Microsoft released a change for Skype for Business (SFB) meetings on Mac which enables you to use the desktop app for SFB on Mac instead of the SFB meeting app.
This is primarily applicable for SFB Online. It works for SFB Server 2015, too BUT it requires that the Microsoft Content Delivery Network (CDN) is used instead of the bites coming from your SFB Server 2015.
Configure SFB Server 2015 for CDN to enable SFB desktop app for meetings on Mac
First you can check your current SFB Server 2015 configuration.
Get-CsWebServiceConfiguration | select Identity,MeetingUxUseCdn
This return your SFB Server web service configuration. If MeetingUxUseCdn is set to “True” everything is ok and CDN is used. If it is “False” you can enable it as follows.
Set-CsWebServiceConfiguration -MeetingUxUseCdn $True
Additionally and optionally, you could also enable Meeting Telemetry and / or change the join launcher CDN timeout (in case a client might be unable to connect/receive data from the CDN an needs to failback to the SFB Server meeting app binaries.
To check the as-is:
Get-CsWebServiceConfiguration | select Identity,MeetingUxUseCdn,MeetingUxEnableTelemetry,
JoinLauncherCdnTimeout
To enable telemetry (OPTIONAL, sends telemetry data to Microsoft*):
Set-CsWebServiceConfiguration -MeetingUxEnableTelemetry $True
To change the join launcher CDN timeout to 10 seconds:
Set-CsWebServiceConfiguration -JoinLauncherCdnTimeout (New-TimeSpan -Seconds 10)
Conclusion, opinion and summary
To use the SFB desktop app on Mac for meetings should offer you a much better user experience. Microsoft says that this makes audio, video and sharing communication and collaboration more stable and reliable than it is with the SFB meeting app on Mac.
