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Roadmap for Skype for Business capabilities coming to Microsoft Teams now available

Tiffany Wissner (WENTZEL)'s avatar
Tiffany Wissner (WENTZEL)
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Oct 24, 2017

Last month at Microsoft Ignite we introduced a new vision for intelligent communications, which includes Microsoft Teams becoming the primary client for communication and collaboration in Office 365. Today we are sharing more detail on our planned roadmap for adding Microsoft Skype for Business capabilities to Teams, so you can plan your onboarding.

 

Messaging – Teams offers rich instant messaging capabilities today, with persistent chat, as well as private 1:1 and group chat. We expect to deliver additional messaging capabilities in Teams by the end of Q2-2018. Features will include screen sharing during chat and federation between companies.

 

Meetings – Teams offers collaborative meetings capabilities today, including screen sharing, meeting chats captured in the channel after the meeting, and the preview of audio conferencing. We expect to deliver additional meeting capabilities in Microsoft Teams by the end of Q2-2018. These features include meeting room support with Skype Room Systems, and cloud video interoperability capabilities that allow third party meeting room devices to connect to Teams meetings.

 

Calling – Today, Teams offers many calling capabilities. Later this quarter, we plan to ship voicemail for Teams. By the end of Q2-2018, we will enable you to use your existing telco voice line to activate calling services in Office 365.

 

Beyond bringing existing Skype for Business core capabilities to Teams, we are excited about new intelligent communications coming to Teams. As shown at the Ignite Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business General Session, customers will be able to record a meeting and store it in Teams, have transcription added, and be able to search the meeting for key terms. These features will begin rolling out at the end of Q2-2018.

 

As part of our vision for intelligent communications, we are also taking the opportunity to simplify the naming of our premium communication offerings. PSTN Conferencing will now be known as “Audio Conferencing;” Cloud PBX will now be known as “Phone System;” and PSTN Calling will now be known as “Calling Plan.” We want these names to be more intuitive to both IT and end users as we further integrate communications with collaboration. 

 

We encourage all customers who have not yet done so to start using Teams today, either stand alone or side-by-side with Skype for Business. 

You can find a list of upcoming features on the Office 365 Public Roadmap. A downloadable version of the same roadmap is available on the Intelligent Communications FastTrack portal to further help plan your onboarding to Microsoft Teams. 

 

We also invite you to our Microsoft Teams "Ask Microsoft Anything" on October 25th, at 9 AM PDT and a live broadcast on October 27th, at 9 AM PDT on Teams On Air to hear our team discuss the roadmap in more detail and have your questions answered.

 

Updated Jan 26, 2021
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  • MarkVale's avatar
    MarkVale
    Iron Contributor
    Oct 24, 2017

    Please do something with that GIF. It is impossible to read before it moves

  • John Gooding's avatar
    John Gooding
    Copper Contributor
    Oct 24, 2017

    Honestly I am very disappointed you are moving in this direction, I miss the days of a small simple interface like the old school Communicator, I want IM, Voice Call, Desktop share, to one or group, with conversations saved to my mail/server.  All the 10 billion bloat features have their use but those are the features I use day in and out, I don't want or need a social network internally, even today Skype for Business makes half those items that use to be direct items two to three window clicks to do instead of a user list right click share desktop.  We tried Slack and Teams, and it was fun for 30 minutes then it turned into a productivity drag, taking huge amounts of screen relestate, give us an option for a simple business use IM/call manager to save picking up phones, kicking off GoToMeeting etc.

  • David Phillips's avatar
    David Phillips
    Steel Contributor
    Oct 25, 2017

    I partially agree with John Gooding - My take is the new interface and functionality will be great, but we absolutely need an option for a "light" interface.  I have users who will never use the full functionality of Teams and will only ever need a chat / calling interface similar to what is available today with the SfB client.

  • Deleted's avatar
    Deleted
    Oct 24, 2017

    Other Products need Roadmaps like this. I like it. Would be nice if the live Roadmap though had ETA's on the items. 

  • AllanWith's avatar
    AllanWith
    Iron Contributor
    Oct 24, 2017

    Awesome stuff! I have an annoying question about a very particular feature, namely the ability to specify, when scheduling a meeting, that participants will not be able to share video, their own screen, audio, etc. This would be useful for one-to-many educational situations. I see that the ability to mute someone is coming, but am unsure if this is the same thing?

     

    Also, I don’t see anything about if and when Skype for Business will be forcibly replaced by Teams? Can you say something like it won’t happen until mm/dd/yy at the earliest? This will make it easier for us to communicate the coming change with our organization (and frankly calm them down a bit).

  • John Gooding's avatar
    John Gooding
    Copper Contributor
    Oct 24, 2017

    On old stuff you could right click and start a desktop share, now you double click someone to start a text message to a window that typically opens up behind another one and on which screen, then click the content share.  Business is simple streamlined and focused, add call and IM to the GoToMeeting interface and you have it.  As I said we had Slack and Teams up and running, neither gained acceptance due to being 'too much crap' where skype business took off due to the simpler smaller interface, which in my mind is often not right for productivity but still way better than the other two.  I don't want 10K windows, I want to be able to communicate and share real time instead of walking to the other side of the building or picking up the phone.  I'm sure if MS keeps in this direction someone else like GotoMeeting or other VoiP companies will offer what we are need.

  • Steve Dalby's avatar
    Steve Dalby
    Iron Contributor
    Oct 25, 2017

    The Microsoft Teams team rocks!! 

     

    Roll on Q2 2018... is this the preview release date or the actual live date??

     

    This is great information about a product and the changes due in the next 6 months allowing us all to plan and manage what will be a significant change.

     

    Thanks and please keep it up, maybe we will see the other Office 365 product managers doing the same which will allowing us to improve the coming change and therefore improve adoption by being able to evangelise the future with an increase certainty.

     

    Thanks

     

    Steve