Presence and contact lists in Skype for Business environments

This section contains information about how Pexip Infinity manages presence information in Microsoft Skype for Business and Lync* environments for Pexip services and contacts.

* Note that where this documentation refers to "SfB/Lync", it represents both Microsoft Skype for Business and Lync unless stated otherwise.

Publishing presence information

Pexip Infinity automatically publishes basic presence information in SfB/Lync environments for Pexip services (Virtual Meeting Rooms and Virtual Auditoriums, and contacts reached via the Infinity Gateway). The contact will indicate that it is 'Available' when a SfB/Lync client subscribes to it.

Note that an Infinity Gateway contact publishes an 'Available' presence if the contact alias matches any Call Routing Rule (Match Lync / Skype for Business (MS-SIP) must be selected as one of the rule's incoming protocols). This does not necessarily mean that the destination alias that is associated with the rule is online and available.

The Call Routing Rule that allows SfB/Lync to dial out to other devices should be configured with a Destination alias regex match that matches your dial plan as precisely as possible. For example, if all of your endpoints have a dial plan in the format <city>-roomXXX@vc.example com where XXX is a number (e.g. london-room003@vc.example.com), then you should use a regex like [a-z]+-room\d\d\d@vc\.example\.com instead of just .+@vc.example.com. This will help identify invalid contact addresses in the SfB/Lync client contact list as they would not match the rule, have no presence, and hopefully alert the SfB/Lync user to a possible typing mistake.

See Regular expression (regex) reference for information about writing regular expressions.

Making a VTC endpoint searchable from a Skype for Business / Lync client

If your environment has VTC endpoints that can be called from SfB/Lync clients via the Infinity Gateway, you can make those endpoints searchable within the SfB/Lync client's address book. To do this:

  • If you have a resource that already exists in Exchange, you should populate msRTCSIP-Primaryuseraddress for this resource with the address the SfB/Lync client should dial to reach that resource.
  • If the endpoint is not a resource (e.g. it is a desktop system, or a system that belongs to a business partner), then you should create a contact object in AD with msRTCSIP-PrimaryUserAddress set to the address the SfB/Lync client should dial to reach that endpoint.

You must also ensure that the address (domain) dialed by the SfB/Lync client is routed to Pexip Infinity and that a corresponding Call Routing Rule exists in Pexip Infinity to ensure it is routed (via SIP or H.323) to the device.

For example, you may have the following VTC resources configured:

You can then use the Active Directory Users and Computers tool or ADSI Edit to configure these resources and set the msRTCSIP-Primaryuseraddress to the dialable address of that VTC resource, which is sip:vtc_alpha@vc.pexip.com in this example:

The resources will then show up in your searches within SfB/Lync, and can be used to start a video call to the configured address. Presence will show as available (although this may take some time initially) providing there is a Call Routing Rule in Pexip Infinity that matches the address pattern.

For example, searching for "vtc":

...and then initiating a video call:

Note that the contact avatar that is displayed is taken from the Pexip Infinity theme that is associated with the Call Routing Rule that matches the address pattern. See Customizing the contact list avatar below for more information.

Customizing the contact list avatar

You can customize the avatar that is displayed in SfB/Lync users' contact lists to represent the Pexip VMR / Virtual Auditorium, or gateway contact.

The avatar that is displayed in the SfB/Lync user's contact list is the content of the presence_avatar_image.jpg file contained in the theme associated with the VMR or Call Routing Rule as appropriate. If no theme has been associated with the VMR or Call Routing Rule, then the avatar from the default theme is used. Note that this feature only works in environments where the Conferencing Nodes are directly reachable from the SfB/Lync client.

The contact list also displays the VMR name, its presence status and the VMR description.

For more information about how to customize a theme, see Customizing conference images and voice prompts using themes.