Let me break the hiatus by writing a small post on the setup of pidgin for MS Communicator/Skype. This applies to my network and might vary in your case. Internet resources for setup does not somewhat give a complete picture. Hence I decided to do a writeup.
The base data is that the network uses Skype for Business and Office 365. Hence we need to do the following:
The base data is that the network uses Skype for Business and Office 365. Hence we need to do the following:
- Download pidgin using apt.
- Download pidgin-sipe package using apt.
- In the Accounts window (Accounts -> Manage Accounts) select Add.
- Go to "Basic" tab
- Select "Office Communicator" as the protocol.
- For user name enter it in the format of the email address of your office 365 account.
- For "Login" field I enter in the format of "DOMAIN\user". Here "user" being the ldap login user name for your office 365 account.
- Enter your password in the password field and check the box "Remember password"
- Go to "Advanced" tab.
- Enter "Auto" in connection type.
- I have entered the User agent string as : "UCCAPI/16.0.6001.1073 OC/16.0.6001.1073 (Skype for Business)" minus the quotes. If you get an error please try other User agent strings as recommended in the FAQ given here: https://sourceforge.net/p/sipe/wiki/Frequently%20Asked%20Questions/#connection-refused-with-error-messagewzxhzdk12you-are-currently-not-using-the-recommended-version-of-the-clientwzxhzdk13you-have-been-rejected-by-the-server-httpsportalmicrosoftonlinecomdownloadlyncaspx
- Select the Authentication Scheme as "NTLM". It might vary for your network. Please try different options if the one I selected does not work.
- Keep all other options as defaults.
- In the proxy tab select "Environment Settings".
- Enable the account in the Accounts tab.
- Restart pidgin if needed.
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
-John Von Neumann
