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Use same presence as Skype for Business

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Angela Sze shared this idea  ·   ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
completed  ·  Warren responded  · 

Good news. The feature, Unified Presence (aka same presence as Skype for business) is rolling out.

The feature update has started rolling out to customers.
PLEASE NOTE: Not everyone will receive the update at the same time.

You can read more about the March releases on the Teams Blog – https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/What-s-new-in-Microsoft-Teams-April-update/ba-p/179801

Thank you very much for all your feedback.
-Warren

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537 comments

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  • Justyn Davidson commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Thank you for the update! I don't see anything about making any of the bug fixes with Presence as they relate to Teams (without S4B integration), which is where we will continue to be for the foreseeable future. No acknowledgement that these are even bugs indicates that they won't be addressed any time soon, rendering Teams basically unusable for a distributed organization. I really do appreciate the update; as a MS alum it's nice to know the roadmap is in place and has some timelines. Unfortunately it doesn't help with the viability of Teams as a collaboration solution for my company. We will need to start heading in a different direction (hopefully not Spark) but good to know that now rather than later.

  • Andy commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Ideally the status as well as the presence state should work the same as Skype for Business.
    We update skype status with what we are working on as we start new tickets and this functionality does not even seem to be in Teams.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Truthfully i hope you don't use the same presence as you used in SFB - 'presence' has been a big issue for us as a team moving from slack..

    My team works remotely primarily and when you're not using Teams it automatically sets their status to Away - which means if I want to as my team a question i've actually got no way of telling if i'm going to get a timely response or not and has actually stopped me rom posting the message i.e. I'll wait until they're online again. Which is exactly what i don't want.

    In slack presence is on/off primarily which acts as a flag to say "hey - I'm working now. I'm here if you need me" which mean i'm happy to post and I know i'll get a response today. Recently they introduced 'status' which can give some additional context.

    Personally i believe it's a mistake for a tool which is supposed to bring people together through digital collaboration to use 'automated' presence detection which relies on you being with in the app (which most people aren't).

  • MiiiAptyltd commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    With announcement at Ignite about Skype for Business being rolled into Teams I'm assuming this will just be a matter of time. Hopefully some of the quirky shortcomings of S4B can be smoothed out in future as it becomes part of Teams.

  • Jeff Sieben commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Slack is great, BUT one thing it lacks greatly is the concept of presence. I loved Skype/Lync for keeping sync with Outlook Availability through Office 365. That's an essential feature of Teams needed to compete with Slack.

    I was telling our Operations VP (140 employees here) about Teams, and Teams appears to have presence embedded (ie. Green for available, yellow for unavilable, red for busy), and it said she was available, but in fact here Outlook 365 calendar had meeting (and they're connected).

    Presence didn't show well to the VP.

    Big things make product essential.
    Small things make product amazing.

    ...keep pushing to get the big and small things right.

  • John Black commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    You have to take what was said at Ignite and process it through a sales/marketing filter. Having been on the other end of preparing for those kinds of events/announcements at a previous company, I can attest to the careful and sometimes overly-optimistic wordplay that goes on. "Interoperable" might mean "they can be installed at the same time and you can use them together" rather than "the two programs actually interact with each other.

  • Riley commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I'm confused. At Ignite Lori Wright said that the two clients currently are interoperable, with common presence, messaging and calling capabilities. That would suggest that the two clients already using a common presence, but that is not what we're seeing on our end. Can we expect this to be fixed soon?

  • alalalalalalala commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Apr 28, 2017

    Start off your weekend with good news: we’re working on this!

    still laughing about this response - don't get too cocky...

  • David B. commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This is extremely frustrating as I end up using S4B to see if someone is busy before I can go to Teams and chat with them. I've seen no improvement at all since starting to use Teams 6 months ago.

  • Matt Shafer commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    @Alex, that's fine. It's the same "behavior", IMO, that we're looking for.

    Consider this scenario: You have teams on another screen and are plugging away at something on your main screen and someone needs to get your attention for a quick question. The way this currently works is the other person will see you as away. The only way you appear online is if you're actively interacting with the Teams client. So now let's consider the very real possibility that you're a remote worker and your boss see's you as "idle" all the time. This can affect how they scrutinize your work among other things. You would think with the great presence that S4B has, Teams would get the same treatment since it's clearly going to replace S4B given your article

  • Justyn Davidson commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    S4B has the best Status/Presence format in its class. Integrating that same functionality needs to be an immediate priority. Without Presenting and On A Call there is a huge gap in collaboration usability. And of course the basic reliability of Presence on the desktop version needs to be addressed in concert.

  • Matt Shafer commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I'm with Gary on this. I understand priorities shift, but there must have been some work on this in the last 4 months? The pitch has been that Teams is where MS is putting its development resources. Since this is a top 10 suggestion, I would expect better movement on this. The real gripe is that users appear as away even when they're at their PC working actively.

  • Gary Evans commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    How in the world has 4 months passed and this has not rolled out? My office complains about the presence almost daily and I keep telling them "Microsoft is working on it." I've been telling them that for 4 months. Come on guys, what's the hold up? Remember the new Microsoft, iterative product releases? :)

  • Paul Youngberg commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Any update on this? I'm assuming it'll get full attention after Guest access launches, but I get questions about this frequently from my clients - there's lots of interest out there!

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