Forum Discussion
Why does Skype for Business (Plan 2) license only allow download of Skype for Business 2015?
Hello,
Should Skype for Business (Plan 2) be compatible with any Skype for Business client software version?
My portal only shows downloads for Skype for Business Basic and Skype for Business 2015. Any ideas why Skype for Business 2016 is not listed on the list of client software that I can download?
I did some research and noticed that all Office bundled packages that comes with Skype for Business list the license as Skype for Business (Plan 2). You can buy that particular license as a standalone. However, if you buy it as a standalone, it only provides the option to download Skype for Business 2015 client software version.
That said, what other license would you need to be able to use the Skype for Business 2016? I can't find any documentation that explicity states that if you want to use Skype for Business 2016 client software, you must also buy licence x, y, and/or z. I'm lost by why the standalone Skype for Business license only allows me to download an outdated version of Skype.
8 Replies
Is it working on any other plans? There should be options for which clients as available to download within your admin portal. S4B 2015 is really Lync 2013 with a skin on it (via a patch) to call it Skype.
If your portal is set to only allow the 2013 edition of office/skype as a download you'll only see S4B 2015. If you allow the office 2016 edition of Skype to download then you'll end up with S4B 2016.
By default, with Skype for Business Plan 2 we should be able to download the Skype for Business 20015 and Skype for Business 2016 Client both. For being able to download the Skype for Business 2016 Client we should allow downloading the 2016 Application from the Settings.
Be it any plan we should be able to download both the SFB 2015 and SFB 2016 Client from the Office 365 Portal. In addition, we can also download the Skype for Business Client from the following link
SFB 2016
https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=49440
- As per my first post, there is virtually no difference between the 2015 and 2016 versions.
Also the link you have provided is to the Basic client, which has less features than the client available from O365.
What specific feature differences are you after?
The year version in the product name does not specifically refer to the version or how up to date it is.
The 2016 client came with the Office 2016 installation, whereas the 2015 version comes with the server or as a standalone.
Other than that they are the same, as you can see in this client comparison article: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn933896.aspx
