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Excel VBA and Skype for Business

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Hi

Has anyone succeeded in controlling Skype for Business (not 'domestic' Skype) using Excel vba?

Internet searches refer to dll libraries but I can't locate a working example. My current task is to a quite a few contacts to a number of groups  (already created in Skype for Business).

Any kind of practical starter otr pointer to information would help. Thanks in advance.

John

excel
MS Office Version: Excel 2013 version 15048231000
posted by: John_R (rep: 9) on Wed Sep 5, 2018 at 11:28 am
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Can you give a more specific example of what you are trying to control with it? For instance, do you want to be able to click a phone number in Excel and have it open in Skype?
don (rep: 1989) Sep 6, '18 at 1:19 am
Hi Don

It's not so much live control of Skype For Business (SfB) I was looking for but I'm hoping to populate the contact Groups which SfB allows you to create. I lost those in moving to new infrastructure but have an Excel list of contacts (email addresses) and the groups they were in.

I'ver re-created those groups but need to add contacts now.

Say there were Groups X, Y and Z listed in column A and associated contacts in column B; I want to add 15 contacts identified in the spreadsheet as in X, 12 in Y etc. There are more groups I was trying to minmise a laborious task.

To be honest I think it will take me less than 2 hours to do that (having created my 30+ groups) but I was interested to know see examples of how VBA could control SfB.
John_R (rep: 9) Sep 6, '18 at 5:34 am
I did a little digging, not much to be fair, but it looks like you will not be able to do this with Skype for Business. Apparently, the product is quite different internally than the consumer version and, as such, it's not as "open" as far as this kind of functionality goes. I would just stick with the tried and true method of tedious data entry. :/
don (rep: 1989) Sep 6, '18 at 3:11 pm
Thanks Don, you're right. Someties you nave to know when to give up.

Incidentally for some reason I can't answer or add to the discussion using IE11 but I can in Chrome (which I'm doing now). Any ideas? 

John
John_R (rep: 9) Sep 7, '18 at 4:41 am
I've been doing a lot of tweaking to the website recently in an attempt to make everything load smoother and that was probably the cause of the issue; however, I did test it with IE11 and everything seemed ok. Can you give me more specific information about the situation, OS that you used and exact issue that occurred? As in, did it fail to show the text input area when you tried to add to the discussion or what exactly happened?
don (rep: 1989) Sep 7, '18 at 4:53 am
Understood Don.

In IE11 (v 11.1266.15...) and under 64-bit Windows 10 Enterprise (version  1703), once logged in, when I hover the mouse over the Answer or Add to Discussion buttons, it changes from the I-bar to pointing finger/hand (so looks like it will take focus") but nothing happens when I click, the text box does not appear.

In Chrome (v 69.0.34...), clicking Add to Discussion brings up the editable text box for me to type in.

John
John_R (rep: 9) Sep 7, '18 at 5:26 am
I'm still looking into this, it works just fine for me - troubleshooting is the worst hah. Any updated or it still works, or doesn't work, the same?
don (rep: 1989) Sep 13, '18 at 3:07 am
Hi Don.

This time it worked first time, thanks. Our IT department reconfigured the proxy- that has caused me some problems but either that fixed my problem here or your work did. I'd rather credit you Don- thanks.

John
John_R (rep: 9) Sep 13, '18 at 3:57 am
haha I'll take it! I think it might have had to do with caching old files that were updated. We'll see how it holds. If anything else happens let me know!

FYI, if an issue in the future occurs, and you reply to this thread, instead of making a new question, I will get a notification sooner than if you make a new Question regarding the issue.
don (rep: 1989) Sep 13, '18 at 5:13 am
Thanks Don, understood. will try to remmeber but I can offer no guarantees!
John_R (rep: 9) Sep 13, '18 at 6:12 am
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