To reduce redundancy of features and avoid confusion, Microsoft is planning to decommission Skype for Business within Office 365 with a definite end-date of July 31, 2021. As a result, it’s critical for organizations to plan and implement their transitions from Skype to Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft wants to provide organizations with a single hub for teamwork. The updates to the Teams platform that will replace Skype for Business combines the business-critical communications capabilities of Skype for Business with the collaboration tools, app integration, and file storage and sharing of Microsoft Teams. This modern Cloud infrastructure will create new experiences for meetings and calling opportunities, allowing your users to make better use of their most valuable asset – their time.

Microsoft has added new meeting and chat features, like background blurring, larger video displays, the ability to save meeting recordings with Stream and improved access to meeting conversations after they happen.

Here are five tips for making that transition as easy as possible.

1. Start Right Away — The Transition Is Coming
   To best prepare, organizations should start planning for the transition now. Among other things, they should set up and test the Teams application and understand the new features that Microsoft Teams brings to the table.


2. Plan for More Than Just Calls and Communication
   Teams brings several collaboration tools to the table. For example, Teams has the capability to host live events for large audiences (streaming to mass audiences via Yammer or the internet) and it can save any recorded meetings to Stream. On top of that, Teams supports superior chat and collaboration capabilities.


3. Prepare Your Users
   As with most rollouts of new systems, the more organizations prepare, the smoother things are likely to go. Teams has the potential to help workers be more productive. The closer organizations get to showing all users how they can do their jobs better with Teams, the greater increase in productivity they will see.


4. What should I do to prepare for my upgrade to Teams and what will happen after the upgrade?
   Microsoft is encouraging all Office 365 customers to start using Teams in parallel with Skype for Business so they can get used to the Teams platform. To complete your upgrade to Teams, you’ll need to enable Teams Only for each of your users.
   
   Once you do so, your users will see several things happening:


• Their Skype for Business client will be disabled for use. All calls and IMs will go through Teams. However, if there are Skype for Business meetings that were scheduled before the switch over, they will still run through Skype for Business.


• All new meetings that are scheduled from Outlook will be scheduled in Teams.


• If your users are attempting to sign into Skype for Business, they’ll get a notification letting them know that they’ve been upgraded to Teams.


5. What if I need more help moving from Skype to Teams?
   Microsoft has generated a lot of content around helping companies to switch from Skype for Business to Teams, and its best to start here: Getting Started with Your Microsoft Team Upgrade. If you need more assistance, our experts at Datum Consulting can help you explore your options and decide the correct course of action for you to take.