Company Directory in Skype for Business

[Adam Kuhn]

I've seen this subject discussed in other forums, but want to bring it up here to see if there are any suggestions to resolve this subject in a satisfactory manner.  Is there a way to build and propagate a company directory in Skype for Business?  The general consensus is "no."

We're a 65 person company and it would be great to have all of the users pre-populated when you login to Skype for Business.  Unfortunately, it's up to each staff person to build their own directory - which is just an impediment to actually using the product.

Thanks for your suggestions.

[#2]

If you are using Exchange AND Skype For Business, you can create an "Everyone" distribution list on Exchange, and have end users simply add that group to their "Favorites" menu. Thats how we advise our end users in a 5k person company. Add their team and location dist. lists, done and done :)

[#3]

You win the prize for the day.  That's such an obvious great answer, I wish I had figured it out for myself.  

Thanks.

[#4]

The only problem with this is it won't update new employee's that onboard. Why can't employee's just click search and type a name to find someone? It's linked to the directory by default and technically "All employee's" are in the system, you just only add people you frequently communicate with. Having a list that long just seems cumbersome and most likley would probably impact performance of the client a little bit. 

[#5]

This is exactly what we do, and it works well.  The list updates for everyone as employees are added and deleted in the Everyone DL.  The only inconsistency I've found is between the Windows and Mac SfB clients (of course).  Our Everyone DL is actually constructed of 2 sub-DLs:  All employees + All contingent staff.  When adding the Everyone DL, the Mac client properly expands the sub-DLs so you get the list of people.  But the Windows client only expands to the sub-DLs, meaning we have to add the sub-DLs individually.  I recommend testing your particular configuration before locking in the DL structure. 

[#6]

The logic of using these groups defy's my understanding of what is the point when you have a directory with everyone in it on the search tab? Can someone enlighten me why you would even want these groups?