Regarding the silly time it takes for Lync to update the database. Please follow these steps: Exit out of Lync, making sure it’s gone by right clicking it in the task tray and choosing exit
First, execute the following command from the Windows Command Prompt run as an administrator (or manually add the GalDownloadInitialDelay registry key). Setting this value to 0 will force Lync to immediately download the address book.
reg add HKLMSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftCommunicator /v GalDownloadInitialDelay /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
Second, exit the Lync client and manually delete the GalContacts.db and GalContacts.db.idx files from the user’s profile directory. If the .db file still exists during startup of the client then Lync may still wait for that random interval between 0 and 60 minutes before checking for changes on the server’s address book files.
On Windows Vista or Windows 7 workstations:
%userprofile%AppDataLocalMicrosoftCommunicatorsip_<username@domain>