you might want to look at implementing the ExcludeScpLookup in your GPO so that users with voice mail will look at the external server rather than the onsite server.

 

Let me know if you need a bit more info.

[mitchell1981]

Thanks, that's all very useful. I'll definitely look into this further and contact you if I need any more advice. So looks like the place to start is moving users to Office 365.

[ReadTheNetwork]

I'm starting to understand S4B a little better now. There's a little hate/like relationship with me and Skype 4 Business at moment.

 

The ExclueScpLookup I mentioned is a registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\#.# \Outlook\AutoDiscover]

"ExcludeScpLookup"=dword:00000001

Useful if you find users are connecting to onsite Exchange server rather than external.

 

also edit to previous post:

Then the Skype server will save the voice mail onto the online Exchange server

Then the Skype server will save the voice mail onto the on site Exchange server