Skype for Business Online Being Retired in July 2021

So....the news we've been expecting for a long time has finally been announced - Skype for Business Online is being retired in July 2021.

Not a huge surprise, we all knew it would happen at some stage, but two years away should be long enough for any business using Skype for Business Online to be able to get their migration to Microsoft Teams planned and executed. If you want to know about the options for migrating to Microsoft Teams, the migration routes are explained here.

It's important to note though that Skype for Business Server (the on-premises version) is not affected by this announcement.

What else has been announced?

There are some other snippets in the Microsoft announcement:

  • Dynamic E911: this is a big deal for US-based organisations, and is an improvement over what is currently offered within Skype Online. In the US, if you call the emergency services, your call needs to be routed to one of over 6,000 Public Safety Answering Points, or PSAPs, depending on where you are. Right now, this can be configured with Microsoft Teams using Calling Plan, but only in a static manner, that is, your call will be routed to a particular PSAP based on your configured location for your DID number. So if your configured location is New York but you're on a work trip to California, your call will still be routed to New York. With dynamic E911, Teams will be able to work out where you are located and route the call correctly. This is now promised for the end of 2019.
  • Retention periods down to 1 day: again, for some customers, this is a Big Deal. Some customers' legal departments do not want yet another place where data can be stored which needs to be included in any Discovery request. It's a big issue because Skype for Business doesn't really store 'chat' data (it's just sent from one client to the other), so there never was anything to 'Discover' (it was just stored on each client, and you could easily configure the client not to keep chat data). Again, this is promised for the end of 2019.
  • Teams to Skype Consumer interop: possibly something of an edge case, but clearly enough customers made enough noise to Microsoft that they have now promised to deliver this by first quarter 2020.
  • Contact Centre Integration and Compliance recording: this isn't a new announcement as it was actually announced earlier this month. There's no specific timeframe for this as yet, however.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Microsoft Whiteboard and Teams

Image
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
Read more

Skype to Teams - which route?

Image
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'
Read more

Microsoft Licensing for Small Businesses

Image
The other week, I was looking into using Teams as a phone system for a potential small business customer - and spotted a major problem. But it's not a technical one, it's a licensing (or commercial) one: if you're licensed with one of the Small Business Plans (for less than 300 users), you cannot add a Phone System licence. To be able to add a Phone System licence, you need to have at least an 'E3' licence, which really surprised me. I spent a little while trying to tabulate the relevant features of a number of different licence plans, and produced this table to help try to compare and understand the options. Some points: I've not listed every single product and feature, just what I thought the ones which would be most relevant to a small business customer. I've translated the 'features' into actual 'products' to make it easier for techies to understand. All pricing is standard, with no discounts applied, as of July 2019 in GBP
Read more