Most of us already have in place a method to block spam emails. And with our cell phones, we can easily block calls. But what about Skype for Business? Is there a way to block unwanted calls there? I am here to tell you that yes, there is way to do this, but it does require a little effort. First and foremost, you have to know what number you are wanting to block. Then, we have to create a Contact within Outlook (which is integrated with Skype for Business).
Open up Outlook, go to “New Items” and select “Contact”:
Enter a recognizable name, something like “Blocked Contacts”. Enter a bogeous email address (something like blocked@bad.com). And then under Phone numbers, enter the phone number you want to block. Be sure to include the +1 (for US) and the area code.
Now, go to Skype for Business and search for the contact you created:
Right-click on the contact, go to “Change Privacy Relationship” and select “Blocked contacts”:
You will then get a message, stating that once this user is blocked, they will not be able to contact you in any way – including phone calls (which is what we want). Just click “OK” and voila!, you are now blocking that unwanted caller. Now please note, you can add more numbers to this contact you created, but only up to 7 numbers. After that, you would need to create another Contact and do the same process as above. Hopefully you will not need to use this a lot, but for those annoying fax calls or telemarketers, it might come in handy.
(Thanks goes to Sele Training who provided a YouTube video explaining this, found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CN44dZ6Syc)