Lync Contact Card Customization

Lync Contact Card is used to show Lync user’s information. Which including but not limited to Lync users’ free/busy status, Contact, Notes, Organization... etc. In this article, how to customize Lync Contact Card will be introduced.

Environment:
Lync 2013, (version: 15.0.4569.1503).
Outlook 2013, (version: 15.0.4569.1503).
Lync server 2013 integrated with Exchange 2013.

Here is a Lync 2013 contact card interface:

The following customizations will be introduced in next:

1. Calendar Presence, Free/Busy Info
2. CONTACT Tab
3. NOTES Tab
4. ORGANIZATION Tab
5. WHAT’S NEW Tab
6. MEMBERSHIP Tab

1. Calendar Presence

Calendar data taken from Microsoft Outlook will not be included in your presence information by default. The free/busy information will be reported in your contact card. Likewise, your status will automatically be set to Busy any time Outlook shows that you are in a meeting. On Lync Server side, you can control with the client policy:

DisableCalendarPresence.

When it set to True, calendar data taken from Microsoft Outlook will not be included in your presence information. When set to False, calendar data will be included in your presence information.

When you be scheduled a meeting, your contact card might include a note similar to this:

Calendar: Free until 5:00 PM.

On Lync Server side, you can control with the client policy: DisableFreeBusyInfo. When set to True, free/busy information retrieved from Microsoft Outlook will not be displayed in your contact card. When set to False, free/busy information is displayed in your contact card.

Reference:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398300.aspx

2. CONTACT Tab

Lync administrators can use ABSConfig tool to customize Address Book service configuration in Lync server 2013 and the ABSConfig tool can configure attributes such as FirstName, LastName, Alias and so on. These information will be showed on CONTACT Tab.

Here is a capture of ABSConfig tool interface:

ABSConfig Tool

Reference:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj945604.aspx

3. NOTES Tab

You can add information to your copy of someone’s contact card, such as the person’s birthday, work address, additional phone numbers, and/or email addresses. This information is stored in Outlook. So if you do not integrated with Outlook there is no Notes Tab.

If you do not add any information to Outlook Contact using the “Add” button on Lync Contact Card, the NOTES Tab won’t be showed on the Contact Card. After you adding to Outlook Contact through “Add” in the picture below you will see the NOTES Tab on Lync Contact Card:

NOTES Tab

4. ORGANIZATION Tab

ORGANIZATION Tab helps you understand the organization Architecture related to you. You can view the working relationships with people who share same manager with you, your manager and other relationship clearly.

On Lync Server side, you can control ORGANIZATION Tab with client policy: DisableContactCardOrganizationTab, When set to True, the contact card organization tab is not visible within the Lync user interface. When set to False, the contact card organization tab is available in Lync.

Reference: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398300.aspx

If you find the tab missing on Lync client Contact Card, it may also cause by the values changed on Registry Editor.

You can check the value in the Registry Editor on local workstation with the following path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\15.0\common\contactcard

You can create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value named “TurnOffOrganizationTab” and change the value data to “0”. If it set to “1” the ORGANIZATION Tab will missing.

You can compare the difference with the following pictures:

No ORGANIZATION tab on Contact Card

ORGANIZATION Tab on Contact Card

5. What's New Tab

The Tab display the contact’s social network updates (if you’re friends with them on a shared social network or if their updates are public). You can also add your SharePoint, Facebook, LinkedIn account on WHAT”S NEW Tab of Contact Card.

6. MEMBERSHIP Tab

MEMBERSHIP Tab shows the Outlook distribution group on Lync client.

Lync server automatically refresh the membership list of any distribution group that has been “expanded” in the Contacts list from Exchange server. The time Lync server refresh can be controlled by the Lync client policy: DGRefreshInterval. DGRefreshInterval can be set to any integer value between 30 seconds and 28,800 seconds (8 hours), inclusive. The default value is 28,800 seconds.

You can create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value named “TurnOffMemberOfTab” and change the value data to “0”. If it set to “1” the MEMBERSHIP Tab will missing.

You can compare the differences with the following pictures:

No MEMBERSHIP tab on Contact Card

MEMBERSHIP Tab on Contact Card

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