Sign up for Office 365
Learn more about Office 365
Background
Current status
All Office 365 services except Lync seems to work fine. Both Lync instant messaging in Outlook Web App and my client installation of Lync are unable to logon. In Outlook web app i get the message "Instant Messaging isn't available right now. The Contact List will appear when the service becomes available."
Note: If I create an account with the @onmicrosoft.com email address, then Lync works fine. It is when I use my personal domain I experience this problem.
Root cause(?)
When I have browsed this community I have found a lot of customers experiencing the exact same problem. It seems like Office 365 auto configuration of DNS fails for some reason when adding a personal domain name. The result is that SRV records are missing in the DNS configuration for customers personal domain(s).
Solution?
Since P license customers doesn't have access to technical support, and at the same time are not able to add SRV records in the DNS, the only work around I have seen so far is to move out the DNS hosting service from Office 365 to another DNS hosting provider. This really doesn't feel like a good solution.
It feels like the natural solution would be to first offer a manual fix for the problem by a MS technician, followed by creating a solution for the failing automatic DNS configuration and/or enable P license customers to edit SRV records in the DNS.
I really hope that someone from Microsoft can give a good answer to this problem that apparently is affecting lots of customers.
Thanks in advance
/Jonas
References
Another post on the same issue: http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/160/p/12147/183355.aspx#183355
And yet another: http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/166/p/20136/97073.aspx#97073
Support document about this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2526143
Support document about this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2566790
Hello Jonas,
Thanks for your detailed information about the issue. The error message “"Instant Messaging isn't available right now. The Contact List will appear when the service becomes available.” is caused by the incorrect or missing Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Federation SRV record. Since the custom domain hosts at Office 365, this SRV record should work well. From my understanding, the other SRV record you mentioned isn’t related to this issue.
Based on my experience, it would take several hours to finish the new users’ provision. If a new user created doesn’t finish the provision, the error message will occur. As a result, based on the current situation, please wait for several hours for the users’ full provision to see if it works.
Best regards, Claud
0 out of 1 people found this post helpful.
Hello Jonas, How are the things going? In addition, do you need further assistance on the issue? Best regards, Claud
Hi,
Now I have moved the domain to another DNS provider, and added the following SRV record:
Type Service Protocol Port Weight Priority TTL Name Target
SRV _sip _tls 443 1 100 1 hour <DomainName> sipdir.online.lync.com
The situation has NOT changed.
I want to emphasize that I have provisioned users several times and waited days. This has NOT worked as solution to this problem.
Br Jonas
Hello Jonas,You are stating that you changed over to a different DNS Provider and have added 1 of the DNS records for Lync. I suggest adding all 4 records with your DNS Host, in case at any point in the future you do want to use Lync with any of the other services that require those DNS records, you will not have to wait for them to be provisioned. To first determine if the records are correctly added I suggest you try using the NSLookup tool, with the "Default Server" set as 8.8.8.8, to check they are provisioned and correctly configured. - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/200525Once you have determined the DNS records are all added correctly, attempted to sign-in to Lync Client with your vanity domain, not .onmicrosoft.com - If you are unable to sign-in, please provide me with the exact error message you are receiving
You are stating that you changed over to a different DNS Provider and have added 1 of the DNS records for Lync. I suggest adding all 4 records with your DNS Host, in case at any point in the future you do want to use Lync with any of the other services that require those DNS records, you will not have to wait for them to be provisioned.
To first determine if the records are correctly added I suggest you try using the NSLookup tool, with the "Default Server" set as 8.8.8.8, to check they are provisioned and correctly configured. - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/200525
Once you have determined the DNS records are all added correctly, attempted to sign-in to Lync Client with your vanity domain, not .onmicrosoft.com - If you are unable to sign-in, please provide me with the exact error message you are receiving
If you are unable to sign-in after verifying the DNS records are correct, set your Lync Client to use Manual Configuration
1) On the Lync sign-in screen, click the gear icon in the upper-right corner. This action opens the Options page. 2) On the Options page, next to the Sign-in address box, click Advanced. 3) In the Advanced Connection Settings dialog box, make sure that Manual Configuration is selected and that the values in the boxes are exactly as follows:
4) Click OK two times to return to the sign-in screen. Then, sign in.
If you are unable to sign-in to Lync after changing the settings to use Manual Configuration, please provide me with the exact error message you are receiving.
If you are able to sign-in with Manual Configuration but not with Automatic Configuration, please let me know and we will continue to diagnose the issue.
Charlie GaitherMicrosoft Lync Online Support
1 out of 1 people found this post helpful.
Thanks for a detailed answer!
I hereby confirm I might have a permanent solution to my problem. I logged on the Lync client with my vanity domain, I used manual settings according to your suggestion. IT WORKED!
I then logged on Outlook web app and suddently the message "Instant Messaging isn't available right now. The Contact List will appear when the service becomes available" has disappeard. Instead the Instant messanging in Outlook is ONLINE.... I don't get it?... Maybe the manual logon via the Lync client triggered the last Lync configuration/provisioning somehow????
Now I also can login on Lync client without manual settings???!
However
The reason why I moved out my vanity domain from Office 365 hosted DNS, was that one of the SRV records are missing and I cannot add SRV records myself.
Dump from Office365 hosted DNS for vanity domain.
As you can see the following SRV record is missing (source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2566790/)
I would prefer that the missing SRV record is added by Microsoft personnel which would allow me to change the name servers back to the Office365 hosted DNS.
Can that be arranged? Or should I leave the DNS hosting "outside" Microsoft?
Jonas,
I spoke with an Agent in the Office365 Support Department and they informed me that after OfficeLive, Microsoft is no longer providing hosting. They indicated that if you were a transistion user that was moved over from OfficeLive to Office365 you should have received documentation on Melbourne IT, which is who you should contact about your DNS records that were hosted by Microsoft.
When you set the Manual Configuration within the Lync Client, that will go around your DNS records from your DNS host and connect directly to Office365. So if you want to completely fix the issue you will need to have the DNS records correct with your Host.
The DNS records for SRV are not required for Lync Client to work. Since some DNS host do not allow SRV records, Microsoft provides the information to use CNAME records instead, but if you are missing them we can not guarantee you will not run into issues in the future with certain aspects of Lync, i.e. Lync Attendee.
Sorry but your last post don´t make any sense??
When creating a Office 365 account and adding a vanity domain, you get the choise to point your NS records to Microsoft, That means that the DNS is hosted by Microsoft??!!
Comments on your last post:
a. I'm not a transition user from Office Live
b. My issue itself is solved, your comment reg. manual settings in Lync and correct DNS records are obsolete.
c. My vanity domain DNS is hosted by a swedish DNS provider at the moment.
I therefor repeat my question. Can you (Microsoft) add the missing SRV record to the Office 365 DNS settings? That would enable me to point out NS records to:
ns1.bdm.microsoftonline.com
ns2.bdm.microsoftonline.com
Sorry for all of the misdiagnosis of your issue. This is not a very common issue and took a bit of research for me to find information on this. To have Microsoft add this record to your account, I will need information regarding your account. I have sent you a private message with the information I need to complete this.
Jonas Haddadi,
After speaking to a High Level Support Agent, I have come to the conclusion that the record you are requesting, SRV SIP, is not the cause of the error you are receiving. You are receiving an error that indicates that Lync inside of Outlook WebApp is not communicating with each other. The only records that are required for this to function are the SRV FED record and Autodiscover. If for some reason when the Microsoft System that sets up the DNS records for you domain did not setup this SRV FED record correctly, even though it is showing correctly within the Admin Portal, could be the cause of this issue. For us to diagnose this issue we will need you to reattach your domain back to Microsoft so that we can check the DNS records while they implemented. Since there is a delay in our communication due to us only being able to communicate through the Community Forums, I will need to get you to take a screenshot of the DNS Records as they show when running a nsLookup on them.
Once you have moved your domain to point to Microsoft DNS please follow the steps below.
1) Click start, run, then type CMD 2) nslookup 3) set type=srv 4) _sipfederationtls._tcp.6) set type=cname8) type: autodiscover. 9) take a screenshot of the output of both of these
Please paste the screenshot into the reply.
You also stated that you were unable to sign-in with your Lync Client while you had Microsoft hosting the DNS records. What is the error you are receiving?
Charlie Gaither
Sorry but I mistyped in the previous message:
I guess the Community Forums does not allow the syntax I was using:
1) Click start, run, then type CMD 2) nslookup 3) set type=srv 4) _sipfederationtls._tcp.yourdomain.com6) set type=cname8) type: autodiscover.yourdomain.com9) take a screenshot of the output of both of these
I wanted to check to see if you were still having issue?
Dear Jonas Haddadi, I am still searching solution for my too same kind of issue. I will be grateful to you if you can assist me on this issue. Thanks