We’ve all been on those conference calls where someone is taking roll call and tracking who has joined the meeting. How about the conference calls that introduce each person that has joined the call? Conference calls regardless of the platform you are using tracks the attendees that have joined. Some do it better than others and Skype for Business is not different. I am a big advocate for Skype for Business Meetings (yes, you heard it hear folks), because it easily integrates with most enterprises way of life and it is simple to use for the typical end user. However, there are some quirks with one of them being attendance tracking.

There are multiple ways to track attendance in Skype Business meetings, some not as straightforward and others can be distracting to a meeting. Below are the ways to track attendance in a Skype for Business meeting without having to ask “who just joined the call?”

Participants list: If your meeting is less than 75 attendees, you can see everyone that has joined the meeting via the participant list. This isn’t too bad to use but what happens if you’re in a meeting with over 75 attendees and you need to track attendance? When you have a meeting that has more than 75 attendees the Skype for Business client will cut off the participant list and a warning will be displayed. This is where it’s not so ideal because the Skype for business client provides no way of exporting the participant list directly from the client. What a pain right?! But there are alternatives see the OneNote option.

Announcement: You can configure your Skype for Business meeting to announce attendees that join or leave a meeting. This by far my least favorite because honesty it can be distracting to hear every time someone joins or leaves the call.  Your focus should be on the call not the automated attendant announcing who has joined the meeting, but for those that like the announcements the option is there for you.

Conversation History: The conversation history is another way of tracking attendees but it only works if you have conversation history enabled on the server. What happens with this option is if there is an IM conversation during the Skype Business Meeting, a conversation history of it will be saved in your conversation history in your Outlook folders. Again this is only good if you have the conversation history enabled and you are using IM in your Skype for Business meetings

OneNote: Another alternative to tracking attendee is using one note. This is probably my favorite because you can track the attendees in your meeting but it also provides the ability for you to type in your meeting notes at the same time. When you are done with the meeting you can send it an email, export to pdf or word document or copy and paste into another document.  As a project manager this can be a very easy way to keep track of your meeting notes and attendees. To use the OneNote option in Skype for Business Meetings, select the presentation icon in your client (the monitor icon) and select “My Notes”. By selecting this OneNote will open up and export your attendees into your notebook at which point you can begin adding meeting notes if you desire. Once your meeting is completed you can send it via email or export to another document.

While there is no easy way of exporting your attendee list from the Skype for Business client as it was in older versions of Lync, there are alternatives that are available. They all have their pro’s and con’s , hopefully you will find one that suits your needs the best.