Quickly Convert CSUsers into CSMeetingRooms with PowerShell

Okay, so your working on a roll out and you have provided the process on how to create meeting rooms to the IT team. But unfortunately someone in desktop support has already created all the meeting rooms using the Skype for Business Control Panel as a standard EV enabled Skype4B users?

Don’t throw all their work away, Quickly and easily convert them to meeting rooms with this little bit of PowerShell

Login to your Skype4B frontend or other machine with Skype4B Powershell and run the following code block.

(Note: you will need to change the Where-Object filter to another filter that matches the meeting room users)


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$Rooms = (Get-CsUser | where-object {$_.DisplayName -like "Do Not Use*"})
  ForEach ($Room in $Rooms) {
      $Room | Enable-CsMeetingRoom -lineuri $Room.LineURI -SipAddress $Room.SipAddress -RegistrarPool ($Room.RegistrarPool.ToString())
      }

Opps: I had the Set-CsMeetingRoom cmdlet in there from my other testing! updated to Enable-CsMeetingRoom.. Thanks Aaron.

And that’s it PowerShell will automatically copy across the important data from the users to the meeting rooms, and as part of enabling them Skype will automatically remove the old CsUser objects (this may take 15 minutes)

Hope this helps someone else!

2 thoughts on “Quickly Convert CSUsers into CSMeetingRooms with PowerShell

  1. Aaron

    James,
    Is there any other reason or benefit from having the account as a CSMeetingRoom rather than a CSUser? We looked at changing our Skype Meeting Room accounts to CSMeetingRoom awhile ago but looking at how the lobby works described in Jeff Shertz blog between the two account types we felt CSUser lobby options were more appropriate for meeting rooms. (I’m referring to the table about halfway down the article)
    Keen to hear your thoughts!

    http://blog.schertz.name/2017/01/skype-for-business-online-meeting-room-accounts/

    Reply
    1. Avatar photoJames "UcMadScientist" Arber Post author

      The main two reasons I personally set meeting rooms as meeting accounts is;

      • Audio Feedback: A lot of my clients bring their laptops into the room and will share content from their laptops to the meeting room especially when using solutions like the SRS v2. Having the room set as a “MeetingRoom” vs a User account will prompt the user to mute their speakers/mic when they join the meeting otherwise it can create an unpleasant experience for all whilst everyone sorts out their audio devices. (AKA the Reverb of Death)
      • Presence: When a Skype Meeting room is registered as a room instead of a user, it’s presence is based on its availability. Regardless of what device you put in that room.
        Say for example that you have a quiet room with a VVX phone in it, if the room is configured as a user its presence will switch to “away” when no-one uses the phone for a little while. Where-as if we create it as a room the presence is based on the calendar availability. So if no-one is in the room and its not booked, it shows as “Available” instead.
        (You could then add Crestron room sensors/booking panels or the upcoming Embrava Desksign to automatically update status when the room is in use)

      The other benefits are

      • Manageability: I used to use this alot, but now it’s less relevant now thanks to SRSv2 was the “Microsoft Skype Room System Administrative Web Portal.” This was a tool I could give clients to get a high level view of their meeting rooms and how they were being used / state they were in. Devices only appeared in here if they were meeting rooms.

      • Migration to Microsoft365 / Teams
        This is something we all need to keep in the back of our minds. Here in Aus, We have one of the largest takeups of Office365 per capita and everyone is already asking about moving to Teams.
        With the new management portal for SRS devices coming (see: Jamie Stark’s session at Ignite) ideally your accounts should be as clean as possible. Especially if you want to start moving these devices to SkypeOnline from a licencing perspective.

      Reply

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