Skype for Business client addressbook not downloading - Force Addressbook download - Why would you?

Skype for Business client addressbook not downloading - Force Addressbook download - Why would you?

This is one of those things that happens to all of us.

The Lync or Skype for Business addressbook won't download to the local computer.

I wrote about this once before for Lync 2010 here.

After upgrading to Office 2016 you get the new collaboration/communication client as well: Skype for Business. And with that comes a version change, and i don't mean in what you see at the client i mean on the file system level.

The previous path to the Lync client profile was:

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Lync\sip_username@domain.com for Lync 2010.

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Lync\sip_username@domain.com for Lync 2013.

But now it's:

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Lync\sip_username@domain.com for Skype for Business 2016.

So you have to update you registry path accordingly.

So instead of looking for:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Lync\GalDownloadInitialDelay for Lync 2010.

Or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Lync\GalDownloadInitialDelay for Lync 2013.

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Lync\GalDownloadInitialDelay for the new Skype for Business 2015 client.

Make sure the value for GalDownloadInitialDelay is set at 1 for instant GAL retrieval.

But,

Why bother with local copies of files when you can search at the source?

The one place where the GAL originates from: The Skype for Business server it self.

On the frontend server open an elevated Skype for Business Management PowerShell:

To get the current Addresbook policy:

PS C:\> Get-CsClientPolicy | select identity, addressbook*

 Identity               AddressBookAvailability
Global                 WebSearchOnlyWebSearchAndFileDownload

To set the Addressbookavailability to "WebsearchOnly":

Set-CsClientPolicy -Name Global -AddressBookAvailability "WebSearchOnly"

To see more about ClientPolicies go here.