Policies and Best Practices
for Working with People (Contacts)
in Office 365
Customization note: This document contains guidance and/or step-by-step installation instructions that can be
reused, customized, or deleted entirely if they do not apply to your organization’s environment or installation
scenarios. The text marked by yellow highlight indicates either customization guidance or organization-specific
variables. All of the highlighted text in this document should either be deleted or replaced prior to distribution.
Topics in this guide include:
Get started working
with contacts
Policies to consider
when working with
contacts
Best practices for
working with contacts
2 | Policies and best practices for working with People (contacts) in Office 365
Get started working with contacts
Customization note: Highlighted areas should be updated based on instructions specific to your organization.
In Office 365, your contacts are the online identities of the people you communicate with a lot. They look
and behave pretty much the same across all of the Office 365 products. They are a key part of the Office
365 experience, and they’re especially important in Lync. If you have Office Professional Plus, Lync
probably is already installed. To check, click Start >All Programs > Microsoft Office 2013. If Lync 2013
is listed, click it, and sign in. If it (or Microsoft Office 2013) isn’t listed, do as follows:
1. If your computer is connected to the corporate network, go to <<internal URL>>. Otherwise, go to
<<external URL>>.
2. In the Office 365 sign-in page, tap or click Sign in.
3. Enter your credentials in the form [email protected], enter your network password, and then tap or
click Sign in.
4. The <<company>> Office 365 page appears.
5. Click PC & Mac, select your language, and then click Install.
NOTE If Lync doesn’t install, contact your workplace technical support to make sure your account includes
the Lync Online service.
Policies to consider when working with contacts
Presence privacy mode

The default privacy setting for your organization has been set so that other Lync Online users—except for
those in the External or Blocked privacy relationship groups—<can/cannot> view your presence status.
If you want to override this setting, go to Lync Options > Status and make the appropriate selection:

I want everyone to be able to see my presence

I only want people in my Contacts list to see my presence
For more information about presence and privacy relationships, see Control access to your presence
information.
Adding external contacts

You can add external contacts to your Lync contacts list only if:
o
o
Your workplace technical support has configured support for this, AND
The contact outside your org uses either
 Lync, and their org also is configured for external contacts, OR
 Skype, and they’re signed in with their Microsoft account (formerly Windows Live ID).
Contacts using other IM providers aren’t supported.
Here’s what is and isn’t available for communicating with Skype users. Note that the Skype user must be
signed in with their Microsoft account (formerly Windows Live ID).
3 | Policies and best practices for working with People (contacts) in Office 365
Available with Skype users
Not available with Skype users

Presence

Video conversations

Person-to-person IM


Person-to-person audio calls
Audio or IM conversations with
three or more people

Finding and adding Lync contacts
in Skype

Desktop and program sharing
If you can’t communicate directly with contacts from outside of your organization using the Office 365 service,
your administrator may need to change some network settings. Or it may be that your organization has
established a policy of not supporting this kind of communication with external contacts. Either way, your
administrator will know what the policy is and what can be enabled. For details about the types of
communication that may be available with external contacts, see Add an external contact in Lync.
Limits on the number of contacts

The default maximum number of contacts that Office 365 allows is 1000 (which is plenty for most people),
but the actual limit for your org is set by your Office 365 administrator, so contact them if the number
hasn’t been made available to you.
Best practices for working with contacts
Organize your contacts into meaningful groups

Lync organizes your contacts by access levels (Friends and Family, Workgroup, Colleagues, External
Contacts, Blocked Contacts), categories that control who can reach you, how and when. But you can (and
should) also create new groups based on the relationships with people you interact with. For example, you
might create a group called “Head Office staff” and add contacts to that group. For details about creating
groups, see Create a new group in Lync.
Display your contacts in a way that makes sense for your needs

You can drag groups of contacts up or down in your list so those you interact with most often are at the
top of the display and within easy reach. And, although you can’t completely remove offline contacts
from your Contacts list, you can group them so that they don’t clutter up your Contacts list. Click Options
> Contacts List, and then, under Show this information, select the Show contacts with away,
offline and unknown presences in a separate group check box. Unavailable contacts will appear at
the bottom of your Contacts list, in a group called Away and Offline Contacts.
Add contacts from your social networks

You can add your LinkedIn and Facebook connections to your Office 365 contacts. Click Outlook >
Settings > Options > Account > Connected accounts. From there you’ll be able to connect to
your LinkedIn or Facebook accounts and add your connections as contacts.
Integrate your contacts into one view

If you know you’ve got multiple contacts for one person, you can link them so you’re able to see all of
their contact information on one card. To do that, go to the Office 365 People tab, click the listing for the
4 | Policies and best practices for working with People (contacts) in Office 365
person whose contacts you want to link, click Manage, type the name of the person in the search box,
and click the search icon. When the new listing appears, click it and then click the link button.
Edit entries in your contacts

To update information about your contacts, find and select a contact that you want to edit. (You can edit
only the contacts in the folders under My Contacts.) When you select a contact, you’ll see their details in
the reading pane. To edit their information, select Edit
select Save to save your changes.
. Make any changes that you want, and then
For more information
Help Desk
http://<organization help desk URL>.com
Office 365 Learning Center
http://<Office_365_learning center URL>.com
This guide is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION
IN THIS DOCUMENT. © 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.