Strategy for SfB Deployment To 25 Diverse Users

[Wayne Guenther]

I hope the questions below are appropriate for this forum; let me know if I need to take them elsewhere.

I'm the defacto Global Admin of a small nonprofit Office 365 E1 environment. Only a handful of our staff and none of our board have ever logged into the O365 portal; most domain email addresses are forwarding to personal and institutional addresses (Gmail,Outlook.com, .edu, etc.).

That is all changing; we are creating Groups for the board, for the staff and for committees. The 1st priority after getting everyone logged in is setting up Skype for Business. The user demographics include millenials up to octagenarians. I'm striving to "keep it simple." Going in, I want to provide dial-in PSTN Conferencing for the least technologically inclined and for those traveling without a computer.

Question 1

I've already purchased two E3 licenses plus two PSTN Conferencing licenses. Do I assume correctly that I'll have to buy those two licenses and assign them to every host/convenor of a SfB meeting to make dial-in an option? Problem is, I have a high ratio of potential hosts-to-users, 10:25.

Question 2

With SfB as 1st priority and upon 1st log-in to the portal, I plan to have everyone "Install Software" and then SfB, hoping that won't challenge the older users. If I schedule an SfB meeting, and forwarding is active for a user, do I assume correctly that the invitation will get forwarded to the user's forwarding address of record and the connection options will still be functional from the forwarded address?

Question 3

Assuming the user in Question 2 above receives the SfB meeting invitation as forwarded by Office 365, and the user has no Skype and did not install SfB from the portal, will the SfB Web App option be present, executable and functional in Windows 7 & up, and Mac OS 10.12 & up?

Question 4

If installation of SfB on a computer becomes problematic, and we want to avoid Dial-in Conferencing, it appears that the SfB apps for the iPad and Android tablets get high reviews. Is that the general experience and a good alternative? (Many of our users have such tablets.)

Question 5

Any other suggestions or caveats regarding this roll-out given the above?

Thanks!

Wayne

[#2]

Hi Wayne.

I'll try to answer your questions here.

Answer 1

Sort of correct. You'll need to assign the licenses to all users that need to organize (sends the invitation) a Skype meeting with PSTN conferencing available, those users doesn't have to actually participate in the meeting, so the task can be delegated.

Answer 2

Correct, the join options is available.

Answer 3

The user can join using the Skype Web App and signin with the Office 365 account without using the Skype for Business client.

The Skype web plugin works in the following browsers:

On Windows desktop: Internet Explorer 9 and higher, Firefox and Chrome.

On Mac OS: Safari, Firefox and Chrome.

If you use several internet browsers on your computer, you only need to install the Skype web plugin for one and it will be available for other supported browsers as well. If your browser doesn’t support add-ons, or you can't install the web plugin for any reason, you can still send instant messages to your Skype contacts using Skype for Web. However, the Skype voice and video call options won’t be available.

The Skype web plugin is not supported on Windows RT, Linux and Chromebooks.

(Source: https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA12316/what-is-the-skype-web-plugin-and-how-do-i-install-it)

Answer 4

The client on tablets (iOS, Android and Windows) works quite fine for a meeting participant, but you cannot use in-meeting presenter controls from the mobile client and some sharing capabilities are not available, so this is not a full-featured alternative (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn951412.aspx).

Answer 5

Most likely, but that depends on AMO your infrastucture.

Hope this helps you.

/Kenneth ML

[#3]

Kenneth,

It sure does help me. Many thanks for your response and the associated URLs. I may be back with additional issues as I roll SfB out to my small organization.

All the best,

Wayne