Description

One of the problems that can be truly maddening when troubleshooting issues is a 485 ‘ambiguous’ error in Snooper. This is when Skype for Business doesn’t know what to do with an inbound call because the number being called is configured in more than one place. Skype for Business will complain if you try to configure a number more that once in SOME areas, such as several users, but not in all areas. So you’re left with hunting around for a while to figure out where else the number is defined. Meanwhile, users are complaining that calls aren’t working. So I came up with a quick function that will look through all of the areas that a number can be defined, and will list all matches. Additionally, you can use the script to verify that a number is NOT assigned somewhere before assigning it to a resource.

Yes, I know that others have done similar things, notably Tom Arbuthnot’s Get-LyncNumberAssignment :Find #Lync Users/Objects by Phone Number/LineURI #PowerShell and Amanda Debler’s Is that Skype for Business (Lync) Number Free?, as well as other phone number management solutions such as those by Stale Hansen and Lasse Nordvik Wedø. I’ve had a previous version of my script in my profile for a long time and decided to clean it up and make it available.

Is that Skype for Business (Lync) Number Free?

This PowerShell function will look for a full or partial number to see where it is allocated. It looks at the following:

• User LineUri
• User PrivateLine
• Meeting Room LineUri
• Meeting Room PrivateLine
• Analog Devices
• Common Area Phones
• Unified Messaging (UM) Contacts
• Dial-In Conferencing Access Numbers
• Trusted Application Numbers
• Response Group Numbers

The function accepts input via the named LineUri parameter, or via pipeline. It returns a typical PowerShell object. Here is an example of specifying a full e.164 number.

Get-CsPhoneNumberAssignment -LineUri 12145551212

Example: Specifying a full e.164 number results in a single match. In this case, a user. Click image for larger view.

Specifying a partial number will likely show more matches.

Get-CsPhoneNumberAssignment -LineUri 1214

Example: Specifying a partial number results in several matches. In this case, some users and a dial-in access number. Click image for larger view.

Note that since it must look at all of the related objects in order to build the object, it can take a minute or so to complete. But at least now there is a single command you can run to look in all areas.

Download

This script is available in my GitHub repo at https://github.com/patrichard/Get-CsPhoneNumberAssignment. Feel free to grab it from there, and contribute any updates or improvements.