Forum Discussion
Problems with IM from Teams to SfB
There is something fishy going on here.
We have a SfB solution in office 365.
1:Currently the Coexistence setting is Islands (decription reads: users can use both skype for business and teams app)
2: I have 2 external contacts in each their SfB organization
3: My Testuser can IM both these external users from SfB, however cannot IM the external users in teams.
4: When trying to search in teams for each of the external contacts, I get an error saying "we cannot setup the conversations, because the 2 organizations are not setup to talk to each other"
5: If I change my Coexistence to Only Teams, the problem remains the same, but now I cant even communicate with the external contacts because my SfB client is disabled.
All of this is pretty straight forward I guess however this is the strange part!!!!!
I have a friend who is an administrator of another Office 365 Solution. Their Coexistence setting is set to Teams only, and has been for months.
1: If one of his users tries to IM my 2 external contacts from above, they dont experience the same.
2: If they try to search for external contact nr 1. in teams, they get a message saying "user@externaldomain.com was not found
3: if they try to search for external contact nr 2. in teams, they are able to IM the contact with out any issues.
4: In the admin.teams.microsoft.com we have compared each to 365 subscriptions, every single setting is identical
I have no idea whats going on
Could someone please help with this issue, or try to help me understand what is happening?
? Why are my office 365 solution and my friends office 365 solution are behaviouring different?
? Why are we being told to move to Teams, if this makes it impossible to communicate with organizations who is still using SfB
All help, advise or troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated.
Kind Regards
Kenn Christensen
1. Skype for Business and Teams are both cloud based
2. AD is synced from On-prem, all accounts are local
3. Org default is "Islands" and My personal default is "Teams only"
Here is what I am seeing
I am only able to see presence of people who have Teams turned on, when I create a new Message to someone they do not get it unless they have Teams open.
A skype user is able to see my presence, they are able to IM me and I am able to respond. I am able to see their presence once they initiate the IM and I see two entries in my Teams client one of them the one they never receive and then one with Skype logo on it.
What I want is to be able to see Skype presence in Teams and be able to send IM's to skype users if they are not signed into Teams.
36 Replies
Guess I should have finished reading your whole post :P.
Responding to a few things you said here:Here is what I am seeing
I am only able to see presence of people who have Teams turned on, when I create a new Message to someone they do not get it unless they have Teams open.
Not sure here, is the user internal or external? Shouldn't matter, Teams is persistent. Sounds like one of your Islands users, so your Teams will go to their Teams so they need to be in Teams to get it, it won't go to Skype when they aren't in Teams.A skype user is able to see my presence, they are able to IM me and I am able to respond. I am able to see their presence once they initiate the IM and I see two entries in my Teams client one of them the one they never receive and then one with Skype logo on it.
The Teams entry without the logo is their Teams endpoint aka because of Islands, the Skype one is their Skype contact which you can see because when they message you it routes to your Teams only endpoint in your Teams. You can only initiate these when Skype user sends to you first. Otherwise your messages always go to Teams. Islands means that they are just that, each is their own product, until someone gets moved to Skype or Teams Only, which in your case, you start to see both endpoints.What I want is to be able to see Skype presence in Teams and be able to send IM's to skype users if they are not signed into Teams.
Basically this isn’t possible in Islands mode. Any Teams initiated chat, from Islands or Teams Only user will be sent to another Islands user’s Teams client.
All that said, if you are in Islands, the #1 requirement is everyone needs to have Teams client installed and using Teams, if not, Islands will be a cluster F. In that case you need to pick a side, Teams or Skype, and that seems to be why you are having headache's here.To accomplish this you need your org in Skype Only mode, and users wanting to use Teams in Teams. Or those that Know they will use both, can use Islands.
Sorry basically I copied some content from another post on this forum and forgot to delete the last bit, everything from after my signature you can disregard. sorry 😞
I just cant understand that when my office 365 moves to Teams only and I compare settings with my friends office 365 org that's also teams only. he can write to external user nr 1. but I get an error saying that: "we cannot setup the conversations, because the 2 organizations are not setup to talk to each other"
The other thing that's bothering me is that we have many clients, some has their own SfB onprem setup. and if we go Teams only, which I prefer then it appears that all communications with SfB orgs. are dead. that's very bad.
What would you guys suggest? I cant very well stick with skype only or island mode for our office 365 setting can I, I read that Microsoft is moving everyone to teams before 2020. Or am I missing something?
Kind Regards
Kenn Christensen
Kenn Christensen If you go to Teams only you will be able to chat with SfB orgs but the functionality is limited (such as screen sharing, formatting etc). I am not sure but as long as you have the org-wide setting in Island I don't think the user setting (Teams only) matters when it comes to federation between two tenants.
Here are a few good blog posts regarding why you should move away from Island mode:
https://www.enowsoftware.com/solutions-engine/teams-islandmode-trap
- You cannot use External Chat from Teams in Islands mode. You can only use Skype, all chats will go to your Skype client coming inbound as well. Once you go Teams only then you'll be able to use external chats from and to Teams client.
Kenn Christensen I assume you have set the setting Users can communicate with Skype for Business and Teams users on in External access in Teams admin and that you don't have any allowed/blocked domains.
Kenn Christensen I don't have a solution to your issue with external users but I would definitely suggest you to move away from Island mode and rather go for Skype for Business only and Teams only for all users (depending on if they want to use Skype or Teams). The Island mode is just so confusing and you get all sort of weird things happening and no one knows when to use what.
