Using Teams to Replace Skype

[Mike Dumka]

Hi There, 

I am having trouble figuring out how to use Teams as my only client and shut down Skype. I know that if I do not have Skype running I will get the notifications in Teams. But I only want 1 client. 

So my first big question is how do I send a message to a Skype user from Teams?

Thanks

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Mike. You'll still need Skype (for Business) for online meetings and calls with people outside your organization. You can hold a meeting within your org using Microsoft Teams, but attendees will need to be members of the team. Teams meetings have a limit of 80 attendees. You can share your screen in a Teams meeting. But if your org is in the practice of recording meetings, this feature isn't available in Teams yet. 

As for Skype for Business Interop

• Interoperability between Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business is currently available for peer to peer (P2P) instant messaging only.
• For a Microsoft Teams user to send an IM to a Skype for Business user, the Microsoft Teams user must be enabled with their account homed in Skype for Business Online.
• Incoming Skype for Business messages can be responded to on the Microsoft Teams client

- "Plan, Deliver and Operate Microsoft Teams" from the Planning Workshop PowerPoint at https://www.successwithteams.com/#Download.

[#3]

And by the way, Teams is not aimed to replace Skype for Business or any other collaboration tool in the Office 365 ecosystem...the scenario you have just described is a good example. Teams is not designed as an IM solution to work with both organizational and not organizational users

[#4]

That's right. The IM / Calls / Meetings are for enriching the real-time collaboration within the Team. Skype extends beyond the Team.

[#5]

Hmm, I'm not so sure anymore, after seeing this in my Office 365 tenant:

[#6]

This is going to confuse lots of folks! Is this really just an advert for Microsoft Teams and a nudge for those users to check out Teams, or something else? Either way, it seems poorly worded and out of place.

[#7]

We've also seen this? Does anyone know if it's reversable?

As I understand Teams isn't a replacement for Skype so this feels wrong.

/Thomas

[#8]

Same for us (French users) 
A bit confusing as we have some users fully online and for whom we can't let them without Skype IM...

Answer awaited with a huge restlessness...

[#9]

Nico, I found your article helpful with more background info - Office 365 Mail pushing Microsoft Teams.  Sounds like this is (was?) just a temporary glitch but we can read more into if want to ;)

[#10]

I agree - I am all for MS Teams. We love it, but this was an unwelcome surprise on many levels. MS owes its customers an explanation QUICKLY.

[#11]

We have the same issue (large manufacturing MNC).

[#12]

Microsoft can't really do this until they have external guest access and federation working for Teams. My users of Skype Online (through OWA) cannot contact externals... It is impacting my Service Desk. 

UPDATE: Microsoft recognized this was a little mistake. It is fixed.

[#13]

I agree with the frustration. This cannot be done this way, i haven't really understood that this was going to happen and i don't see any information about this change. 

It's creating a lot of confusion since we have disabled teams up until we can figure out how that space can interact (if) with our way of working which now consists of mainly yammer for social collaboration. Yes, I understand the advantages of teams but we are trying to avoid too much confusion too early.

Microsoft, this is extremely unfortunate and badly implemented/informed.

[#14]

This story got picked up by Mary Jo Foley - Microsoft may be repositioning some (or all) of Skype for Business as Teams pointing to this very thread, that answers some of the questions many of us had.

"A number of Office 365 users received a big surprise today when trying to log onto Skype for Business."

[#15]

Now confirmed -

"We're upgrading Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams. This will take us some time to complete. For now, this is an opt-in experience, as we continue to work on enhancing the Microsoft Teams experience."

[#16]

I've got that message in the Admin center too but no other sign of it, and hope this is one of their crazy ideas that doesn't come to pass!?!

[#17]

It's a pity the additional information link goes nowhere.

[#18]

For testing purposes, we have multiple O365 tenants.  This message appeared in all of them today.  Within an hour, all of the messages were gone.  Oooops.  

[#19]

Same for us.

[#20]

Today, we have another surprise. You can add external guest users - but it doesn't work after you add them.

The external guest gets an email saying they've been added, but when they try to get in, it fails...

[#21]

I am getting some private messages basically implying people don't believe me when I say external access is half-turned-on :)

Screenshots.

UPDATE: Microsoft Product Group contacted me on this. It was a small mistake. It only impacts users that were in Azure AD already, not "new" external guest users. It still fails, but it seems this will be fixed soon.

[#22]

@Josh SullinsTeams is built on groups, groups allow guest access, that's what you are seeing and has been there since the start. It's useful to know that when uploading a file using Teams that this might be seen by a guest accessing SharePoint.

Guest access to Teams conversation is coming, it's been talked about on the roadmap for a long time, and I'm sure we'll get all the details about it at Ignite.

[#23]

You are right @Steven Collier, but this morning we got a message in all our Teams based on O365 Groups that already had externals in them, that the externals were added in the Team. So, I think something happened today, maybe it was possible before, and it is a little bug, but the message was an issue.

Again, MS PG contacted me (appreciated) and I know it will be addressed.

[#24]

You are right @Steven Collier, but this morning we got a message in all our Teams based on O365 Groups that already had externals in them, that the externals were added in the Team. So, I think something happened today, maybe it was possible before, and it is a little bug, but the message was an issue.

Again, MS PG contacted me (appreciated) and I know it will be addressed.

[#25]

Yes, I have seen this in a couple of tenants so it seems Microsoft is already rolling out something...I was worried about the fact that external users had already access to my Teams, but I checked that's not the case...I hope they release both private channels and external guests support at the same time or at least provide granular controls for guests users at the Team Level

[#26]

What is the most appropriate response now that it has been announced the teams will "take over" for S4B? I heard that we will be setting up and taking phone calls using Skype but am not sure where info is for the path forward. I also read that there will be the ability to call in via regular phone (without needing special PBX PSTN add-ons). Any news?

[#27]

Well worth checking the FAQ, along with the other resources, if you haven't seen it yet.  It mentions, amongst other things, Inbound and outbound calls to PSTN numbers, as well as basic calling features (hold, call transfer, speed dial, voicemail) are to be added plus support for USB & IP phone hardware.  Also, audio conferencing is being added to Microsoft Teams.  There is a roadmap update due in October for Teams, that might add some further clarity.

[#28]

Please , Do not hold your breath waiting on clear details. I think the automatic enabling caught a lot of Admins by surprise. I have turned off Teams until we can determine how the interaction with Groups, SharePoint, OneDrive are securely managed. We already had lots of problems with people creating custom share invitations breaking our SharePoint security.

[#29]

I am following and advising customer UC and/or Microsoft since the OCS days.

For me Skype is going from a majority of 1-1 communications with easy escalations to a group. Now there is teams which is focussed on (larger) groups.

I know there is a roadmap to take all Skype online functionalities towards teams, which will take plus one year and not even the more advance communications will be included.

I am afraid of the following: items not working anymore between Teams and Skype for Business (federation, videoconferencing, desktopsharing, file transfer etc). A lot of investment need to be made into adoption of a new client.

Less support of Skype for Business 2019. If i look at the roadmap announcement at Ignite, only items i see is removal of silverlight and some connection to O365 dashboards. I am just not getting why trying to port a 13 years product towards something completely new (1year). Too difficult to manage Skype Online??

I know there is room for team communications. Funny part is that persistant chat never took off on Lync 2010/2013 and Skype. It was supposed to be used in the financial area, but my last customer was an international bank and they did not use it.  

If I look at my majority of clients with 5000+ users they should stay on Skype for Business On-premise or actually in most of the cases still in the proces of migrating away from the old PBX-es, Analogue connections, PZI integrations, Video integrations, Contact Center integration, Voice recording etc. All those items are already difficult for Skype On-Premise, impossible for people going to the Cloud. Why even consider Hybrids. So Microsoft is focusing on their Cloud-First initiative because it's in their benefit, I see little benefit for the customers (note: just the Skype for Business workload, the rest is has a better business case).

In the meantime Microsoft should deliver on their cloud roadmap and also fully invest in the On-Premise product. Otherwise there will be an opportunity again for Cisco, Avaya, Mitel etc. to take over again in the UC space. Cisco has already passed Microsoft in the Gartner MQ for UC.

[#30]

It seems we have nothing to use right now. I cant even use Skype?? There's no way to setup video calls in teams? All of the people I work with have their own emails outside of the organization. I need to have meetings with people outside of the organization. I hope Microsoft's Teams becomes Skype or a "GoToMeeting" service for anyone (outside organization or in)!

[#31]

Joseph, this is an old thread, Teams now supports both guests and people joining individual meetings who are anonymous. If you've turned on the ability to use Teams for meetings you can create a meeting in a channel, or schedule one through outlook.

Your guests can join using Edge for a full video experience, Chrome for audio and screen only, or install the Teams desktop app on Mac or PC for full experience (no need to log in for he anonymous join to work).

If you invite them to your channel they can log in using their email as a Microsoft Account, then join your chats, file sharing and meetings as well.

[#32]

We are using both Skype and Teams, I have had no issues with Teams , even with conferencing both audio and video. Most of these are with external people. I have Teams set up for various projects and include the third parties in them so everybody is kept up to date and have to say, the video conference part is far superior than any I had used before. Even the mix of some video and some audio(usually because they have poor internet connection) works very well

[#33]

Just picking up on this thread.

I too want to shutdown the use of Skype For Business in my organisation and move to Teams exclusively.

However, during testing I have not been able to get the SFB client to join a meeting organised by a MS Teams user and vice versa.

At the backend, the I set co-existence to Islands mode but I still have no joy.

By the way, with OWA, are there plans to update the SFB icon with the Teams one at some point?

[#34]

You must use Skype to join Skype Meetings and Teams to join Teams Meetings. With Islands mode the two solutions run totally independent. When you go Teams only mode the interop improves, but not for Meetings.

For us, we will move the org to Teams only and keep the Skype client on the PC just to join meetings that were created in Skype (all our execs have their meetings planned 3-15 months in advance...). At the end of 2019 we will remove Skype from the PC.

[#35]

Hi Josh,

I really appreciate the response. 

Another reason I want to move off SFB is that the client does not play well with Office 2013 installed, hence the pure Teams route.

I did open a ticket with MS, but they advised that there would be no issues using a disparite client in a meeting but obviously this does not work.

Sounds like there is no getting out of using SFB when the organiser has instigated it in this format.

[#36]

It is a challenging situation. We are using Skype in conjunction with Office 2010. It is not an ideal situation.

I have asked Microsoft for a feature that lets a user CONVERT their Skype meetings into Teams Meetings when they are upgraded to Teams Only.

[#37]

Right, one more thing.

For your Office 2010 client PCs, did you end up using the Basic SFB or 2016 SFB client?

[#38]

HI,

We are already in the process to move Lync 2013 on premise users to Skype for business online.

Now the question is that can i just move the users to SFB online first from on premise then i can move them to Teams later on.What would be the good approach?as i can already see teams and Skype for business are together in O365 Admin center.

[#39]

Not trying to be snarky, but someone might want to inform Microsoft about this. From their documentation:

"As an existing Skype for Business customer, you’re invited to upgrade to Microsoft Teams, to experience this full suite of communication and collaboration capabilities in a single client experience."

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/journey-skypeforbusiness-teams

(Jul. 15, 2018)

[#40]

Not sure if this will be relevant at this stage but we have built a Microsoft-certified Cloud Connector that delivers voice services for Teams calling directly to the O365 Tenant. Our geo-redundant solution also completes the missing PBX and legacy feature-set, provides full integration capabilities to Call/Contact Centers and CRMs and handles extension dialing, DID /TF number porting, as we are a Tier1 Cloud UC carrier. Our cloud dial-plan allows for legacy PBX or Skype4B to Teams extension dialing during migration as well.

[#41]

Hi:

I am piloting Microsoft 365 and need to get voice figured out. I just attended the local Technical Summit at which I was informed that voice is already in teams as long as you have a Microsoft dialing plan. It looks like this is maybe true IF you are a enterprise user; I am not. I would rather go directly to Teams but there seems to be little if any step by step documentation on this so given that you have some services/solutions in this area maybe you could provide some insights.

[#42]

Chris,

Sorry, I am super embarrassed I didn't see your response!

Your question leads me to believe you already suspect my answer ;) We already owned Office 2010, so financially it didn't make sense to provide E3 to tens of thousands of information workers with dedicated PCs. So, we started with E1, and only upgrade to E3 as we systematically upgrade users to Win10, which we pair with O365 ProPlus, shifting users with dedicated PCs to M365 E3.

As a result, for our Win7 users, the only S4B client available is.... S4B Basic. Let me tell you, this Basic client has some serious limitations - no support for calendar delegation!

Josh

[#43]

Thanks for the clarification, but you are assuming that a 'Team' of people is only a subset of an organization.  I am a sole trader working in a very collaborative environment so my 'teams' always consist of people across organizations.  Statements like MS Teams is for 'within the team' and skype is for 'beyond the team' shows you have a blinkered view of how people work.

[#44]

@TedTame Hi

This message is directed at this thread in general - apologies in advance if I'm posting in the wrong place but I'm at my wits' end.

I'm an individual S4B user trying to make video calls + screenshare with another, bigger organisation that I'm subcontracting for. I can't call them, but they can call me. I also keep getting pushed onto Microsoft Teams, which I *can* call them on, but *can't* use to screenshare with. When I open up S4B I get a very limited interface and it seems like a I can't do much at all. I also get a tiny message down the bottom right saying "S4B and Exchange aren't making a connection right now". Other piece of information is that I am on GSuite using 3rd party mail app (not Outlook), which might or might not come into play.

Before last week I had no idea Skype for Business was a separate entity to Skype so this shows how new I am to this. I feel like I've gone down a rabbit hole trying to fix the issue.

I have an Office 365 Business Essentials license - as far as I understand (it's super hard to tell from their pricing plan structure) this gives me access to S4B.

Microsoft? Microhard more like.

Any help from people who know more than I do would be appreciated!

John

[#45]

---

@John_Baker wrote:

@TedTame Hi

This message is directed at this thread in general - apologies in advance if I'm posting in the wrong place but I'm at my wits' end.

I'm an individual S4B user trying to make video calls + screenshare with another, bigger organisation that I'm subcontracting for. I can't call them, but they can call me. I also keep getting pushed onto Microsoft Teams, which I *can* call them on, but *can't* use to screenshare with. When I open up S4B I get a very limited interface and it seems like a I can't do much at all. I also get a tiny message down the bottom right saying "S4B and Exchange aren't making a connection right now". Other piece of information is that I am on GSuite using 3rd party mail app (not Outlook), which might or might not come into play.

Before last week I had no idea Skype for Business was a separate entity to Skype so this shows how new I am to this. I feel like I've gone down a rabbit hole trying to fix the issue.

I have an Office 365 Business Essentials license - as far as I understand (it's super hard to tell from their pricing plan structure) this gives me access to S4B.

Microsoft? Microhard more like.

Any help from people who know more than I do would be appreciated!

John

---

@John_Baker 

Hi John,

Support engineer from SFB and Teams team.

I think you are facing more than one issue when you are using Skype for business. Here are some information that might be useful for you:

1.Skype for Business users can chat one-on-one with Teams users.

2. Skype for Business users can make one-on-one voice and video calls to Teams users, and vice versa.

Some features aren’t available for the interop chat and interop calling experience between Teams and Skype for Business:

• Markdown, rich text, and the full emoticon set aren’t supported either from Teams or Skype for Business. Other native features of the compose box in Teams chats aren’t supported.
• Screen sharing (desktop or app sharing) between Teams and Skype for Business isn’t supported.
• Group chats (multiple-party conversations) in Teams can only include participants who are using Teams.
• Multiple-party IM conversations (group chats) in Skype for Business can only include participants who are using Skype for Business.
• Escalating an ongoing peer-to-peer voice or video call to a multiple-party call involving both Teams and Skype for Business users isn’t supported.
• File transfer for two-party chats, or file attachment in group chats, from Teams to Skype for Business—and vice versa—aren’t supported.
• There is no interoperability with Skype for Business Persistent Chat.

For all these limitations (except for Persistent Chat), one possible workaround is for one user to start a meeting and invite the other user to join it. This workaround is the basis for interop escalation.

See detailed info here.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-and-skypeforbusiness-coexistence-and-interoper...

[#46]

Follow my last post, if you face anything that we say support, it means that something is not properly configured or network issue. We need to do further investigation.

[#47]

I'm tagging on this thread as I see many people have answered. Still not quite sure of the way forward.  I just finished rolling out Skype For Business to my organization in late 2018.  We have roughly 1500 users on board. My company has 77000 O365 licenses and we use S4B hosted.  I've been hearing from my account rep that Teams is the new product and my manager has installed it.  In testing, I see it has a chat functionality like Skype as well as collaboration.  What I cannot figure out are:

1. If I create a "teams" meeting in Outlook, will staff who don't have Teams installed be able to join?

2. Can I stop using S4B for IM and start using Teams? Will my users who don't have Teams yet be able to send/receive my chats? 

3. Will I see their chats?

4. We are very mobile. Will I need both S4B and Teams running on my phone to get messages and attend meetings?

[#48]

@PerfectReign 

1. You can join a Teams meeting using the Teams app or Chrome/Edge Browsers. 

2. Teams supports interop to Skype for business Online, it has limitations as described (badly) here, however if your SfB is 'hosted' it will depend whether that is hybrid-connected to Skype for business Online. Simple answer for now would be that you'll have a different address for online.

3. As 2.

4. Probably until you can migrate to Teams.

[#49]

That helps clear things up. So, the teams and S4B user databases are separate?

[#50]

@PerfectReign @Steven Collier 

Skype for Business Online is retiring

How does this affect everything as there still in my eyes is no clear way to replace skype for business yet it is end of life!