SfB OnPrem to Te

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The term Common Area Phone means two entirely different things when talking about Lync and Skype for Business Server deployments versus Skype for Business Online.

• In server-based environments a Common Area Phone (CAP) account is a special type of user account which in essence is simply an Active Directory Contact Object that is enabled in Lync/SfB Server differently than standard AD User objects.  This model was first introduced in Lync Server 2010 with the advent of the Aries model family of the Lync Phone Edition platform and leverages only Certificate-based Authentication (TLS-DSK) via PIN Authentication and DHCP Options 43/120.  These accounts are not Exchange mailbox-enabled and thus address a simple goal: the ability to register a phone using generic credentials, provisioned and managed by an administrator, which is intended solely to provide basic ‘dial-tone’ features to a handset or conference phone.  These CAP accounts then also provide the hot-desking capability to the registered device so that a fully-featured user can temporarily sign-in with their own account.

• With Skype for Business Online/Teams  though the CAP terminology is completely different as this is currently related only to licensing and device provisioning.  A new, dedicated Office 365 license has been added to reduce the overall cost for common-use IP phones and a new Web Sign-in method specific to these common-area use cases as also been added.  There is no special account type like with the server platform as any standard online user account can be used with the new license, meaning that Exchange calendaring is available for phones registered using a CAP-enabled account.  Registering a phone to Skype for Business online is also completely different than the server-only PIN Authentication method.