

In 2018, Microsoft boasted about the fact that Microsoft Teams is now at feature parity with Skype for Business Online–a very important milestone, as it means that organisations can comfortably switch from Skype to Teams without sacrificing features. Skype for Business Online will no longer be available and integration with third-party audio providers will cease. In July 2019, Microsoft officially announced the end-of-life for Skype for Business would be July 31, 2021. Below is a quick video showing a real-time meeting, triggered from within a team.When is Skype for Business Being Replaced by Microsoft Teams? The interface changes from blue to purple and a meeting is now hosted within the pane that contains all your team and one to one chat. Many meeting features will be like Skype for Business, making Teams adoption simple and intuitive. When you hit Meet Now, the screen will launch a pre-meeting screen like the one below. Within the team, users can also start a team meeting by hitting the Meet Now button. Users can share messages, files, emojis, GIFs, and stickers with other members of the specified team. You can see a “conversation” is occurring within the “General” group of the O365 Deployment “team”. Below is an example of multiple users chatting within a set team. Teams can be set up on a per department basis, per project, per customer or any basis desired.

This applies to both one to one messaging and team messaging.

However, unlike when you log into Skype for Business the morning, the chat will remain from the previous day, week, or month. Like in the screenshot above, the chat history is presented in a familiar style to Skype for Business. While Microsoft Teams introduces persistent chat. Chat logs were kept in Outlook or Exchange, but the conversation ended when the chat was deemed over or timed out. However, in Skype for Business, once a chat was closed or the working day was over, the chat was lost. Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business both enable real-time chat. The Difference between Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams
