Company Contact List

[Peter Longley]

Whilst testing the preview release of Skype for Business (Cloud PBX) it became apparent that I have not seen anywhere so far a mention of how to add a companies contact list or even just the ability to have our internal company structure in groups within Skype.

This would make life a lot easier for us IT admins as otherwise each person will have to add there own contacts and favourites.

If we had a way to structure a company list centrally for all users which was fixed and not able to be edited it would save time and also remove possible errors.

Alongside that if we have a number of clients\suppliers it would be best if we had a way to list those once entered centrally for all users.

I apologise if this is listed anywhere but so far my searches have turned up nothing like this.

[#2]

Hello Peter,

I remember we had a feature wherein we can add the contact details of the users in the Local Active Directory and then synchronize from the Local AD to Office 365 AD. Additionally if we have all the users assigned with the Manager and the hierarchy in the Local AD and we can get a group created whenever a new user account is created in the hierarchy.

Reference Article: -

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https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt651713.aspx

With Regards,

Satish

[#3]

Hi Satish,

You might have mis-understood my comments, I know we can add contact information to our users etc. but what doesn't happen is that we are able to create a group say "Support" and add all the support team members to it and have it appear on all users Skype for Business system accordingly.

Also as a company often you have regular external contacts that all staff contact, as such it would be good to be able to have an external contact list which you setup centrally for all users to see in Skype for Business.

Hopefully that makes it clearer.

Regards

Peter

[#4]

Hello Peter,

Apologizes for the misunderstanding the issue.

In that case we might require to create a distribution list for the users we need to add in a group. But adding the Distribution Group in the Skype for Business Client has to be done manually there is not automation that can performed.

For the external contact we would require to add them individually as this users are not a part of tenant we can't even add them to the distribution list.

With Regards,

Satish

[#5]

Hi,

think these 3 link might help you:
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Bulk-Import-Contacts-for-8e3c614f

https://lumt.codeplex.com

http://www.vytru.com/contacts-manager-for-microsoft-lync-and-skype.html

Found these links on this blogpost:
http://www.skypeadmin.com/2015/04/13/pre-populate-contacts-lync-skype/

[#6]

Hi Peter,

Good question! I am also investigating the possibility to (programatically) add a certain group of users (e.g. support team) as a group to all Skype for Business Users in the organisation. We are looking to do this for O365 subscriptions. So far I did not find a suitable solution. Did you get any further regarding this topic? 

[#7]

I have not had any chance to look at the scripts that Alexander H has provided as other things have come up lately but will see if any of those are options. Other than that so far the only option is to create the distribution groups and add them manually to each user (not ideal)