Known issue with VVX Favorites and S4B Online (note: affects ONLINE S4B only)

[ijtech]

If you are using Skype for Business Online AND VVX phones, and have recently created new users, you may have noticed that when you add contacts to your new users' "Favorites" group, they do not show up in the "Favorites" group on your VVX paired phone.  This is because Microsoft arbitrarily changed the server-side name of "Favorites".  The VVX phones are parsing the server config schema for a contact group called "Pinned Contacts", but Microsoft recently changed the name from "Pinned Contacts" to "pinnedGroup".  If you are experiencing this, check the contact groups  (Contacts softkey > groups softkey) and you will see two groups: Other Contacts and pinnedGroup.

Microsoft refuses to change the name back, and they refused to contact Polycom about the issue.

The workaround is to simply create a new contact group in your users' S4B client called "Pinned Contacts" and direct them to add their favorites to this new group.  Once you do this, you'll see these contacts show up in the Line shortcuts on the main phone screen.  And if you go back to Contacts>Groups, you won't see a "Pinned Contacts" group - you'll see "Favorites.

If anyone from Polycom reads this, please work with MS and have your firmware updated to recognize their new naming convention for favorites.

[SteffenBaierUK]

Hello ijtech,

welcome to the Polycom Community.

I raised this internally and will get back to you.

Best Regards

Steffen Baier

Polycom Global Services

[SDK]

I have been running this issue through my reseller and Microsoft for over a week... It was a giant finger pointing contest on whose issue it was. Argh. Please update the firmware. We have a large number of phones to deploy and this has taken up way too much time!

Now if only someone could tell me why is consistently says "Contacts: Synchronizing".

Thanks for posting this!

[SteffenBaierUK]

Hello SDK,

We , Polycom, have qualified against Microsofts 3PIP program and our phones are compatible and tested.

If anything has changed we need to work together to fix this.

For your contact synchronisation issue please post a new post and please provide the relevant data and a MAC address of a phone so we can get this into support.

Please ensure to provide some feedback if this reply has helped you so other users can profit from your experience.

Best Regards

Steffen Baier

Polycom Global Services

[SDK]

The favorite workaround did not seem to work. The main screen is not displaying the rename group and the has 2 locations for favorites.

First (referenced above): Softket Contacts> Softkey Groups> The favorites now show as described above but not on the main screen as expected.

Second Favorites location with no contact populated: Home button> Directories> #4 Favorites (shows no records)

[SDK]

Nevermind. This was a setting that was jacked with while trying to get the favorites to work.

I had to disable Customized Line Keys. Its in Settings>#1 Basic >#12 Line Key Customization, >#1 Custoimized Line Keys: Disable

The solution above does work! Thanks.

[ijtech]

Glad it helped!  The phones can be a little fickle when it comes to the contacts, it's not really intuitive to disable the customized line keys, but glad you figured it out!  I'll add that to my list of "gotchas".

[SteffenBaierUK]

Hello ijtech,

I am unsure about your comment in regards with the line key.

• Using the flexible line key = Manually assign each wanted contact and the position of this
• Not using the flexible line key = Factory standard and Favorites are populated automatically and alphabetically.

Best Regards

Steffen Baier

Polycom Global Services

[ijtech]

---

@SteffenBaierUK wrote:

Hello SDK,

We , Polycom, have qualified against Microsofts 3PIP program and our phones are compatible and tested.

If anything has changed we need to work together to fix this.

For your contact synchronisation issue please post a new post and please provide the relevant data and a MAC address of a phone so we can get this into support.

Please ensure to provide some feedback if this reply has helped you so other users can profit from your experience.

Best Regards

Steffen Baier

Polycom Global Services

---

Hi Steffan,

I can provide you with my microsoft ticket number, and I will attach the email from Microsoft directly.  Ticket # was 30126-5512807.  And this is not a phone-specific issue, so a MAC address would not help.  This is a user profile issue on the Microsoft side.  See output below from two different users' skype for business API logs:

<contactList deltaNum="19" ucsMode="disabled" >
<group id="1" name="~" externalURI="" />
<group id="2" name="Pinned Contacts" externalURI="&lt;groupExtension groupType=&quot;pinnedGroup&quot;&gt;&lt;email/&gt;&lt;/groupExtension&gt;" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1 2" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1 2" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1 2" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1 2" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1 2" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1 2" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1 2" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1 2" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
</contactList>
 
<contactList deltaNum="17" ucsMode="disabled" >
<group id="1" name="~" externalURI="" />
<group id="2" name="pinnedGroup" externalURI="&lt;groupExtension groupType=&quot;pinnedGroup&quot;&gt;&lt;email/&gt;&lt;/groupExtension&gt;" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1 2" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1 2" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1 2" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
<contact uri="REDACTED" name="" groups="1" subscribed="true" externalURI="" />
</contactList>

The favorties group name is different.  Per Microsoft's email, the "pinnedGroup" name is a result of some update in their system, and this is the way it will be going forward.  The VVX phones are expecting to see "Pinned Contacts", so they don't add the contacts to favorites for users whose favorites group is labeled "pinnedGroup".

[SteffenBaierUK · Accepted solution]

Hello ijtech,

We are aware of this and will address this in a future release.

I cannot give you any timeline and for now you will need to utilize the workaround you provided.

Best Regards

Steffen Baier

Polycom Global Services