Hi,

I'm trying to get Lync to work by having it call me to start a Meeting. It always gives the error "We couldn't reach you" when I tell it to start the meeting by calling me at my number. I've tried a couple of different numbers. Am I misunderstanding how the program works? We received Lync through our Office 365 Business Essentials plan. It looks like we may have to use a 3rd party provider to be able to use phone conferencing (non-computer)? Thanks for any insight anyone can provide about how Lync works on a basic level and in the scenario above.

If you're using Office365 from Microsoft, Lync will be unable to call your phone to join a conference.  This is a feature currently only available to on-premises deployments.

If you have a third party conference provider for the phone, then users could dial in to listen into the conference, but I don't believe you would be able to dial out to a phone in this scenario, again, that would only be for on-premises deployments.

If it's only available to on-premises installations, then make the system context aware and not provide that user interface as an option.  It only confuses the end user and costs us in lost productivity.