Override Lync and Use Skype for Business

Microsoft has recently moved from their well-known business communicator client “Lync” to Skype for Business. Which has major graphical enhancements along with many handy features for making our work-life easier.

More details can be found here

Now the main part, it’s very difficult for the companies to move to a new solution easily and it takes vast amount of discussion and planning for a movement shift towards new technology. Lync has similar concerns when moving to skype for business. So even many users who are part of office 365 and then can use (technically) skype for business but they cannot due to the restrictions from their backend IT infrastructure. For example.

When you try to login with your previous lync credentials on Skype for Business application, you will be greeted with a message “You have the newer version of Lync called Skype for Business, However, your admin would like you to use Lync or it’s the only version your server support. Please restart now to use Lync”

Isn’t that annoying? Having a latest version of the software but not able to run it. Don’t worry, after going through this article, you will be able to ditch this error message and should be able to run Skype for Business without any pop-up error message. All you need is admin rights on your machine and access to system registry settings. So lets go ahead and configure this.

1. First and the most important step is to close your Lync or skype from business (even if you already restarted it after seeing the above error message)
2. Let’s search for command prompt from your start menu and then right-click and run it as an administrator

1. Type regedit on that and hit enter

1. Once the registry windows has been opened navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Lync

   You will notice that the EnableSkypeUI is set to 00 00 00 00

   

2. Now in order to make Skype for Business as default UI always, we need to modify the key EnableSkypeUI, change the value of the registry as below

1. Now, on more important step and its mandatory. If we leave the registry settings as given below and do not perform next steps, Skype for Business will change back to Lync in next restart. So we need to make sure that even after the restart the registry settings will remain the same. To achieve that we will just go ahead and change the properties in a way that our user account will not be able to modify these settings. You can use a domain admin account if you are a member of it. In this scenario we are taking example for local admin account.

1. Once you click on the edit button following window will appear and you just need to remove all permission for Lync object. Need not to worry, it will not impact anything. Just make sure that you have checked the box for “Apply these permissions to object and.or containers within this container only” and press okay.

1. With all mentioned steps you have just conquered the Skype for business and got rid of lync forever. Enjoy a great UI with great functions. Do like us on Facebook or Twitter and don’t forget to spread the news if you like it. Thanks for following the article.