The feature actually depends on the interoperability with some other settings as well, namely the EnableIMAutoArchiving and the DisableSavingIM parameters of the Client policy.You can store copies of your Skype for Business/Lync chat conversations in your Outlook to refer to later. The usage is pretty simple however, basically you turn the feature on and off using the EnableOfflineIm paramter as detailed in this article.

The cmdlet seems to be unavailable for my tenant yet, so again I cannot show actual examples.

First, a new cmdlet has been made available for controlling this feature, namely the Get/Set-CsImConfiguration cmdlet. Now, a few words about controlling the feature. For examples on how the notifications in the Skype for Business client and Windows would look like, check the support article here: Unfortunately, in my test this part wasn’t working as expected, and the only thing I received was an email notification in my mailbox, as seen on the screenshot below. In turn, the other party will receive notification in Skype for Business, via Windows alert and also in their mailbox. Status is unavailable or offline.” message when trying to IM an offline contact, instead you will get “UserXXX is offline, but they’ll still get your IM as a missed message.” You can see how it looks like on the screenshot on the right. You will no longer see the “UserXXX can’t receive IMs right now. The feature works by sending the message directly to the user’s mailbox and is only available for peer-to-peer IMs. In order to take advantage of this feature, you need to be running the latest version and the feature must be enabled in the tenant configuration (more about this later). Today’s update for Office 2016’s click-to-run version (.2053) brings a long anticipated feature – the ability to send messages via Skype for Business to contacts that are currently offline (offline messaging).

Exchange messages on skype