Lync VoIP now available for Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, and UAE

Great news – we recently enabled Lync Online video and Voice over IP (VoIP) for our customers in Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, and UAE. A couple of questions you may be asking…

Q: Who was affected?

A: On 11/29/11 we launched Office 365 trial in 22 new markets. In four of these markets (Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, and UAE), Lync Online video and Voice over IP (VoIP) were not available at the time the trials were launched. Other Lync Online functionality such as IM, presence and desktop sharing worked. Any customers who started a trial between 11/29/2011 and 2/8/2012 were affected.

Q: Will I see changes in the product?

A: Now that video and VoIP are available the Office 365 administrator will see a “Make audio and video calls” checkbox while editing the user in the admin user interface (Lync Online Control Panel). The administrator can turn it on or off for one user, or multiple users at once.

Q: What do I need to do to enable the features?

A: The administrator needs to follow the steps outlined in this help article: Configure file transfer, audio-video, and recording

Q: Why was it not originally included?

A: We strive to enable the entire Office 365 feature set upon launch into every new market. Due to technical and operations limitations we were not able to enable video and VoIP capabilities in these 4 trial markets at launch. We decided to launch without these capabilities rather than delay the entire launch of Office 365. Video and VoIP was not affected in the 18 other trial markets we launched in November 2011.