Upon looking at visitor statistics for this blog one of the reoccurring trends is the amount of traffic to articles like Updating Lync Phone Edition Devices after Microsoft releases a new round of Lync updates.  It can sometimes be difficult to successfully navigate through the various updates which follow different release schedules which are sometimes bundled together with other Office releases, so hopefully this article can bring some additional clarity to the subject.

This article will continually be updated to serve as both a source of new update information as well as a history of all past updates for both client and server platforms.  Releases for Qualified IP Phones will continue to be tracked in their original articles so this article will only cover the Microsoft-released server and client releases. The ‘Updates’ tag can be used as a quick route to all of these articles.  Keeping this data up-to-date and accurate is an ongoing process feel free to leave comments regarding any errors or dead links.

One thing to understand is that for some products Microsoft will continue to leave multiple previous versions online on their download sites, while others (namely Lync Phone Edition) are removed an only the latest cumulative releases are provided.

Lync 2013 Server Updates

Download

As Microsoft only provides the latest releases for the server components then the following two links are always updated with the most recent information and can be used as a definitive source of the latest server updates.

• Updates for Lync Server 2013 – Comprehensive KB article listing for all server components
• Lync Server 2013 Cumulative Update KB 2809243 – Direct link to Microsoft Download page for server packages

Typically one does not need worry about the individual components as the LyncServerUpdateInstaller.exe is the ideal package to download and run on any servers.  This tool will locate and upgrade only the applicable components on each Lync server it is executed on locally.

Installation

At this point in the product cycle there is no real value in documenting the steps which have been already covered on various other websites for basic installations (like here and here) to more complex articles covering Enterprise Edition pools with mirrored databases.

The important points to understand are the following:

• Use the LyncServerUpdateInstaller referenced above to make life easy.
• Start inside-out and work from Front End servers toward Edge servers.
• Do not forget to update and verify the backend SQL database for each Enterprise Edition pool that is patched

Component History

For occasions when working with the individual packages is desired then the following table covers each cumulative update release with links to the original Knowledge Base articles for each new component.

This matrix provides a visual aid to when and how often some of the various Lync components are updated as cumulative releases will typically not refresh every single server component.  The official package version numbers will always be in the format of 5.0.8308.xxx but the 5.0 has been truncated fro the following table for spacing purposes.

Lync 2013 Windows Client Updates

The following table lists major client update packages with links directly to the download pages for both the client and any prerequisite components, which are only represented again when they themselves are updated.

• Releases denoted with ‘CU’ refer to the unofficial but commonly used Cumulative Update nomenclature for Lync.
• Releases denoted with ‘SP’  refer to a Service Pack release for Microsoft Office.
• 32-bit downloads are recorded as ‘x86’ while links to 64-bit download are labeled as ‘x64’
• Items in strikethrough text have been pulled and replaced by the following update but have been left in this table for posterity.

Lync for Mac 2011 Client Updates

The following table includes each client update package for the latest generation Mac client, with the most recent entry’s description containing a link to the download page for the cumulative update.

Lync Phone Edition Firmware Updates

The following table was moved from a previous article to lessen the burden of updating multiple articles each time a different client or server update is released.  For details on the actual device firmware update process see the original article entitled Updating Lync Phone Edition Devices.

• Be aware that although the KB articles are still online for earlier Cumulative Update releases the download pages are the same page for each successive release.  Thus previous CU releases are no longer available for download as the new package replaces each previous version.

Skype Room System

The following table lists the history of Skype Room System (formerly know as Lync Room System) updates for the Crestron RL / Polycom CX8000 product.