Enabling User to Appear Offline on Microsoft Lync 2013/Skype for Business 2015 [Update]

Hello everyone! It's been a while since I posted something on this blog. Sorry about that. I have been very on my work and the change of technology to System Center 2012 Configuration Manager.

Well, this blog post is to give you update on how to enable User to Appear Offline on the new Microsoft Lync 2013/Skype for Business 2015

By default, Microsoft Lync 2013/Skype for Business 2015 enable users to set their presence to one of the following six statuses:

But Administrators can provide users with another option for setting their presence: Appear Offline. When user selects this option, he or she appears to user(s) offline. In fact, all of the user's contacts see a presence icon indicating the user is offline. For the users to have the option of "Appear Offline" you must create a new registry key and registry value on the computer running Microsoft Lync 2013/Skype for Business 2015. For this option that I'm showing is per user or machine setting only, not a Global Setting.

 

Caution: Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on the computer. Enable User to Appear Offline:

1.      Log on to a computer that is running Office Communicator.

2.      Click Start, and then click Run.

3.      In the Run dialog box, type regedit, and then press ENTER.

4.      In Registry Editor, expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, expand Software, expand Policies, expand Microsoft, expand Office, expand 15.0, click Lync .

5.      Right-click the Lync registry key, point to New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.

6.      After the new value is created, type EnableAppearOffline to rename the value.

7.      Double-click the new EnableAppearOffline registry value.

8.      In the Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value dialog box, type 1 in the Value data box, and then click OK.

 

Registry Location



Registry Setting Example

 

9.      After making above change, exit from Lync 2013/Skype for Business 2015 (from system tray) and relaunch it.

10.      After signing back to Lync 2013/Skype for Business 2015 you should able to see "Appear Offline" on the option of the Microsoft Lync 2013.

 

 You know have the Appear Offline for Microsoft Lync 2013/Skype for Business 2015

For old versions for Enabling Appear Offline. Here are the reference links:
Enabling User to Appear Offline on Office Communicator 2007 R2 [Update]
Enabling User to Appear Offline on Microsoft Lync 2010

For questions send and email to: mikhail@mimanu.com