Edit: July 30, Availability dates updated to reflect schedule.
Over the years, we’ve heard feedback from customers and IT Admins about the difficulty in managing Office activation for subscript...
Updated Feb 10, 2023
Version 7.0
Blog Post
I've been informed that this change for Semi-Annual Channel users was only introduced in v2008. Is this correct?
I've also been informed that this design change is the reason that running up the Skype for Business client now triggers the Office activation process, when it did not before. With this change we now have to license up accounts that just need to use Skype for Business with an E3/5 license to be able to connect to our own on-prem Skype for Business Server environment! Why? We never had to active Office to just use the Skype for Business client before, nor do we feel this should be the case now!
This is actually about to cause us great pain where we have on-call support teams that use the "run as" command to run Skype for Business as a "functional account", and then use the call forwarding functionality on that account to forward that account's softphone to their on-call mobile.
And that's not the end of it, technically we've been unable to complete activation when using "run as" and as such Skype for Business enters some sort of reduced functionality mode which prevents call forwarding and strips it off if already set! Rock meet hard place! 