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Microsoft Teams Blog
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Skype for Business Online retires July 31, 2021 – here’s what to expect

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Microsoft_Teams_team
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Apr 29, 2021

As we approach the retirement of Skype for Business Online, we want to take a moment to appreciate the efforts organizations are making to complete their transitions to Teams prior to July 31, 2021, as well as those who have already upgraded to Teams. Thank you! If you still have Skype for Business Online users, keep working your upgrade plan. Regardless of the technical and change management dynamics with your upgrade, you can accomplish so much over the next three months.

 

What to expect as Skype for Business Online retires?

Skype for Business Online will be fully functional through July 31, 2021 to allow customers time to transition users to Teams or to an instance of Skype for Business Server. Here are some other details you should know about the Skype for Business Online service retirement:

 

Microsoft-assisted upgrades to Teams

In the coming weeks, we’ll begin scheduling Microsoft-assisted upgrades to Teams for Skype for Business Online customers with cloud-only or hybrid deployments. Assisted upgrades help with last-mile technical steps of the transition to Teams. Customers will be notified through the Teams admin center and the Microsoft 365 Message Center, 90 days prior to the scheduled date of their assisted upgrade. Customers tracking to complete their transitions to Teams Only prior to their scheduled automated upgrade date are encouraged to do so for better control over the timing of their upgrade experience.

 

The duration of each customer's upgrade will vary by volume of users and characteristics of their deployment, but generally users within a tenant will be upgraded within 24 hours from the start of the upgrade. During this time, users will still be able to access Skype for Business Online. Once the upgrade has completed and users log out of Skype for Business Online, they will only be able to use Teams to initiate and receive messages and calls as well as to schedule and host meetings. These users will be able to join a Skype for Business meeting scheduled by a user on Skype for Business Server or in a federated organization.

 

When the assisted upgrade completes, the coexistence mode for upgraded users is set to Teams Only. Admins should review Teams Only mode considerations prior to upgrade. Learn more about Microsoft-assisted upgrades to Teams.

 

Teams upgrade resources

Whether you’re at the start of your upgrade journey or are wrapping up, these resources can help guide your organization through its transition to Teams:

The retirement of Skype for Business Online and corresponding assisted upgrades do not affect the Skype consumer service, Skype for Business Server products and Skype for Business Online operated by 21Vianet (China Sovereign Clouds Instance).

 

Additional guidance for customers with hybrid configurations

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing more retirement guidance for Skype for Business customers with hybrid (server + online) configurations.

 

See you in Teams!

Updated Apr 30, 2021
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  • t-rev's avatar
    t-rev
    Copper Contributor
    May 17, 2021

    We received notice that our tenant will be auto-upgraded on 8/11/2021. The notice references that a three month extension will be availalbe but also still says Skype will be retired 7/31/2021. 

     

    If we request the three month extension, will we be able to use SfBO until early November when the extension expires? If yes, are there any caveats/limitations during the extension period after Skypes formal retirement date of 7/31?

  • BinduPillai's avatar
    BinduPillai
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    May 18, 2021

    Hi t-rev, if your service extension request is approved, you will be able to use Skype for Business Online for three months beyond the July 31, 2021 retirement. Your tenant will be re-scheduled for an assisted upgrade to Teams at that time. However, we encourage you to self-upgrade prior to the new date as you're able. 

  • Sukhvinder_Ahuja's avatar
    Sukhvinder_Ahuja
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    May 21, 2021

    Team can you advice how do we tackle SMB customer in our solidary whom we do not have a direct relationship or contact information . What if they come back to Microsoft  post the deadline for migration support will we have any mechanism to support them . regards CPE lead India  

  • Laurens_vd_Vleuten's avatar
    Laurens_vd_Vleuten
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 18, 2021

    Eric Marsi  
    Our organisation noticed the same behavior.

    Following the instuctions below, we managed to move a user from sfb online to our sfb on-prem again. (with the powershell commands, not in GUI. Which I also hope they will fix.
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-powershell-move-from-sfbo


    Although I get the move for retiring the sfb online, Sfb on-prem is still here and has mainstream support untill 09 january 2024 and extended support till 14 october 2025.

    Can anyone tell if it is possible to migrate sfbo users to teams(only) and be able to move users between teams and the on-premises SFB server ?

    So we have time to move the enterprise voice to another telephony platform.
    Teams still lacks some essential basic features to be suitable as a voice solution for us.
    Aside of the problem that Teams is also used for many other things than voice/telephony, which interfers with a person which function is to answer the phone. (so I was glad that SfB and Teams were seperate products.

  • Eric Marsi's avatar
    Eric Marsi
    MVP
    Jun 21, 2021

    Laurens_vd_Vleuten To move a user from SFBO to Teams Only, simply change the coexistence mode to Teams Only. As long as the user was first created on-prem you can move them back on-prem with the Move-CsUser cmdlet with the target of as the poolfqdn.