Skype For Business - Admin/Policy Options????
-
We use the Office 365 Enterprise E1 exchange online play. I finally rolled out Skype For Business for all users (was just management and sales for a while) and it has been accepted by everyone and they are excited.
Except for one, gruff/crusty user. He first grumbled that he didn't want anyone know his "status" (Available, Away, Busy, etc.) Now, he just closes Skype when it starts.
We have no policy yet where they need to leave it on. But if we do, I was wondering if there were any admin settings/policies I could set so they cannot close it or change status manually? These were all stream installed from the Office 365 website and installed on Domain PC's.
Thanks.,..
-
If his managers cannot get ahold of him via skype, they'll ask him why they cannot reach him.
This is a leadership issue not a technical issue
-
Yeah, if it's just one user and everyone else is excited then sacking him might the easiest route on this one.
-
@Breffni-Potter said:
If his managers cannot get ahold of him via skype, they'll ask him why they cannot reach him.
This is a leadership issue not a technical issue
True but we have no requirement for it YET...we will soon!
-
@garak0410 said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
If his managers cannot get ahold of him via skype, they'll ask him why they cannot reach him.
This is a leadership issue not a technical issue
True but we have no requirement for it YET...we will soon!
If there is no requirement, what's the issue?
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@garak0410 said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
If his managers cannot get ahold of him via skype, they'll ask him why they cannot reach him.
This is a leadership issue not a technical issue
True but we have no requirement for it YET...we will soon!
If there is no requirement, what's the issue?
We want everyone on board! LOL
-
If management allows it, I would suggest helping him adjust his status settings so it doesn't broadcast whether or not he's been away from the computer for 5 minutes. Bumping it up to inactive at 30 minutes, away for an hour would probably help ease him into it... but you could also make the limits super high so he has to manually set his status to something besides a generic "online".
At the end of the day, some accommodation might be made but his workplace is shifting to a new form of communication. He will need to deal with it as a workplace annoyance, or find another job. As others mentioned, you could muck around with settings to try and make it impossible to close but there isn't too much point if you're putting a policy in place soon. After that it becomes a policy violation and management's problem if he continues to close out of it.
-
What if you make it stay minimized or even hidden once it opens. Perhaps he will not realize that it is there.
You can also have a process monitor that alerts you if it gets shut down. You could even have another process that opens it if it gets turned off.
-
@Breffni-Potter said:
If his managers cannot get ahold of him via skype, they'll ask him why they cannot reach him.
This is a leadership issue not a technical issue
Agreed with this... not really your problem. This is a management issue and not an IT issue, this would be better solved via letting the manager (or higher up) know this is happening.
-
Change Status No, It's there for a reason. But you could make a "watchDog" service that keeps it from being closed. Just make an Exe that runs as a service, looks for the lync/skype process running and if not will re-launch it every time. This wouldn't prevent a user from signing out and keeping the program open or setting themselves as invisible though.
-
@garak0410 said:
True but we have no requirement for it YET...we will soon!
I'd love to hear how you'll use it. I know nothing about Skype for Business other than it used to by Lync and it is "unified communications". Anything that has everyone excited gets me excited too!
-
I am glad that posting headshots in their Exchange profiles didn't cause a big stink...
-
@Carnival-Boy said:
@garak0410 said:
True but we have no requirement for it YET...we will soon!
I'd love to hear how you'll use it. I know nothing about Skype for Business other than it used to by Lync and it is "unified communications". Anything that has everyone excited gets me excited too!
It's an awesome product..... if it works. Which is often does not. It has all kinds of great features, is easy to use, looks nice, does audio, video, screen sharing, presence, integrates with Exchange and AD.... it's really nice until you need to communicate and it just doesn't work. Great idea, but no effort into making it do what it needs to do reliably.
-
@Carnival-Boy said:
@garak0410 said:
True but we have no requirement for it YET...we will soon!
I'd love to hear how you'll use it. I know nothing about Skype for Business other than it used to by Lync and it is "unified communications". Anything that has everyone excited gets me excited too!
Depends on your environment. It's worked well for us here, as well as I've used it most previous jobs. It's biggest issue is if you have it open on to locations sometimes the messages do not get sent to both. Otherwise the in-house version works fine. Office 365 Lync tends to go down a lot.
We will likely be switching to a Cisco solution once all phones are deployed across the country and mexico as it provides deep integration with the phone system.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
@garak0410 said:
True but we have no requirement for it YET...we will soon!
I'd love to hear how you'll use it. I know nothing about Skype for Business other than it used to by Lync and it is "unified communications". Anything that has everyone excited gets me excited too!
It's an awesome product..... if it works. Which is often does not. It has all kinds of great features, is easy to use, looks nice, does audio, video, screen sharing, presence, integrates with Exchange and AD.... it's really nice until you need to communicate and it just doesn't work. Great idea, but no effort into making it do what it needs to do reliably.
Interesting to know...I'll keep an eye on this...I do know when I've tried to CONTROL someone's desktop via Skype for Business if I get like 2 to 3 Windows deep, I can't click on anything...but I've had that happen in another remote control app before.
-
@garak0410 said:
Interesting to know...I'll keep an eye on this...I do know when I've tried to CONTROL someone's desktop via Skype for Business if I get like 2 to 3 Windows deep, I can't click on anything...but I've had that happen in another remote control app before.
I wouldn't use it for desktop control. That has issues. We use Logmein for that. Mostly so we use the same tool everywhere get to laptops on or off site no matter if they are on the VPN or not.
-
We moved away from both Lync/SFB and LogMeIn to ScreenConnect. We are VERY happy about that!
-
ScreenConnect is the poo. Best remote access tool I've used. Easy to use and cost effective.
-
I don't use it that much as I tend to be on Linux but I'm happy with what I have seen. Way more stable than LMI, that's for sure. LMI crashes out every two or three minutes so I spend far more time reconnecting than I do actually using it. SC will keep a remote session open for days at a time without an issue.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
I don't use it that much as I tend to be on Linux but I'm happy with what I have seen. Way more stable than LMI, that's for sure. LMI crashes out every two or three minutes so I spend far more time reconnecting than I do actually using it. SC will keep a remote session open for days at a time without an issue.
I haven't had any crashes with LMI so far.
