This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Healthcare and Life Sciences Blog articles.
Today Microsoft announced that Skype for Business Online will be retiring on July 31, 2021. Though we didn’t know the exact date until today, we have been preparing for this for the past year and are ready to support you however we can as we work together to help you make this transition.
We knew this was coming, we have been preparing for this for the past year, now we know the official date. We hope this does not come as a shock to you as MS Teams has taken center stage for Intelligent Communication and Modern Collaboration and Microsoft as an organization is not going to support Skype for Business (SfB) online for the long term. All of our investments and feature enhancements have been in Teams and Teams will continue to receive these investments for the future.
If you are currently a SfB Online customer don’t worry MS Teams has all the features your users need to continue business continuity, Teams actually has more features and we have found the majority of our end users are more happy with the MS Teams experience over Skype.
See here for a feature comparison list of the primary features we hear from our users:
|
Skype for Business Online vs Teams |
Skype |
Teams |
|
Chat |
|
|
|
Persistent individual and group chat |
X |
X |
|
Start a chat with individuals or groups |
X |
X |
|
Transition from a chat to a call |
X |
X |
|
Share a file in chat |
X |
X |
|
Share a file with offline participants |
|
X |
|
Emoji’s |
|
X |
|
GIFs and memes |
|
X |
|
Like and acknowledge chat messages |
|
X |
|
Persistent conversations with threaded replies |
|
X |
|
Praise individuals and teams |
|
X |
|
Search for files, content, and people |
|
X |
|
@ mention people and groups |
|
X |
|
File Management |
|
|
|
Co-author auto-saved and auto-versioned files with others |
|
X |
|
OneDrive file access and management |
|
X |
|
Group shared file access |
|
X |
|
SharePoint Online file access and management |
|
X |
|
Meetings |
|
|
|
Schedule meetings in application |
X |
X |
|
Schedule meetings from Outlook |
X |
X |
|
Integrate with Outlook calendar |
X |
X |
|
View and interact with calendar within application |
|
X |
|
Share screen |
X |
X |
|
Share video |
X |
X |
|
Blur background on video |
|
X |
|
Live captions |
|
X |
|
In-meeting access to all chat features and files |
X |
X |
|
Persistent chat before, during, and after the meeting |
|
X |
|
@ mention people and like conversations |
|
X |
|
Record and share meetings via Stream with auto-transcription |
|
X |
|
Contacts |
|
|
|
Create individual and group contacts |
X |
X |
|
Calls |
|
|
|
Make, forward, transfer calls |
X |
X |
|
Mobile |
|
|
|
Chat, call, share/edit files, and meet from your mobile device |
X |
X |
|
Set Quiet Hours |
|
X |
|
Presence and Location |
|
|
|
Share Presence and Location |
X |
X |
|
Notifications |
|
|
|
Desktop, web, mobile audio and visual notifications |
X |
X |
|
Mute conversations |
|
X |
|
Application and BOTs Automation |
|
|
|
Extensible with Tabs and Channels |
|
X |
|
BOTs (Who, Polly, T-Bot, etc) |
|
X |
For a deeper comparison and more technical look at SfB vs Teams please read this article.
If you are surprised by this announcement or maybe not surprised but more in shock because you are not prepared, don’t worry, Microsoft is prepared to support you in your efforts to move from SfB to Teams. We have many people like myself in the field that are fully trained and ready to help you every step of the way.
Here is how to get started on the MS Teams Journey:
- MS Teams Governance
- MS Teams Security
- MS Teams Technical Site
- SfB and Teams Coexistence Modes
- Teams Voice - What is Direct Routing for MS Teams
- Cloud Video Interop for MS Teams
- How to get started with upgrading to MS Teams
For more assistance please reach out to your Microsoft account team, there are 3 roles on the account team that are specifically focused on helping our customers make this transition, if you have relationships with one of these members of your team, I would ask them first.
- MS Teams Technical Specialist
- MS Teams Customer Success Manager
- FastTrack Manager
We are giving our customers a two year runway on this and that may seem like a long time, but in reality, large organizations move slow so the time is now to get started. MS Teams can offer your end user so much value! We strongly encourage you to start planning for this and working with us now, not just because Skype is coming to end of life, but because Teams can offer your organization so much more.
Start empowering your users now by providing them with world class Intelligent Communication sooner than later.
Thanks for reading:
Co-Authored by Shelly Avery and Josh Thompson