Customizing Lync Online Meeting Invitations in Lync Server 2013

NOTE: The following post is based on Lync Server 2013 Preview.  Procedures and screenshots are subject to change when Lync Server 2013 is RTM.

A big ask currently with Lync 2010 is how do we customize the Lync Online Meeting template.  Companies would really like to adjust text, add logos, or add/customize specific hyperlinks.

With Lync Server 2010, there was not a great way to do this.  Basically, the only supported option was to utilize Exchange Transport rules and key off of a hidden string to add text to the invitations.  Obviously, this was not a great solution.

Lync Server 2013 has added some ability to adjust the Lync Online Meeting invites.  This post will describe and demonstrate the options.

The default Online Meeting invitation for Lync 2013 look like the following:

The following customizations can be made for meeting invitations:

• Adding Your Organization’s Logo
• Adding a Custom Help or Support Link
• Adding a Custom Legal Disclaimer Text
• Adding a Custom footer text

Customizations are made within the Meeting Configuration settings and can be scoped on a Global, Site, or Pool level.  In my example, I will be adjusting the Global configuration of the Meeting Configuration.  To access the settings in the Control Panel, navigate to the Conferencing node –> Meeting Configuration tab:

Edit the Global configuration.  Here you will find four corresponding fields to configured the customizations.

Here you will need to add URLs that will be accessible by users who will receive the meeting invite and are expected to see the customizations.  So if you want external users to be able to view the customizations, these URLs need to be externally available without authentication.  For my example in my lab, my URLs will be internal URLs.

Now when we initiate a new Lync Online Meeting invite, we will see the new components:

A few things to note.  The custom Help URL will just replace the default Help URL.  When clicking the link, it opens my customized help web page:

When clicking the Legal link, it opens my customized disclaimer web page:

If you are a powershell type admin, you can do the exact same configuration using the New-(Set-)CsMeetingConfiguration:

This new functionality to easily customize the Online Meeting invitations is a welcomed addition to Lync 2013.