Microsoft retired Skype for Business Online (SfBO) in July 2021, and the deadline to complete your SfBO upgrade/migration is rapidly approaching.
To help protect the investment that you have made in Skype for Business Online phones (3PIP phones) and help you upgrade to Teams, we offer a solution through SIP Gateway to enable these devices to securely connect and function as Microsoft Teams endpoints. We encourage you to make necessary updates as soon as possible because Skype for Business Online will be permanently turned off on July 31, 2023.
The following are a few scenarios that can help you chart the course of action for your organization:
- You have compatible 3PIP devices connecting to Teams via SIP Gateway on July 31, 2023 – no action needed on your part, your phones will continue to work via SIP Gateway.
- You have compatible 3PIP devices connecting to Teams, but not through Teams SIP Gateway on July 31, 2023 – your phones will stop working, unless you take steps described below to upgrade your devices to connect to Teams through SIP Gateway.
- You have incompatible 3PIP devices connecting to Teams on July 31, 2023 – your devices will stop working, you must replace them with Teams phone devices or compatible Teams SIP devices for continued scenario support.
How you can get help with your upgrading to SIP Gateway
SIP Gateway is the recommended approach for customers to continue using 3PIP phones to connect and work with Teams. We recognize that the upgrade of 3PIP devices to SIP Gateway can be lengthy, and so we highly encourage beginning the process as soon as possible. There are several resources available to support you through the migration process.
- To help facilitate your migration, we have prepared a self-serve playbook to help you through the process step by step.
- We are also pleased to announce a Microsoft Teams ‘Ask Microsoft Anything’ (AMA) live event specific to maintaining your 3PIP Phone connectivity on Thursday, May 11. Similar to a “YamJam” on Yammer or an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit, this AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of the product engineering team who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback.
- Reach out to us through your Microsoft account representatives or Support if you have any questions and stay tuned for more details.
Discover Your Existing Deployed 3PIP Devices
To identify existing 3PIP devices deployed within your environment, the sign in logs contained within the Azure AD Admin Center can be leveraged to identify recent sign registration events by filtering on "Skype for Business Certified Phone," as shown below:
3PIP Discovery PowerBI Template
As an additional option to identify remaining active 3PIP devices deployed across your environment, a new PowerBI template has been released leveraging latest media session details (via Call Quality Dashboard) to further summarize locations where 3PIP devices may remain for migration:
- To identify remaining active 3PIP devices deployed, download and open the PowerBI template from the following URL: https://aka.ms/3piptemplates
- Note: To view, the latest version of PowerBI Desktop must be installed, as well as the CQD PowerBI Connector must be configured in advance as summarized below: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/cqd-power-bi-connector#installation
- Planning Teams SIP Gateway - https://learn.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/sip-gateway-plan
- Troubleshooting SIP Gateway - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/troubleshoot/phone-system/sip-gateway-issues