Ubuntu Empathy Microsoft Skype For Business Lync 2013 Client

Posted in: technology. Tagged: linux, microsoft, lync, skype

I wrote recently regarding using Microsoft Skype for Business / Lync 2013 in Pidgin, this has worked really well for our Lubuntu 14.04 clients, running Pidgin. Having some time off work I decided to try and get this working also on my Ubuntu 14.04 laptop.

The problem is that Ubuntu uses Empathy by default, rather than Pidgin, but I found that the steps were virtually identical (cut and pasted from my earlier post):

Download and Dependencies

1. Install build tools if you don’t already have them:

   sudo apt-get install build-essential

2. Install checkinstall if you don’t already have it:

   sudo apt-get install checkinstall

3. Download source files.

4. Extract source:

   tar -xvvzf pidgin-sipe-1.20.1.tar.gz

5. Change into source directory:

   cd pidgin-sipe-1.20.1

6. Read carefully the README file in the source directory.

7. Install dependencies listed in the README:

   # apt-get install libpurple-dev libtool intltool pkg-config libglib2.0-dev libxml2-dev libnss3-dev libssl-dev libkrb5-dev libnice-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev

These dependencies may change over time, and your particular requirements may be different from mine, so please read the README and that information should take precedence.

Compile and Install

Lastly, as an ordinary user, you should now be able to compile. If it fails at any stage, simply read the error and install the missed dependency.

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ sudo checkinstall

I found checkinstall was pre-populated with sensible settings, and I was able to continue without making any changes. Once complete a Debian package will have been created in the current directory, but it will have already been installed for you.

Add Account in Empathy

Still in a terminal type:

$ empathy-accounts

Then simply click the + button to add an account, select the Account Type “sipe”, enter your email address in the Account field and click Log-in. Then highlight the newly created account and Edit Connection Preferences, opening up the Advanced section. I completed the following:

• Login: enter your Skype for Business email address
• Password
• Server: leave blank
• Transport: auto
• User agent: UCCAPI/15.0.4420.1017 OC/15.0.4420.1017
• Authentication: auto

And that really was all that there was to it.