Skype integration (Consumer Federation)
It would be nice to integrate public Skype (not Skype for Business) into Teams. I am able to chat with Skype for business users within my organization but when working with external clients I still have to go back to public Skype. If I could even just simply chat and call with Skype users as well that would allow me to use Teams as my sole communication platform.
Matt
shared this idea
Admins can now enable their tenant to allow Teams users to chat with and call Skype users by using their email address and vice versa.
More details here: https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/teams-skype-interop for more details
Enjoy!
641 comments
Comments are closed-
Brian Craigie
commented
As an Admin who has just discovered that the Skype for Business has been "Upgraded" to Teams for the whole organization (don't know how it happened, and now no way back) this has just become a nightmare. Now all the users are asking why they can't contact ordinary Skype users or even Skype for Business users any more. What do I tell them? They all need to use personal skype? What an idiotic decision by Microsoft. They have just opened up the market to other providers and shot themselves in the foot. :-(
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Bob Cooper
commented
There's nothing like giving your customers what they want - and this is nothing like giving customers what they want.
RIP Skype - Google Hangouts it is then... -
Michael Coyle
commented
Do we know why this was declined? I can't understand the logic behind this. One of the reasons that Skype For Business was easily adopted was the people were used to using the consumer client. Give an example here on a Recruitment company and interviewing or contacting candidates. Most candidates have a consumer account for Skype. They can call and share video and conduct an interview. With SFB being retired soon is Skype consumer getting retired?Yes I know you can setup a Team meeting and invite the person but we should not be removing functionality that is already in place.
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Kasey Tomasek
commented
For Teams to truly be an appropriately built tool, Microsoft needs to cut out the noise. Skype, Skype for Business, and Teams should all have cross-connectivity functionality. Be it chat, voice, video - it's simply stupid to segment these into their own isolated buckets preventing useful interaction with contacts.
In our use-case, we're security consultants often collaborating with dev teams, ops, finance, etc. in our contractors environments... we meet with clients using S4B, and have many contacts still running legacy Skype (typically these are clients.)
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Steven Taylor
commented
What an own goal, this is crazy. It was one of my favourite features and now it’s not available. Like many have said before to have a single communication hub is a key selling point and the reason why so many have adopted. Can you please advise why you have removed this functionality.
Not only is this used for contacting other businesses but also our customers who don’t have access to S4B. -
Hubert Blanchard
commented
This is indead very unconvenient to chat with suppliers or make candidate interviews with a private account when you have a professional one. I recommand all unhappy users to test https://appear.in/
It is so easy ;-) And maybe this competition will make Microsoft move ! -
Sharon Wirz
commented
this desicion, not to integrate free Skype would be an epic fail. Once more Microsoft you should listen to your customers and dont do bad decisions like killing Windows Phone, "One Note Desktop" or now Teams.. :(
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Anonymous
commented
This is not a nice to have. It's a must for Business.. Full integration is required. Listen to your Customers and deliver please
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David
commented
I am guessing engineering has declined this since as a whole MS Sales teams still use Skype for Business and haven't noticed they can't contact small businesses or individual contractors directly in Teams.
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Sebastian Hähnel
commented
Right now im working on a concept paper for a customer. Now reading that Skype consumer interop is not supported in teams is a real bummer.
The customer is willing to migrate his whole PBX to Teams. But he heavily depends on Skype consumer.
I know this is the reason the customer will choose to Stay on Skype for Business (hybrid) and legacy PBX because of that. Potetial Loss of 4500 Phone System Subscriptions for MS.Why do you always kill good ripe products in favor of beta versions?
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Anonymous
commented
Hi, Microsoft. Please suggest how to explain this to company management? We need at least a workaround how to communicate with Skype users.
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Anonymous
commented
I am curious why this was declined. The idea was supposed to be for Teams to offer everything Skype for Business did and more, but this is a significant loss.
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Orestis Karras
commented
We need to communicate outside organization, with plain Skype users.
So, that feature must be added ASAP to Teams, otherwise get back Skype for business.
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Pankaj Singh Bundel
commented
This is really bad experience. Our client communication is now dependent on skype instead of Skype for business. We not using team just because of this
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Rick Beemsterboer
commented
The stupid things is that with Skype consumer our employees cannot register new accounts anymore since it's MSA accounts only nowdays! MS Tenant/Office365 users just can't sign up with their corporate email adres. New employees are just stuck to talk to our customers.
This really leave us/Office365 users completely in Limbo!
Should the whole world upgrade to Skype for Business/Teams overnight or so!?It's really unacceptable this situation they left us with. the request should at least be in the backlog!
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Matt S
commented
Agree. It appears Google is becoming the better place to doing all the work. Skype and integration with teams would have captured share here.
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Anonymous
commented
Then Teams is even less useful as Skype for Business. We have a lot of contact with people around the world that uses Skype, without communication from Teams we can't switch.
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Rick Beemsterboer
commented
With what reason was it declined?
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Dan M
commented
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Anonymous
commented
Please reinstate this feature, if S4B can do this, why not Teams? Skype Consumer is widely used in business. Can't move users from Consumer to Teams subscription if they suddenly loose all their external contacts! Multiple messengers are inconvenient for most.