Microsoft Teams Driving Adoption for Skype users.

[Thuan Ng]

I'm finding Microsoft Teams completely powerful and a real modern communication tool moving forward. I don't like Skype especially since the relese of mobile app with bad UI/UX ever I've ever seen from Microsoft (as I'm believing Microsoft UI/UX Team is the top of the world in software area). 

There are other reasons as to why Skype is not a productivity tool I want in my organization. No centralization, no focus and self-service group is not what I want. People very often create their own groups with others they like to privately talk. To these reasons, I begin looking into driving adoption from Skype to Microsoft Teams. It can be educational adoption or technical enforcement. 

Has anyone like me had started such an adoption? 

[#2]

Take a look at this thread, I think you will find some useful information there: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams/Microsoft-Teams-Adoption-Resources-Success-wi...

[#3]

Interesting idea.  Maybe that's the way it's going with Teams and Skype convergence, as discussed here and here though Microsoft has said "We don’t think there is a “one size fits all” collaboration product for our users".

My thoughts, what do you users want or need? Is there 100% Microsoft Teams acceptance where you are, you might not like Skype much but what about your users? Arguably, Teams is overkill if you just need basic IM and to make calls but it depends I suppose. How about meeting rooms, PSTN calling etc. 

Hopefully, with MS Ignite, it will be a lot clearer the direction this is heading in, from a roadmap point of view.  It's high praise anyway, just 4 months after GA, you want to get rid of Skype, shows what an impact Teams have made!

[#4]

To me personally when it comes to adoption, it is not what users need. If that is something they really needed I would not have to think about an effective adoption strategy to drive them. There are several reasons for technology transition. It's not only because the new technology is based on user need, but also the trend, the TCO or being aligned with the corporate digital transformation. 

I'm not a fan of Skype nor Skype for Business. To me these tools are only helpful for "calling" (not even video if you don't have good internet connection). This turns out a result of going back to the old fashion which is IM. It's undeniable to say that video conference is more effective for a discussion than chatting but I've seen most of my customers have other video conferences such as Polycom or Cisco which are costly. And their users prefer IM for regular discussion (product idea, product execution, non-technical stuff ...). Folks say that Skype for Business can be used to chat with external people. Unfortunately during my work from small to large businesses, I rarely see such a collaboration on Skype for Business, except meeting invite with an URL :). 

Microsoft Teams is not something magical but to me it is an innovative social tool which competes with the others over the market (e.g. Slack, Facebook Workplace, even with Yammer in particular ...). 

[#5]

Thanks for the additional info, I'm not sure I completely agree with the approach but I can certainly see what you are getting at.   If Microsoft Teams is thought to be better aligned with the corporate strategy that can deliver greater value and ultimately considered the best tool for this scenario, that would be hard to ignore! 

If pursuing this, would you block or exclude Skype for Business from your Office installations and completely standardise on Teams across the board?

[#6]

I am in agreement with you. Because of the online meetings via S4B within Teams, there is very little need for S4B by itself, unless you need the calling features. We are working with our clients to standardize on Teams - by "showing them the way" with its capabilities.

Teams does have some challenges (the lack of native macOS notifications being a big one on the Apple platform) and it is missing some key features (as outlined on the uservoice forum). Thankfully, the development team is rapidly innovating and we're seeing results for this very new product (it's less than a year old and look how far it is has come).

Other than the Microsoft provided Team Guidance documentation, has anyone created a runbook to make deployment/adoption easier for their business units/organization?

Thank you in advance.

[#7]

Thought you may be interested in this @Thuan Ng - Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Integration Continues: Will They Become One? from MVP Matt Landis!