Fixing the missing Skype Meeting Add-in for Outlook

This problem has been popping up for our users the last year: Whenever a user would start Outlook (after reboot or simply restarting Outlook) the Skype Meeting Add-in would be missing from the ribbon and had to be manually enabled to show up again.
In my experience the problem is not consistent between users with the same OS version or even local administrator privileges, but the solution was nevertheless easy in the end.

After trying all the official tips of

1. Simply enabling the add-in (works for the current session, not after Outlook restart)
2. Repair the Office installation
3. Verifying the registry key of the add-in “LoadBehaviour” (should be the value “3”)

Situation still persisted, the user would have to manually enable the Add-in via the menu File -> Options -> Add-Ins -> COM Add-ins. Not a permanent solution.

What works in the end, and is covered in other blog posts, is this:

1. Run Outlook as administrator (no need to set up a new account/mailbox if your logged-in user is not local admin)
2. Navigate to File -> Options -> Add-Ins -> COM Add-ins. Now simply remove the Skype Meeting Add-in from the list.
3. Re-add the Meeting Add-in from the same menu. Path to the add-in is dependant on your Office version. The add-in itself is named UcAddin.dll
   • If you are running x86 version then the path is %programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft Office\Office 16 for Outlook 2016 or
     [..]\Office 15 for Outlook 2013
   • If your are running x64 version the path is
     %programfiles%\Microsoft Office\Office 16 for Outlook 2016 or
     [..]\Office 15 for Outlook 2013
   • This may differ if you are running Click-to-run Office version
4. Now close Outlook and restart in your regular user context.

Add-in should be available again.

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Upgrading to Skype for Business – some experiences

This weekend I finally got to upgrade our Lync 2013 servers to Skype for Business. The delay has been intentional as we have awaited at least the first cumulative update to be announced. We rely heavily on Lync/Skype for Business in our daily operations (1,362 A/V conferences over the last week and more than 103,113 participant conference minutes in our 250 pax company), both for telephony and collaboration, so any service disruption is poorly welcomed. As we are running an Enterprise pool with three Front Ends and the Lync 2013->Skype for Business requires an In-place upgrade this means quite some downtime as well as the added complexity of an Enterprise solution.

In the upgrade process I experienced several things that others might benefit from – so I thought I’d share some thoughts here.

Lync client codecs

I have been missing this sort of overview on the Lync Clients for a while, somewhere to get a summary on the different protocols and resolutions/bandwidths of the different Lync Clients. TechNet and other sources I’ve come across are only showing some parts on the subject.

So ultimately I put together this “Matrix”, although not complete. As you can see I lack the info on what kind of voice proto’s being used for Lync:Mac 2011. I do not suspect that this is different from the Lync 2010 Client for Windows (since these are communicating) – but I cannot prove it.

Here is the summary I’ve been able to do this far:

Some remarks from the table are
*1: If Your Android Device supports the Qualcomm 8×60, send rate is 640×480@15fps
*2: Windows Mobile Devices will support hardware offloading on transcoding

Cannot join the meeting due to user permissions

The somewhat long title is also an exact error Message. A customer experienced that some external users were not able to join their scheduled Conferences. I tried myself, and was prompted With the same Message.