Microsoft Updates Lync For Android With Anonymous Join, Contact Management, And Passive Authentication

Microsoft Lync is instant messaging for people wearing suits and ties. The service, which you generally won’t see outside of corporate environments, supports typing, talking, or staring at each other’s faces through an Android device. Now Microsoft has rolled out an update that adds new features and brings more feature parity with the Windows Phone and iOS versions of the software.

For starters, the Lync Android app can now handle Anonymous Join, which lets users join a Lync meeting without an account. Such participants can join as guests without needing a PIN or dial-in number. This particular feature was previously available on both of the other two supported mobile platforms, but not Android.

This release brings contact management options to Android, so you can view and edit connections without having to resort to desktop software. For now the functionality is only available to cloud-based Office 365 subscribers, but it will come to on-premise customers with the next version of Lync Server.

Until now, the Android app has required Active Directory username and passwords, but some administrators prefer to not to use this approach for security reasons. This update gives them more flexibility. For more details on this and the other features, check out Microsoft’s blog post at the source link below.

Source: Microsoft blog