Technology Musings

Federation was always a really useful feature of Lync, then Skype for Business and now Teams - the ability to see presence and be able to chat and call a contact outside of your business. In fact, for quite some years now, the vast majority of people I work with are using Skype for Business (and now Teams) and I very, very rarely get an actual work phone call. If you've got used to having features such as emoji, GIFs, stickers and rich text in your internal Teams chats, you'll be glad to hear that Microsoft have announced that native Teams federation is coming soon. Ever since Teams was originally launched, federation has been working via the original Skype for Business Online federation gateway, and hence subject to it's limitations, but Microsoft always said that they intended to move to a native Teams federation gateway in due course. You'll be able to tell when it's live when you see the additional feature buttons just below the new message window. But as...

If you've tried to use the preview Whiteboard in Teams , you might have been a bit frustrated by its limitations. Currently, you can 'ink' - but that's about it. If your handwriting (with a mouse, anyway....) is as bad as mine, that's not great if you want to put text on your whiteboard. There also doesn't appear to be a way, from Teams, to export your creation. But there is a (relatively) easy workaround to get more functionality, it is actually documented in the Microsoft article Use Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams . Step 1 - install the Windows 10 Microsoft Whiteboard app from the Microsoft Store. Step 2 - Once it's installed, run the Whiteboard app and sign in with your Office 365 credentials, then close Whiteboard. Step 3 - Start your Teams meeting, click on the Share button and share a whiteboard (sometimes that menu item isn't immediately visible - scroll to the far right). Step 4 - Open the Windows 10 Whiteboard app, and you'll ...

If you're currently using Skype for Business in your organisation, you have almost certainly started to think about how you might start to implement Microsoft Teams, and indeed, eventually, migrate fully to Teams. The question is, what's the best approach? Inevitably, there is no one answer, as every organisation is different. Microsoft's own guidance is here , and continues to evolve as they work with more and more organisations. Having worked with a customer on this topic recently, I've tried to put down some of the pros and cons of each approach. Straight-to-Teams This is my own name for this approach, and it's not covered in the Microsoft guidance, but I've included it for completeness. Pro No messing about with coexistence - users go straight from Skype for Business one day, to using Teams the next. Cons Large change brings the potential for technical risks. Users have to get used to a lot of change all at once. Realistically, you'...

A question I'm often asked by customers moving from Skype for Business to Teams is: will my existing headsets and other peripherals work with Teams? The simple answer is Yes - any Skype for Business certified device will also work with Teams, but there is some potential for confusion around call controls (call answer/hang-up, and mute buttons). This article lists some specific devices for which call controls don't work, but they're mostly fairly old devices, and in fact there are devices which have gradually disappeared from the list over the past few months as this article has been updated (so, if things don't seem to work, try a firmware update on your device): However, what causes the most confusion is that if - as many people are - you're running Skype for Business and Teams side-by-side, with Teams in Islands mode, then the call controls will only  work with Skype for Business. This means that as far as most people are concerned, the call controls...