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YMartin

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Skype for Business hybrid setup licensing question.

I have deployed an on-premise Skype for Business server in several steps. First, I got our in-house Skype working with IM, screen sharing, and phone calls both inside and outside. Then I set up federation so we can Skype with users on our clients' networks. The client is using Office 365 Skype so I moved our on-premise users to Office 365 so we can communicate with the 365 users. Here is where the problem comes in: when I move our users to 365 they lose the ability to make outgoing calls from Skype's dial pad. We can still IM, video chat, and call the other Skype users from their Skype contacts, but can't call our own cell phones for example. We have our own PBX that we want to continue to use for making calls, but we want to integrate it back into Skype so it works like it did on-premise. Do I need a license for Phone System to do this? Is there another way to get Skype to work with the other domain besides moving users to online? I spent a couple hours on the phone with Microsoft the other day and even they don't know what licenses i need.
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Mohammed Hamada
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Mahesh, that article says right at the beginning that I need "phone System" license in addition to E3. We are reluctant to pay another $8/month per user for functionality we already had. We are looking for a way to keep the system we already have, but moving users to 365 breaks that and we lose outbound calls.
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Mohammed, the scenario I'm looking to implement is in your last paragraph, but the on-premise users still need the same chat capabilities as the 365 users. My understanding is that I need the "Phone System" license to make that work. Is there another way to do it without the additional license?

My understanding is that there are two ways to implement what I need (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/nagshettykadwadi/2017/12/17/configuring-phone-system-cloud-pbx-and-on-premises-pstn-connectivity-for-skype-for-business-online/):

If Microsoft PSTN calling service is not available in your country or you already have a service provider and would like to continue with them, we can integrate your on-premises PSTN component with Office 365 Phone system. There are two methods to do that:

Cloud Connector Edition: We use this method if we do not have on-premises Lync or Skype for Business infrastructure.
Skype for Business server: We use on-premises Lync or Skype for Business infrastructure if it is already integrated with PSTN services.


I'm interested in the second option. Cloud Connector sounds like it would replace my existing on-premise SFB deployment and I don't want to do that. Either option seems to require "Phone System" licenses.

You say we can make it work without moving users to 365, but I don't find the instructions to do that. That would be the ideal situation as long as the users can message the other domain while being "Homed" on-premise. The only way federation seems to work right now is by moving the users to 365. Am I missing something?

Thanks for your help!
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On-premises makes everything possible and even adds more features that are not still available until this moment in Office 365 like Persistent chat. Recently MS added Response group as far as I know in what's called now as "Call Queue" in the below link

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/what-is-phone-system-in-office-365/create-a-phone-system-call-queue

To implement Cloud Connector you will need E5 License or PBX add-on on your E3 License for the users who will be using the system. If you don't want to purchase this license considering the expensive price it has you will need to create Hybrid instead and move users who will use phone calling system to on-premises and keep the rest on Office 365 with their current license.
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Well, I must have misconfigured something then because federation between on-premise and 365 users doesn't work. It only works if I move the on-premise users to 365 in the SFB Control Panel and then everything works except dialing out.
No that's a normal procedure in a Hybrid environment , In order for Skype online (Office 365) be aware of the on-premises users , User must be first created on-premises and then synced via ADSYNC then moved to Online environment. This has to do with the Attributes which through it Skype Online would recognize the user is in the no-premises environment.

If however you're not using the same Public domain for both Office 365 Skype and On-premises then it's pretty easy and should work through the SRV DNS values and Configuration to federate with Skype for business (O365).
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Ok, I will have another look at my DNS. Thanks!
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I've done everything in those links already, but one thing makes me wonder. In the first link where we test the SRV records I get the correct result for _sipfederationtls._tcp, but when I test _sip._tls I don't get sipdir.online.lync.com as I expect. I get the FQDN of my front end pool instead. Am I expecting the wrong thing or is this a clue that I have something configured incorrectly?
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It did end up being a problem with DNS. I was following the guides linked above (and others) which show DNS pointing to sipdir.online.lync.com, etc. when it needed to be pointing to my edge server. I changed that, then Skype lost the connection to the server so I rebuilt the configuration store, moved the users back down from 365 to on-premise, restarted the cs-pool and everything seems to be working. No need for moving users to 365 or additional licenses. For others who may see this be careful following these guides you find online because they all seem to say you need licenses when you don't really.

Basically the on-premise parts of Mohammed's posts were what worked for me, but moving users and using Cloud Connector were not necessary.