Lync Online Limitations

Microsoft Lync is a unified communications platform that users can use keep track of their contacts’ availability, send an IM; start or join an audio, video, or Web conference; or make a phone call—all through a consistent, familiar interface. Lync is built to fully integrate with Microsoft Office. The Microsoft Lync 2010 desktop client is available for Windows and for Mac and mobile versions are available for Windows Phone, iPhone/iPad, and Android devices.

There are some known issues with Lync Online that I thought might be helpful for you to know if you use the product. Sometimes it is good to know a product’s limitations so that you can either find workarounds or not waste time in fixing something that is a known limitation of the product. I have gathered the following information from various sources. I ran this by some of my Microsoft contacts and they were able to confirm almost all of these limitations, except for #4, #5 and #11 that they were unable to test.

1. There is no way to record the meeting. This could be an issue if you were recording in Live Meeting before and then you decide to move to Lync.
2. You can only mute a caller, but not unmute him/her. This too can be a serious problem.
3. There is no way to close the conference. This can burn your conference minutes with your conference provider and people can hang around even after the conference is closed.
4. Lync technology does not support coexistence between Lync Online and Lync Server using a single domain. Therefore, it is not possible to deploy a subset of users in Lync Online and other users on-premises using a single domain name. Lync federation can be used to enable users to communicate between Lync Online and Lync on-premises deployments, however only using different domain names.
5. Federated Lync does not support file transfer.
6. Dial-in audio conferencing is not provided in Lync Online. In other words, you can’t dial into a scheduled Lync meeting using your phone. You’ll have to use a third-party audio conferencing service for this.
7. There is no anti-malware scanning for meeting content and file transfers.
8. There is no privacy mode. Therefore, users cannot restrict their presence information only to the contacts listed in their Lync Contacts list.
9. There is no IM/Presence federation with XMPP networks (Jabber, Google Talk).
10. There is no interoperability with on-premises video conferencing systems.
11. Communicator for Mac client and Lync 2010 Phone Edition (for Lync-based IP phones) are not supported.
12. No IM Archiving.
13. SharePoint (both online and on-premise) skill search via Lync is not supported with Lync Online.