Outlook freezes when creating a Skype meeting in Skype for Business 2015 (Lync 2013) running in a terminal server session

When you create a Skype for Business online meeting by using Microsoft Outlook, you may find that the Outlook freezes for a while or fails to create a meeting. This issue occurs when the Outlook runs in a terminal server session, on Windows Server 2008 R2.

To fix this issue, install the March 6, 2018, update (KB4018290) for Skype for Business 2015 (Lync 2013) and apply the following GPO:

Note Lync 2013 was upgraded to Skype for Business in April 2015.

Group Policy settings:

1. Open the Group Policy Management panel and create a new Group Policy Object.
2. Enter the name of the GPO and leave the source as none.

3. On the Settings tab, right-click on Computer Configuration or User Configuration and select Edit.

4. Right click on registry and select New Registry Item from the dropdown menu. You can deploy the registry key under computer configuration or user configuration.

5. Specify the Registry information in the form as below:
   a) Action : "Create"
   b) Hive : "HKEY_CURRENT_USER"
   c) Key path : Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Lync\AddinPreference 
   d) Value name : EnableOptimizeProcessSearch 
   e) Value type : REG_DWORD 
   f) Value data : 1
   g) Base: Decimal

Note The setting EnableOptimizeProcessSearch is set to 0 by default, so you need to create and apply the above GPO to enable the fix.