Step by Step to Enable / Disable Skype for Business client

In my previous post, I shed some light on new Skype for Business Client (formally known as Lync client ) look and options available to end user. This post will focus on the steps require to enable or disable Skype for Business Client for end user. Being an administrator you can control whether a user can use Skype for Business or not. With that being said, let’s get started with this post.

Before we start, i assume that you currently have Lync 2013 deployed in your infrastructure and the steps mentioned below are tested on Lync 2013 server edition. Here are the steps to Enable or Disable Skype for Business client in Lync 2013 server.

Mostly Microsoft product updates are pushed to end users from Windows Updates and Microsoft prefer to push new product updates from Windows Updates too. You can either manage Windows Updates centrally using WSUS and allow which updates can be pushed to end users machine and if you don’t have any centralized Patching system then you probably come up with this scenario where few users update their Lync client to Skype for Business and few using Lync. Once lync client is updated to Skype for Business client users will get the following pop up.

Most of the companies wants to standardize their software deployment and if you want to manage standardization of Lync client without using any central management system then here are the steps which will help you to control lync client version on your end user machines.

Enable Skype User Interface

By default Skype for Business client UI value is Null in Lync Client policy. We can check client policy setting using this cmdlet,

Get-CsClientPolicy -Identity Global <PolicyName>

We can allow Skype for Business client interface using following cmdlet in Lync Management Shell,

Set-CsClientPolicy -Identity Global -EnableSkypeUI $True

To enable for particular set of users,

New-CsClientPolicy -Identity AllowSkypeUI -EnableSkypeUI $True

Grant-CsClientPolicy -Identity <sip address> -PolicyName AllowSkypeUI

After configuring client policy, Lync client will prompt for restart,

Disable Skype User Interface

To disable Skype for Business client user interface run the following command in Lync management shell,

Set-CsClientPolicy -Identity Global -EnableSkypeUI $False

Registry Settings

Administrators can control the client interface using registry settings too. Here is the registry location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Lync

To change registry settings using powershell,

Enable Skype for Business: Set-ItemProperty HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Office\Lync -Name EnableSkypeUI -Value 00,00,00,01

Disable Skype for Business: Set-ItemProperty HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Office\Lync -Name EnableSkypeUI -Value 00,00,00,00