Creating Lync Groups on behalf of your users

Lync Users can create their own contact groups containing projects and teams that are meaningful
to them. It is also possible for us to add pre-defined groups from AD to Lync.
To add groups to Lync on behalf of your users:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Create and populate the group

Email it.servicedesk@ncl.ac.uk to request that the group is mail enabled for Lync
We will let you know when the group has been added
Wait a day or so for the change to filter through
Tell users to search for and add the group to their contacts

Creating a group
The following limitations are in place:

Groups need to have less than 100 members (a Lync limitation)

Groups cannot be nested
They need to be set up in AD as Universal rather than Global

If you are creating a new group for Lync please put the school name/service and the prefix and
include Lync in the name e.g. School_Teamname_Lync

Grouper Groups
The Group Management Service (grouper) can also be used to create an AD group that can then be
mail enabled.
The advantage of using this approach is that you can take advantage of departmental groups which
have been auto provisioned based upon HR data. These reflect staff departmental changes and
therefore reduce some of the administration burden.
For example in ISS we have created a number of Lync enabled groups in this manner.

ISS_Auto_Governance_Lync
ISS_Auto_InfraArch_Lync

(NB: splitting ISS staff into 5 directorates also overcame the 100 user difficulty)
To request a new grouper group please contact it.servicedesk@ncl.ac.uk

Grouper groups follow a fixed naming convention starting with Schoolname_Auto - Lync
should be added to the end of the name.
Groups can be set up to be auto populated from HR data, self-managed, or a mixture of
both.

Once the group is set up and checked you will need to request that it is mail enabled.
More information on the group management service is available here:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/itservice/service-catalogue/technical/group-management/

Creating Lync Groups

Feb 2013