Microsoft

Skype for Business Online capabilities coming to Microsoft Teams

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At Microsoft Ignite conference last year, Microsoft had announced that it was planning to bring the capabilities of Skype for Business Online to Microsoft Teams. The company has now completed the roadmap to include the messaging, meeting and calling features of Skype for Business Online into Teams.

Microsoft said that over 200,000 businesses use Teams, and 70% of Teams users also use Skype for Business Online. Last month, the company announced the free version of Microsoft Teams which comes integrated with Office Online apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more.

With Skype for Business Online capabilities in Microsoft Teams, up to 250 people can participate in a meeting. The meeting features include federated meetings for hosting meetings across multiple organizations, meeting lobby to qualify dial-in caller before they join a meeting, support for dial-in fallback to enable users join a meeting even during network issues.

Team members can now converse in their native language with access to new messaging features like unified presence, federated chat, contacts, and in-line translation.

Talking about calling features, Microsoft said that Teams now offers boss and delegate support, call queues, auto-attendant, consultative transfer, do-not-disturb breakthrough, ability to forward a call to a group, out-of-office support, and Direct Routing to bring a user’s own telephone service to Teams.

Additionally, the tech giant has updated the Skype Room Systems to allow users join meetings in Teams. Microsoft Teams application is now also available for Surface Hub in the Microsoft Store. The new Teams Conferencing Gateway will allow users to use existing Skype for Business certified SIP-based phones with Teams.

Also coming to Teams is support for USB HID to enable customers answer, end calls, and control over mute and volume using USB peripherals.

Microsoft is working on adding the cloud video interop services to support Teams meetings with existing VTC systems. It is expected to be available later this year.

The company is helping the current users of Skype for Business Online migrate to Microsoft Teams using its self-serve guidance, upgrade tools in Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business Admin Center, which will available later this year.

Also read: SharePoint hub sites get significant updates ahead of Microsoft Ignite 2018

“Not every organization has dedicated IT resources to manage their transition to Teams. In order to assist these customers, we will begin offering them Microsoft-driven automated upgrades to Teams,” wrote James Skay, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Intelligent Communications Product Marketing Group, Microsoft, in a blog post.

“We will communicate directly with customers regarding their upgrade options through email and in the Office 365 Message Center.”

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