Skype for Business Mac Client June update summary – new features, improvements and Known issues

There has been a new June 2017 update released for the Skype for Business Mac Clients. This could be cumulative update 5 i cant see it mentioning cu version anywhere at the mo so its June update for the SfB Mac Client with a lot of new features added and improvements, any SfB mac user I’m sure will want to get this update.

There is a ton of new features including some of the highlights and there’s even Microsoft Teams meeting join from meetings tab which is nice! Some highlights below:

  • PowerPoint presentation while in a meeting
  • Join a meeting by phone
  • Users can now join non-federated meetings directly from Skype for Business
  • Users can now join a Microsoft Teams meeting directly from the Meetings tab in Skype for Business
  • Added Touch bar support

A full feature list with June update is further on in the post.

This again shows Microsoft hard work with improving the mac client.

 

There seems to be two new known issues to consider as well

Updating

You can AutoUpdate or the Manual download link if below. Suspect the new update will be there soon.

Download link

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54108

Version – 16.8.0.196

Released – 20/06/2017

 
New features added and there’s a ton of them!
  • Users can now share a PowerPoint presentation while in a meeting.

  • Join a meeting by phone — Users that are enabled for Enterprise Voice can now join a meeting with the audio on their phone.

  • Call-back on phone in a meeting — Users that are enabled for Enterprise Voice can now get a call-back on their phone while in an on-going meeting. Click the More Options button () to find out more.

  • Users can now search for contacts whom they previously haven’t talked to directly from the Chats tab.

  • Users can now join a Microsoft Teams meeting directly from the Meetings tab in Skype for Business.

  • Users can now join non-federated meetings directly from Skype for Business, rather than having to join in their browser.

  • Users can see meeting information (organizer, join URL, conference ID) while in a meeting.

    NOTE: For Meet Now, the phone number and conference ID are not available; only the join URL is available.

  • New Contacts tab shows who has added you to their contacts list in Skype for Business.

  • Users can close the "On Hold" overlay while in a meeting. Held calls can be resumed from the new More Options button ().

  • Added Touch bar support for various functionality.

 

Improvements
  • Losing connection during meetings only will now automatically reconnect if dropped due to network problems once sufficient network quality has been re-established.

  • Fixed a memory issue with the 4th Generation Macbook Pro where the app would leak excessive amounts of memory after a video call, or VBSS screen sharing.

  • Fixed an issue where the notification centre would be filled out with alerts about network problems.

  • Fixed an issue where 00 was always normalized to + regardless of the user’s region.

  • Fixed an issue where dialling vanity numbers wouldn’t correctly translate to digits, and the call would fail.

  • Fixed an issue with double dial-tone sounds while dialling a PSTN number.

  • Fixed an issue that prompted users to update meeting due to policy changes when scheduling public meetings.

  • Fixed mute and unmute issues.

  • Fixed various screen sharing issues.

  • Fixed other UI and crash issues.

  • Fixed issues with sign-in.

 

System requirements for Mac

  • Skype for Business Server 2015 or Lync Server 2013
  • OSX 10.11 (El Capitan) or OSX 10.12 (Sierra)
  • Outlook Mac build 15.27 (161010) required for Outlook integration

SfB / Lync Server / Online Requirements

For best experience SfB Online is recommended for full feature set but for on premises deployments its the following

Don’t forget about known issues as well

Latest issues added

  • Contact Management, including Delegate Management, is not supported if Unified Contact Store is enabled
    Users cannot modify their contacts list in Skype for Business if a user account is enabled by the Skype for Business administrator for the Unified Contact Store for Exchange. Users can make changes to their contacts list in Outlook.

  • Skype for Business on Mac fails to sign in

    Workaround:

    1. Remove “Mozilla/5.0” from the WIASupportedUserAgents parameter in AdfsProperties. Essentially, you will need to:

      1. Run Get-AdfsProperties | select wiasupporteduseragents and get the output.

      2. Then remove _only_ “Mozilla/5.0” from the output.

      3. Then run Set-AdfsProperties -WIASupportedUserAgents with the output from step b.

    2. Revert back to using Lync for Mac 2011.

More details on all known issues below

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Known-issues-Skype-for-Business-on-Mac-494ac5d5-50be-4aa7-8f5a-669c71c98c9a?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

 

Client Functionality and Client Comparison

Also worth checking out the Client comparison tables for Skype for Business Server 2015 with the new update so you know differences between windows and Mac clients.

Interesting it now notes separate client comparison for Skype for Business Server 2015 and Lync Server 2013

SfB Server list – https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn933896.aspx

Lync Server 2013 list – https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg425836(v=ocs.15).aspx

 

References

https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/What-s-new-in-Skype-for-Business-2016-cece9f93-add1-4d93-9a38-56cc598e5781#OS_Type=Mac

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Known-issues-Skype-for-Business-on-Mac-494ac5d5-50be-4aa7-8f5a-669c71c98c9a?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#new1

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54108

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