New Features in Lync 2013 Client with July 2013 Security Update

Update December 4, 2013: In the November 2013 update for the Lync 2013 Client, they changed the icon for the Upcoming Meetings list to a mini calendar:

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As I mentioned in my other post about the change to the Lync 2013 System Tray Icon, that change was part of a larger number of changes planned for Lync 2013 Cumulative Update 2 (CU2) but went into effect as part of the July 2013 Security Update for Lync 2013.

However, unlike that change which caused a lot of negative responses from customers (and is now planned to be changed), there are a couple of other features related to CU2 that also are exposed in the client once the July 2013 Security Update is installed that are neat new features.  I wanted to make you aware of them...

Meetings Tab

This new feature adds a new Icon in the main Lync window that when clicked upon, displays a new tab that shows you upcoming meetings (meetings in the next 24 hours):

With this new tab/feature, users do not have to rely upon Outlook (or other clients) to see their upcoming meetings or to join them.  Now, a user can simply use the Lync client to see and join the meetings.  Lync pulls this information out of Exchange via Exchange Web Services (EWS).  It checks for new meetings every 10 minutes.

New Join Meeting Options

This feature adds a new options section called "Lync Meetings" to the Lync Options area.  In this new section you can configure:

• When you join meetings, should Lync show the Participant List (which was hidden by default previously).
• When you join meetings, should Lync show the IM Chat Window (which was hidden by default previously).
• One additional option is the ability to specify which client/app to use to join meetings.  With the ability to have multiple clients and apps installed which can support Lync Meetings, the need arose to allow users to set which client to use to join a Lync meeting.

 

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  excellent post

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  @Matt - Just posted information on that issue: blogs.technet.com/.../issues-with-icons-after-july-2013-lync-2013-security-update-is-installed.aspx

• Anonymous
  July 10, 2013
  Sorry for double-posting this, but I didn't see this post specific to the new Meetings tab until after I commented on your other post.   We've noticed that the icon for the new Meetings tab does not appear correctly after installing the July 2013 Security Update.  (Screenshots at http://sdrv.ms/189bwjn)  Is this a known issue?

• Anonymous
  July 10, 2013
  I was really excited when I found out that this (strange looking) new icon would give me a quick access to upcoming meetings, but for an interesting reason: we have client VPNs that somehow prevent us from joining meetings via the links you find in Outlook calendar events. We must either disconnect or manually dial in. Unfortunately, this new menu doesn't help us with that problem. I know there's some way to make it work.... I wrote a WPF application that crafts a string of the format "conf:sip:{0}@{1};gruu;opaque=app:conf:focus:id:{2}?required-media=audio" and sticks it into a web browser control. This app gives us jumplists and easy access to our meetings, even if we're on the VPN. What is Lync doing in the background to launch this meeting? The webpage method seems to not work, but crafting the SIP URL and sending that off will get the meeting launched. Is there any way you could update Lync to fix this? In addition, consider putting upcoming meetings (and maybe frequent contacts) in a jumplist for Lync. That would be really cool.

• Anonymous
  July 12, 2013
  Love the new features on the PC client. Thanks for sharing the insights! Could you recommend a place that we can offer ideas to add to the mobile clients like Android an iOS devices have? We think it would be great if the mobile clients could have a feature to filter out offline users like the MSI version does... Thanks!

• Anonymous
  September 03, 2013
  after i made july updates on my lync standard 2013 server and all the updates for lync 2013 client, i have problems with live meeting tab , it dosn't appear , the others futures like Lync Q&A Manager or Embedded images in IM are working well, i tried to check on more computers from my network not only at one, anybody have this issue? thank you

• Anonymous
  October 02, 2013
  What exactly is the Meeting's icon an image of?  I can't quite make it out!

• Anonymous
  December 04, 2013
  It was supposed to be a clock.  In the November update, they changed the icon to one that looks like a calendar.

• Anonymous
  May 31, 2015
  Most users already use shortcut keys on daily basic tasks, such as working on documents/spreadsheet,