Purple spot next to Skype for Business presence information

This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I noticed a couple of days ago that my Skype for Business presence information was accompanied by a purple dot/spot. I hadn’t seen this before and I wondered what it meant. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything on the ‘net.

Purple spot next to Skype for Business presence information

My colleague Brian Cain (@BrianCainUC) clearly has better googling (ahem, Binging) skills than I, because he found Microsoft knowledge base article 3072756, describing a change that explains the phenomenon.

It seems that, since the 14 July 2015 update for the Microsoft (Lync 2013) Skype for Business client, when a calendar shows a user as Out of Office (i.e. the appointment status, not to be confused with an Automatic reply message from Exchange), the purple spot appears next to the Skype for Business presence information when they are online anyway…

I regularly add time into my Calendar for when I’m travelling (and mark it as Out of Office) but if my travel plans change (or I’m running late) I might still be online in Skype for Business and that’s what causes the purple spot to be displayed.

The article also describes some other changes in behaviour that might lead to a purple arrow being shown where the presence indicator normally is.

Incidentally, whilst researching this, I also found a useful FAQ about presence and pictures in Lync (Skype for Business) that may be worth a read.

5 thoughts on “Purple spot next to Skype for Business presence information

  1. You can remove the Purple button by choosing the “Change my photo ” Select Personal and Untick the “Show my out of office contact ” and save. Vice versa again .

  2. Hi,
    This is because of an out of office meeting event that you or your colleagues sent you. The fix is to check in outlook calender for any “out of office” meeting requests and mark them as free. Now exit out of skype and login. That has to solve the issue.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.