Lync 2010 sign-in address sadness

Lync at my company has historically been an application that IT folks use. Although I'm creating new accounts every day lately, most (80%) of our users do not yet have Lync accounts. We're Lync2010 on the server with the 2010 and 2013 app version on the desktop. Our desktops are pre-imaged by the vendor including the Lync install.

If the Lync client is installed on a desktop prior to the user getting a Lync account, the sign-in address defaults to samaccountname@domain.org. When I create a new account in Lync, I use the users email address which is first_last@domain.org. So we always run into this issue where the user will initially have an problem connecting in lync since the app is expecting a different sign-in name. Usually its a phone call to the user or a visit from our desktop team to fix the issue.

We would like to continue using the users email address as the sign-in address. My question is, is there a way (registry entry?) to force the lync application to use first_last@domain.org in cases where the lync account does not exist yet? This would save us the issue we're seeing that requires handson to fix.

Sorry for longwinded question...

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Mohammed HamadaSenior IT ConsultantCommented: 2016-04-01

Your problem relies with the UPN not matching the Email address. when you assign Lync address as the Email address that would create a SIP attribute for the user object that matches his Email address (Proxy attribute) but still the UPN will always give you an error if it doesn't match your SIP address.

So in order to resolve this problem which is very easy, you'll need to change all your user's account name or UPN to match their email address.

You can easily do that using the famous ADModify tool that can bulk change UPN for all your Active Directory users or simply use AD to do so but that would require that you do this for users per Organization unit.

You can see my article here but it is for proxyaddress .. You can do the same steps for Account name as well (UPN)
http://www.moh10ly.com/blog/active-directory/changing-proxy-address-for-local-ad-users

Boston49Author Commented: 2016-04-01

Thanks very much for the response. The change you describe while relatively easy, would need to be done to around 14k users in our case. Not a solution we could implement easily. Its nice that we get the ability to create the lync account using sam or email address but not as nice that the app itself defaults to sam@domain.

I have done the admodify for more than 14k users .. not for Lync but for Exchange and Office 365 hybrid environments .. It doesn't take more than few minutes to change all users attributes to whatever you have configured in the tool.

Most important is that you test before you apply on all your users. And no I don't think it is possible to do that with the App, Plus even if you manage to find away to tweak that through the Registry . User would still be prompted to type their UPN.

The UPN is the most common way of solving such problems as it wont affect users in any case. and it's a requirement if are using Exchange for ActiveSync Autodiscover to work.

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Boston49Author Commented: 2016-04-04

Thanks again for your help Mohammed.

Lync 2010 sign-in address sadness

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