Skype for Business and Teams Your Questions Answered

Q. What is for Business and what does it do? A. (SfB) is a unified communications (UC) solution that integrates common channels of business communication and online meetings, including (IM), presence, voice over IP (VoIP), voicemail, file transfers, video conferencing, web conferencing, polling, whiteboards and email.

Q. What is Microsoft Team and what does it do? A. Microsoft (MS) Teams is cloud-based collaboration software that has similar capabilities to Skype for Business and it lets you host audio, video, and web conferences with anyone inside or outside your organisation. Teams allows more collaboration and is tightly integrated with MS Office and SharePoint. Skype for Business is being replaced by Teams.

Q. What’s the difference between the two? A. A comparison of the features in both Skype for Business and Teams is provided at the end of this document.

Q. I want to create a virtual meeting. How do I this and invite people to join me? A. You can do this very easily using Skype for Business. Step-by-step instructions for this are included later in this document.

Q. Can people external to South Ayrshire Council join in with a meeting I’ve created? A. Yes, there are no restrictions on who can join a meeting. As long as you have the persons email address then you can send them a meeting invite. See instructions later in this document about how you can add attendees to your meeting.

Q. What happens if they don’t have Skype for Business? Can they still join the meeting? A. Yes. When they click on the link to Join Skype Meeting in the meeting invitation it will open a browser window and connect through the Skype for Business Web App.

This opens automatically to connect you to the meeting and the user will be able to join using audio and/or video.

Q. One of the attendees isn’t going to have access to a computer. Can they still join the meeting? A. Yes. If they’re on the road, or don’t have access to a computer, then they can just call into the meeting with a phone. Make sure they grab the conference numbers and IDs from the meeting request before the meeting. What about the PIN? They only need a PIN if they are calling into the meeting as the presenter from a public or mobile phone, or if the meeting is set with high security. Otherwise they don’t need a PIN, just dial in and wait to get connected. Q. Are there any issues if an attendee only has ? A. No. If you have scheduled Skype for Business meeting with someone who only has Teams then they will still be able to click on the Join Skype Meeting link. This will open a web browser that allows them to join the meeting with Skype for Business web application in exactly the same way someone that doesn’t have Skype for Business would connect.

Q. Staff in an external organisation have said they are not allowed to use Skype for Business. Is this true? A. We can’t comment on the individual policies of every organisation. That said it is unlikely that Skype for Business will be blocked by anyone. Many public and private organisations are still actively using Skype and denying its use would stop any collaboration opportunities between organisations. What is more likely is that staff in the external organisation have been asked to stop using it to organise their own meetings, not to take part in other meetings. Many organisations adopting a new technology like Teams face the challenge of changing behaviours and stopping staff using the old solution. It might be that this stop message has been interpreted as no Skype ever rather than no Skype for your own meetings. There have been many collaborative virtual meetings (including with all three Ayrshire’s and others across the wider government community) over the lockdown period arranged using both Skype and Teams and the evidence is that all are able to take part, irrespective of the technology.

Q. I’ve been sent an invite to a meeting that’s using Microsoft Teams. Can I join it OK and if I can, how do I do it? A. Yes, there is nothing to stop you joining in and participating in a Teams meeting you have been invited to. You can join a Teams meetings anytime, anywhere, from any device. All you need to join a Teams meeting is a link.

Select Join Microsoft Teams Meeting in your meeting invite to be taken to a page where you can choose to either join on the web or download the desktop app. Unless ICT have set up the desktop app for you then simply select join on the web. If you don’t have a Teams account and the organiser has allowed it, you may have the option to enter your name to join the meeting as a guest. Then, depending on the organiser’s settings, you may join the meeting right away or go to the lobby where people in the meeting can admit you.

Q. Why haven’t South Ayrshire Council rolled out Teams? A. Late last year South Ayrshire Council embarked on an 18 month project to introduce , and with it Teams, to South Ayrshire. Work to-date has focussed on the initial technical and Discovery work and the project is being delivered with the support of an Implementation Partner, Sword IT. The project status at the time of lockdown was such that a move to Teams, while achievable, would have created significant additional work and would not have been as effective as planned. It was therefore decided that Skype for Business would continue to be used in the interim while the migration to Teams is carried out. Skype for Business continues to meet most if not all of the immediate business requirements of the organisation during these unprecedented times.

Arranging a Skype for Business meeting Preparing the invite Open your Outlook client then your Calendar and click on one of the icons below. If you PC has been updated then you will have Skype for Business and you simply click the New Skype Meeting button. If you are still on Lync 2010, use the New Online meeting icon.

This will automatically add the following to the bottom of your meeting invite.

Adding invitees Internal People Select ‘To’, find your invitees (one at a time) by typing in their surname in the top box. Choose the correct name from the list and when they are highlighted in blue click on ‘Required’ or ‘Optional’. Click on ‘Ok’ when you have added all internal people. External People In the ‘To’ box where your list of internal invitees is, add a semi-colon after the last name and type in any external email addresses followed by a semi-colon between all external email addresses. See example below with a mix of internal and external people.

Subject and attachments Add a Meeting ‘Subject’ to the invite, please make this clear what the meeting is about. You can also add documents to the invite by choosing ‘Insert’ and ‘Attach File’.

Adding a date and time Select your chosen date and time or use the Scheduling Assistant to find free time for internal people. Click ‘Send’ to send the meeting invite to all of your invitees. This then saves your calendar entry in your calendar.

Require more help to get started? A guide on how to use and get the most out of Skype for Business is available on the Core.

Comparison of Skype for Business versus Teams While the organisation is committed to a move to Microsoft 365 and Teams, the current communications platform, Skype for Business, is available and capable of many of the features found in teams. The following table shows the comparison between the two.

Features

Requires the Skype for Business client Join seemlessly via a browser without or the installation of a browser plugin Invitations and access a plugin, even for participants without before joining a meeting Teams Yes Chat (instant messaging) Yes No Persistent instant messaging Yes Yes Voice calling Yes Yes Video calling Yes Yes Instant messaging in video call Yes Yes – up to 249 users Group calls (voice/video) Yes - unlimited High quality audio and video. Video High quality and more resilient video can be susceptible to stutter or Video quality given the same network conditions freezing on poor network connections Yes Recording Yes Yes Screen sharing Yes Yes Meetings Yes Yes File transfer Yes No File access Yes No Channels Yes Yes – from Outlook Schedule meetings Yes – from Outlook or Teams client No Public or private groups Yes No External guests/collaborators Yes Multiple content sharing No Yes methods