Notes from Mar. 23 caffeine break
1404 Siebel

Introduction by Tony Rimovsky

Invited Microsoft to address the problems Mac users were experiencing with Lync

“What you want is all platforms being taken seriously in an enterprise environment so that they can be used interchangeably, consistently, and reliably.”

The dialog and the development will continue beyond today with road maps and investigations.

Question and answer sessions

Darryl’s been involved with Mac documenting for Lync and wants to close those gaps

• Q: One of the things faculty report: Problems getting the sound to work right. Skype can do it; why can’t Lync?
  • A: There are different levels of support for Plug and Play on Macs vs PCs. Working with Plantronics and Jabra to solve it. May involve driver updates on Macs. Don’t want people to have to go into audio setup to change things amid call. “Think we’re fairly close. What are your Mac users using? Jabra? Plantronics?” We’re using whatever the users want to buy – if it works.
  • Mac users are using IP phones because they can’t get Lync to work. It’s not a question of switching devices; it flat out doesn’t work.
  • Suggestion for “simple stopgap” fix – ringing and voice have to come through same device, so you either have to wear headphones all the time or everyone has to hear your phone call. There has to be a way to pipe ring sound to a different audio device.
  • 1-2 months for Jabra driver to be available to improve plug and play.
  • Getting the hardware to show up on the Mac is not the same as getting Lync to recognize the hardware. That needs fixing too. The phone log will say it’s not connected.

• Q: Can you explain to us how Microsoft decided this was actually worth releasing for the Mac?
  • A: There was a Mac Communicator that had been based on Windows Live. The MS developers were used to testing by plugging in iPhone headphones to check. They missed the hardware problems.

• Q: The program doesn’t perform the same on Mac as Windows – a lot of features are missing on Macs. Is that going to be fixed?
  • A: There’s a gap between the two software clients. Hate to say it, but MS works to make Windows, so MS is going to make Windows work very well. Still playing catchup b/c there was little demand 2-3 years ago for Mac. Things are being added to Mac Lync that weren’t in Communicator. More catchup.
  • Next Mac Lync: end of this year. The gap should be smaller then.
  • Going to be moving from Silverlight to HTML 5 so it will be easier to make cross-compatible and in sync.
  • HTML5 will make it easier to support Android tablets too.

• Q: What are the gaps that matter?

• A: People just aren’t using it. They won’t have Mac phones because the devices are so horrible. They’re using IP phones instead. The functionality gap doesn’t matter if you can’t use the phone to begin with.
  • Front option receptionist that uses a Mac. HAS to be able to be a delegate, transfer phones, etc. But she can’t do her job through a Mac, and Kathleen has to bring down a Windows laptop for her to do significant events.
  • Screen sharing doesn’t work the same between Macs and PCs. If Mac initiates the share PC can’t claim control.
  • Mac side won’t do video recordings the way the PC will.
  • Recording into Windows Media Player format is also a problem.
  • Call history doesn’t work. As soon as the caller’s window closed, the call history didn’t have the phone number of the caller anymore.
  • Policy issues on server side make a difference to some things as well – Macs don’t interpret server policies the same way Windows does.
  • Calling people is harder on Mac – contact list is harder to use b/c Mac people don’t think of right clicking which is the only way to get a particular flyout menu. Some Mac people don’t know how to right click. Make it easier to call without a right click needed.

• Product integration with Outlook 2011 – issues there?
  • Is there integration? If so, IT pros here don’t know about it.
  • People consider Mac Outlook unusable, so they don’t try.
  • Had to migrate people off; performance issues. Tried to make it work, couldn’t.
  • Either it’s fine or they have to do near constant profile rebuilds. That makes it unusable.
  • 14 hours rebuilding database & getting “try again.” IT pro says “We gave up.” Use Mac Mail on iPads because it doesn’t work. Once it beachballs on you, you’ll never be able to get that account working properly again.
  • Told we (U of I) couldn’t use it with home drives on a network share, which is a problem.

• Discussion of hardware types, trying to pin down patterns
  • Five years old and brand new both.
  • There won’t be platform and level consistency in an academic environment.
  • Fixing things with point releases doesn’t thoroughly fix the problem for us.

• Wanted: List from MS and CITES what’s a reasonable expectation for a client.
  • Used to have phone, voice mail, no fancy stuff.
  • Were promised cool things that never worked. Now they’re disappointed.
  • Give us (U of I) an accurate list of what is and isn’t supported.
  • See – links to MS’s chart on TechNet, assuming that’s up to date.

• Call forwarding on the fly is hard to set.
  • Mobile clients? CITES isn’t supporting Lync mobile clients yet.
  • Different mobile clients for iPhones and iPads. Easier to do call forwarding on those. Might be a good bridge until that’s implemented on the Mac.
  • When to roll out? Might be able to start testing next month, but if that doesn’t happen it’ll be later in the summer.
  • Campus community in general won’t see it until summer.

• Anything we like?
  • The potential. We (CITES) sold it to campus based on promises that it would be like what Windows can do, and we’re very disappointed it doesn’t work that way.
  • Were promised a 6 month delay between Win and Mac version, and we’d hoped Lync 2011 for Mac would catch up to where Windows had been, and it didn’t.
  • MS points out: Nobody other than Lync can do screen shared federation to other institutions…
  • but that’s not our problem. Right now we (IT pros) can’t even get screen sharing to work within the same department.
  • The irony is not lost that Skype works better than Lync despite MS buying Skype.
  • We were sold on enterprise level features, and we’re not seeing them work.
  • Our peer institutions are listening avidly to our experiences doing this.

• What’s the essentials to prioritize? e911 and devices?
  • Nope. Our users don’t care about e911.
  • What they need is front office parity – delegates and transferring.
  • (Explanation of e911 workaround from Tony)
  • Note: e911 calls CAN AND DO go through from Macs, but won’t include location information automatically.
  • CITES cares about e911 for liability, but end users care about front office parity for daily use.

• Skype vs Lync
  • Skype will still be a consumer product
  • Lync is the enterprise product
  • In the future, federation between Lync and Skype will improve.