Microsoft Teams is now a complete meeting and calling solution
Published Aug 24 2018 08:00 AM 219K Views
Microsoft

Last year we announced plans for Microsoft Teams to become the primary client for Intelligent Communications in Office 365, replacing Skype for Business Online over time. Today, we are pleased to announce we have completed our roadmap for bringing Skype for Business Online features and functionality into Teams, and Teams is ready to meet your messaging, meeting and calling needs.

 

Today, more than 200,000 organizations are using Teams, including nearly 70% of enterprise customers who use Skype for Business Online.  We encourage your organization to join them and move to Teams today.

 

Marketing meeting.jpg

 

Teams delivers Intelligent Communications

In recent weeks, we added many new communications features to Teams.

  • Messaging: Teams now offers unified presence, federated chat, and contacts, as well as in-line translation capabilities that allow team members to converse in their native language.
  • Meetings: Cloud-based meeting recording, support for larger meetings of up to 250 participants; federated meetings, which provides the ability to host meetings across multiple organizations; meeting lobby so you can qualify dial-in callers before they join your meeting; and dial-in fallback support to ensure people can join a meeting even in the event of network issues.  For additional information on new meeting capabilities in Teams, check out Meet Now with Microsoft Teams.
  • Calling: Boss and delegate support, call queues, auto-attendant, consultative transfer, do-not-disturb breakthrough, the ability to forward a call to a group, and out of office support. In addition, Direct Routing enables you to bring your own telephone service to Teams, which along with Calling Plans provides you additional choice for dial tone in Microsoft Teams. 
  • Enhancements to the devices ecosystem for Teams: An update for Skype Room Systems that enables them to join Teams meetings; Teams app for Surface Hub in the Microsoft Store; Teams Conferencing Gateway, which allows you to use existing Skype for Business certified SIP-based phones with Teams; and USB HID Support for Teams, enabling customers to answer, end calls and control mute and volume using USB peripherals. In addition, cloud video interop services to support Teams meetings with existing VTC systems are underway with offerings from Pexip, Polycom, and Blue Jeans to be generally available later this calendar year.

 

Make the move to Teams

Over the last few weeks we have released resources, tools and guidance to help current Skype for Business Online customers with their upgrade to Teams.  This includes:

  • Self-serve guidance featuring a proven success framework for upgrading to Teams, including best practices, guidance, and resources for customers who are ready to use Skype for Business and Teams side-by-side or to fully transition to Teams.
  • Upgrade tools in the Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center that enable customers to migrate users from Skype for Business to Teams. These tools are starting to roll out now and are expected to be available to all Office 365 customers later this calendar year.

Not every organization has dedicated IT resources to manage their transition to Teams. In order to assist these customers, we will begin offering them Microsoft-driven automated upgrades to Teams. We will communicate directly with customers regarding their upgrade options through email and in the Office 365 Message Center. 

 

To learn more about how to upgrade to Teams, and to get started today, visit the following resources:

 

92 Comments
Brass Contributor

@Bryan Nyce eeeek.   That is what I am worried about.   

Also the I hear gateway and I'm thinking an extra couple of seconds lag on call queue pickup.

 

Iron Contributor

@Paul Austwick Currently having couple of users on TeamsOnly mode and they are all using VVX 300/500/600 and all working fine.

 

They signed in using Web signin without any issues.

 

Did you update the firmware on the VVX?

Iron Contributor

@Viktor Berke To clarify, you login in successfully, but cannot make calls? If so, is the failure to both PSTN numbers and fellow S4B numbers, or just one of those types?

Iron Contributor

No caller id, no way to conference someone into a current phone call, no permissions on meetings for internal users...

Iron Contributor

@Damon Betlow

Agreed, but the good news is CallerID and Conferencing are both features announced. I am hopeful for something in the next month or so..

 

What is meant by "no permissions on meetings for internal users..."? Can you flesh that out a bit? I am not sure what that means exactly.

Iron Contributor

@Fred Franks  Good to know about conferencing and caller id, I missed that announcement.

 

When you create a Teams meeting, everyone in your tenant/organization is set as a Presenter, so they can share their screen, mute anyone, as well as remove anyone (including the meeting organizer!).  In Skype for Business, this was one of the options you could set as a Meeting Organizer, but you also had the option to choose designated co-organizers or be the only organizer/presenter...  Teams doesn't give you any options for permissions at the meeting level.  There are some at the org-level that you can set for different groups of people, but none address these settings.

Iron Contributor

@Damon Betlow

 

Yes, they listed it as coming soon, along with several other great features:

  • Background Blur
  • Meeting Recording
  • Teams mobile companion
  • Cloud Video Interop
  • Image annotation
  • Teams Administrator Role
  • Microsoft Search
  • First Line Worker Capabilites (Home, Shifts)
  • Calling for everyone
  • Live Events
  • Priority messaging
  • Share Screen from private chat
  • Data Loss Prevention
  • New files experience featuring sync
  • Notify and share with @mentions in documents
  • Create Teams with Templates
  • Teams mobile features: Proximity join, driving mode
  • Manage all teams from the admin center
  • New room systems
  • Scan & capture

Thanks for the clarification. That is a good point! It would be good to hear Microsoft’s take on this feature set. Do you have a Feature Request we can vote up?

Iron Contributor

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/35688493-meeting-policy-presen...

 

Thanks.  Where did you see the caller id and conference calls announced?

Iron Contributor

At Ignite, they announced the Caller ID (mapped to your personal address book), along with other items:

  • Self-serve number blocking
  • Personal Contact Caller ID
  • Operator while leaving a voicemail
  • VoIP Calling for Everyone

The conference calling was added for Teams calls, but the PSTN conferencing is still on the roadmap, it is past due actually:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=Teams%2CPSTN%2CGroup

 

Copper Contributor

@James Skay, is ability for users to share desktop through the webapp on the roadmap?  This is the key feature that exists in S4B, but still missing in Teams, that is preventing us from moving over completely to Teams as our primary meeting app.  https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/34241197-allow-screen-sharing-...

Brass Contributor

@Fred Franks It won't even call, just beeps a few times and disconnects. Unless

 

1. The callee is switched from Teams-only to Islands

2. The callee is signed in and online in Skype

 

 

So I wouldn't call this a Teams gateway at all. It's pure Skype.

Steel Contributor

On UserVoice, Suphatra has now confirmed what we expected for a long time: Microsoft Teams will not be supported on Linux.

 

This means that it counts as a complete meeting and calling solution only if no-one who you want to be in those meetings or calls is a Linux user. And as the size and sophistication of an organization grows, the probability of at least one important user being a Linux user approaches 100%. To cut these users out of the loop seems like an odd choice from a business perspective.

 

It also seems very odd to me from a technical point of view. Teams is an Electron application, and the very first three words on Electron's website are "Build cross platform". Since Electron apps are really just web pages wrapped in a container, then as long as the container exists for a given platform, the same application should "just work". I know that it isn't always trivial to do, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a cross-platform product from a product built using a cross-platform framework.

 

EDIT: MS have now rolled this announcement back. Linux support is back on the backlog. But I am skeptcial of a timely ETA given that 6 of the top 10 requests that are marked as actively "working on it" have shown no progress in 600+ days.

Silver Contributor

https://www.microsoft.com/lt-lt/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=42615 this just dropped on the roadmap. Screen sharing marked as in development. I guess will have to wait longer for this. 

Brass Contributor

Seems I cannot reply, no menu choice for that so... In reply to you @wroot this was really sad news. Just tweeted about it as well to get more info... https://twitter.com/jake_fatman/status/1053166904351830016 

 

 


@James Skay wrote:

Last year we announced plans for Microsoft Teams to become the primary client for Intelligent Communications in Office 365, replacing Skype for Business Online over time. Today, we are pleased to announce we have completed our roadmap for bringing Skype for Business Online features and functionality into Teams, and Teams is ready to meet your messaging, meeting and calling needs.

 

Today, more than 200,000 organizations are using Teams, including nearly 70% of enterprise customers who use Skype for Business Online.  We encourage your organization to join them and move to Teams today.

 

Marketing meeting.jpg

 

Teams delivers Intelligent Communications

In recent weeks, we added many new communications features to Teams.

  • Messaging: Teams now offers unified presence, federated chat, and contacts, as well as in-line translation capabilities that allow team members to converse in their native language.
  • Meetings: Cloud-based meeting recording, support for larger meetings of up to 250 participants; federated meetings, which provides the ability to host meetings across multiple organizations; meeting lobby so you can qualify dial-in callers before they join your meeting; and dial-in fallback support to ensure people can join a meeting even in the event of network issues.  For additional information on new meeting capabilities in Teams, check out Meet Now with Microsoft Teams.
  • Calling: Boss and delegate support, call queues, auto-attendant, consultative transfer, do-not-disturb breakthrough, the ability to forward a call to a group, and out of office support. In addition, Direct Routing enables you to bring your own telephone service to Teams, which along with Calling Plans provides you additional choice for dial tone in Microsoft Teams. 
  • Enhancements to the devices ecosystem for Teams: An update for Skype Room Systems that enables them to join Teams meetings; Teams app for Surface Hub in the Microsoft Store; Teams Conferencing Gateway, which allows you to use existing Skype for Business certified SIP-based phones with Teams; and USB HID Support for Teams, enabling customers to answer, end calls and control mute and volume using USB peripherals. In addition, cloud video interop services to support Teams meetings with existing VTC systems are underway with offerings from Pexip, Polycom, and Blue Jeans to be generally available later this calendar year.

 

Make the move to Teams

Over the last few weeks we have released resources, tools and guidance to help current Skype for Business Online customers with their upgrade to Teams.  This includes:

  • Self-serve guidance featuring a proven success framework for upgrading to Teams, including best practices, guidance, and resources for customers who are ready to use Skype for Business and Teams side-by-side or to fully transition to Teams.
  • Upgrade tools in the Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center that enable customers to migrate users from Skype for Business to Teams. These tools are starting to roll out now and are expected to be available to all Office 365 customers later this calendar year.

Not every organization has dedicated IT resources to manage their transition to Teams. In order to assist these customers, we will begin offering them Microsoft-driven automated upgrades to Teams. We will communicate directly with customers regarding their upgrade options through email and in the Office 365 Message Center. 

 

To learn more about how to upgrade to Teams, and to get started today, visit the following resources:

 


 

Silver Contributor

I think there was never a direct reply option in blogs like in forums. 

Iron Contributor

@Viktor Berke Interesting scenario you outline.

 

Our scenario is: 

Caller is set to "Teams only" mode running on S4B phone and can call out to "Teams only" or "Island Users" on S4B phones or PSTN numbers.

 

I am seeing issues when calling a hunt group on Skype on another tenant. That is currently has a ticket open with Microsoft.

 

What happens in your scenario with both ends (caller and callee) are Teams only mode with a S4B desk phone?

Brass Contributor

Status Screen sharing in private chats without having to call?

Uservoice states "Completed" and at Ignite this was also announced. According to Suphatra in the post at Uservoice this is being deployed.

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/16936774-enable-screen-sharing...

BUT

The roadmap says "Deploy Q1 CY2019"... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=42615

Please say the roadmap is wrong otherwise we still got a blocker... Smiley Frustrated 

Silver Contributor

Not a first time information in the forums, uservoice and roadmap differs from reality. I guess for a huge corp it is hard to coordinate public statements with development status.

Copper Contributor

 Many organizations have now received an email from Microsoft where Microsoft states that they will do an automatic update (scheduled to be done by the end of this month) and force teamsonly mode and disable skype. First calls to Microsoft support have verified that such update is coming and it is coming soon. Not sure if this is forced only to tenants in Islands mode. Still waiting further information from Microsoft, but if this is really happening I want to ask what happened to the promise that organization admins can decide WHEN to update the teamsonly mode?

Iron Contributor

@Irene Lappalainen

 

Can you post this email?

Brass Contributor

I really wish this was all a misunderstanding. I honestly cannot believe that a serious organisation would make a disingenuous announcement about product parity, and despite a barrage of customers and partners calling foul, the organisation decides to ignore all criticism and force an insufficient product down customer's throats.

 

Because if Irene's post is accurate, this is how it looks like from my end.

Copper Contributor

I can provide more information on this now. The email we received was for the test environment and we can now see official message in the message center of that tenant. I believe small / low use tenants have this message now in their message center, so check your message center. I was confirmed from the Microsoft Support that "tenants scheduled for automatically update as all eligible customers will receive upgrade notification on Message Center and also in email." 

 

I have asked if we should expect to see this message soon in our production tenant and the answer from Microsoft Support was that they are "notifying customer and also sending message center and still if someone misses out and there tenant is upgraded, they can connect with support with business justification as why they don’t want to update and we can help them moving back to SFB and then they can plan their migration." 

 

So it seems that you can opt-out but you have to contact support. I have no idea what is schedule for production tenants and I my personal opinion is that after all they do not have the guts to do it automatically to production tenants... it would be unthinkable...

Copper Contributor

Message from the Message Center (test tenant): 

Microsoft Teams is ready for your organization - you can begin your upgrade today:

Microsoft Teams now provides the same presence, chat, voice, video and meetings capabilities as Skype for Business as part of Office 365. Teams is the new communications client in Office 365 replacing Skype for Business over time. Microsoft is committed to supporting your organization’s upgrade to Teams. To make the process as easy as possible, Microsoft will automatically upgrade your users to Teams on Thursday, November 29, 2018.

On Thursday, November 29, 2018, Microsoft will automatically upgrade your users from Skype for Business to Teams. Once upgraded, Teams will become your organization's default client for chat, voice, video and meetings in Office 365.

If you’re not ready to upgrade to Teams by Thursday, November 29, 2018, contact Microsoft Support. Otherwise, we will upgrade your organization to Teams on your behalf.

Iron Contributor

That is no good :) What define a test tenant?

And on what criteria Microsoft consider the tenant is ready to upgrade to Teams automatically?

 

Anyone at Microsoft would comment?

 

 

Deleted
Not applicable

I think this has to do with the 500 seats minimum not sure do

Iron Contributor

 This will break video when using Polycom video conference gear. I am hopeful this is resolved with the Teams update to the phones real soon. However, prematurely moving people (forcing people) is not a wise move.

Brass Contributor

For the record, Teams just got updated to include desktop sharing. At least this is how it looks like for all of us in my organisation earlier this week. I certainly cannot speak for everyone else here, but all my organisation needs now is the ability to record meetings for us to move completely out of Skype for Business.

 

Just my 2 cents: Next time check like, 2, 3 or perhaps 10 times before claiming product parity. I bet things will get easier for everyone this way :p

Brass Contributor

What does Microsoft consider the word "complete" to mean? Does anyone at Microsoft do Quality Assurance testing these days? Is there even such a process anywhere in Microsoft these days? Teams is "NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME"! That's especially true if you use Skype for Business as a phone system. If Microsoft forces us to use Teams until it has "ALL" the features of Skype for Business, I'm going to have "ALL" my customers switch their cloud-based phone systems to Micloud by Mitel or something similar!

 

Microsoft, please stop using your paying customers as Beta Testers!

Iron Contributor

@Donovan Lewis I have shared the sentiment, but seen some strong strides up to this point. What specific features are you seeing now as missing? I do not question they exist, but am have seen most/all of my list crossed off (as it relates to S4B features).

 

The only one for me is a firmware update to the Polycom Trio to run native Teams for video support.

Brass Contributor

@Fred Franks The below is a list of just some of the problems I & my customers have with Teams. Keep in mind that we all use Skype for Business as a full-fledged phone system.

  • There's no integration with the VOIP Polycom phones my customers use.
  • The "Find a contact" feature in the Calls section doesn't work.
  • There's no way to start a Chat with someone who's not added already in a Contacts Group. In SFB, I just type in a name & r-m-c.
  • The "A-Z Contacts" list in Calls doesn't include a Business Name column.
Brass Contributor

By the way, @Fred Franks, "strong strides" aren't enough to for Teams to replace a functional (not perfect) product like SFB.

Iron Contributor

@Donovan Lewis

 

Thanks for sharing. Some thoughts:

 

  • There's no integration with the VOIP Polycom phones my customers use.

What type of phone is in place? We use Polycom VVX phones without issue, similarly the Trio phones work for audio (video needs to be added). There are some legacy S4B phones that will never support Teams.

 

  • The "Find a contact" feature in the Calls section doesn't work.

Yes, good call - Works on mobile, I see that issue on the desktop version. I never search contacts in the desktop calling app, always use my address book, but that seems like a simple bug to resolve.

 

  • There's no way to start a Chat with someone who's not added already in a Contacts Group. In SFB, I just type in a name & r-m-c.

Not a problem on my end. I am able to start a chat with anyone by clicking the new chat icon at the top. If they are in the tenant or a guest of my tenant the search shows the name. If they are not a member or guest, I simply need to type the full email address to send the message.

 

  • The "A-Z Contacts" list in Calls doesn't include a Business Name column.

I see that as the case. Not sure if that is a huge deal if you can find that information inside of your address book elsewhere.

 

Overall, in the last month, I think S4B is severely lacking compared to Teams. For example:

  1. Chat functionality: S4B would leave you wondering if the message went to your desktop or mobile device.
  2. Number of rings: An outside party calling a S4B person will hear far more rings until the receiving S4B user when contrasted against Teams.
  3. Call latency: Similarly, test the voice travel time against a Teams call. Sound quality and latency is noticeably better.

 

My top items to address right now:

  1. (Both Systems) Transfer directly to voicemail - a must have for receptionists. Supposedly coming Q1.
  2. (Both Systems) Need a better call center option or even better just partner with Twilio.
  3. (Both Systems) Should implement a free/cheap common area option (free or $1-2/month for internal calling only instead of $8)
  4. (Teams) Desktop needs click to dial - is on the roadmap, recently the iOS app added this option.
  5. (Teams) Polycom Trio needs to add video
Copper Contributor

Not sure if it's relevant to this post but in order for us to resolve S4B & Teams call feature issues for our clients, we worked extensively with MS for over a year to build a MS-certified Connector that addresses issues and missing legacy PBX features that businesses still need and MS does not see the need to develop. Legacy features such as analog, faxing, ACD Agent log-in/out, true enterprise extension dialing, external paging, etc. are still being used by many businesses.  We are developers and don't sell MS products and in order to observe non-solicitation rules, I can provide info regarding this Connector to community users who specifically ask me for it.

 

I also have a question and would like to know what challenges (if any) have anyone faced when attempting to utilize MS Teams as a full-functioning legacy PBX phone system or UCaaS replacement?  Why aren't more companies using MS Teams as a phone system since it is free and included in the E5/M5 license pack?  The alternative Cap-Ex cost of a premises-based IP phone system is at least $300-$500/user (100 user company: $30k-$50K just for the phone system alone) plus Telco lines and phone service costs.  With Teams Calling, if you have E5, phone system is included and you just need a MS or 3rd party calling plan for $10-$24/user.  Why isn't this being adopted more?

Copper Contributor

What about Skype consumer integration? New delay to Q2 2020 for a request that never should be existed. This is a Must Have feature. Several of our customers is suffering til now the impact of not being able to reenable Skype for business on their tenants!!! So now they are unable to chat with their customers and suppliers using their corporate email, because is not possible to create Skype consumer account to a O365 owned domain. So they are using non sense emails to run their business. This Is really a shame...

Brass Contributor

@Alessandro Kornowski as I've said many times over the past 6 months: "Microsoft Teams" is not ready for Prime Time!

Copper Contributor

MS Teams can be a 100% functional through a 'Direct Route' certified Teams Calling service provider.  You just need to get the Calling Plan from them and overlay the missing/desired PBX feature set.

Brass Contributor

Thanks for the heads-up. I'm going to look into that.

Brass Contributor

@Medy_Shahoveissi Please direct me to a list of 'Direct Route' certified Teams Calling service providers. I can't locate a list anywhere :sad:. Otherwise, please recommend/suggest some.

 

Many thanks in advance :smile:...

Iron Contributor
Brass Contributor

@Aragorn Many Thanks :cool:

Copper Contributor

BluIP is one of the few Direct Route providers with 100% guaranteed outcome and free Proof of Concept.  No SIP trunks or SBCs required, all done through an Access Route via Microsoft cloud, down to customers' O365 Tenants.

Iron Contributor

As much as I enjoy Teams I do wish there was Q&A moderation capabilities in Meetings as there is in Live Events. 250 people all trying to use a chat window for Q&A is a nightmare! :facepalm:

 

(Yes, I did submit a request in Uservoice:smile:)

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