Skype for Business to be integrated into Microsoft Teams

Big news from Ignite 2017

At Ignite 2017, Microsoft have announced that Skype for Business will integrated into Microsoft Teams.

In future releases have promised better meetings with Teams. Thanks to AI. Microsoft is building in machine learning, cognitive services, and speech recognition to improve a meetings experience and make it easier to set them up and receive follow ups after the meeting has concluded.

Its no secret that Microsoft have been putting pressure on the likes of Slack in terms of coming up with the ultimate collaboration tool. Here at Yobah, we have been actively using Teams since its release, and it has to be said that we love it. So this integration is very welcoming news.

Business meetings for the future

The whole meeting lifecycle is to take a whole new turn.

  • Before a meeting, you will be prepared as Teams will gather relevant documents and information about the meeting.
  • Conversations can be captured, transcribed and time-coded with closed captioning and voice recognition.
  • After the meeting, the recording and transcript can be automatically added to the relevant channel, meaning conversations, documents, notes and action items can be reviewed by the entire team.

“With these changes, Microsoft are clearly setting out their stall with collaboration. Integrating Skype for Business will be the first step of an exciting roadmap ahead” – Ian Wright – CTO

Need to collaborate externally?

No problem, recently Microsoft have updated Teams to allow users to invite external entities to collaborate.

But what about my on-premises Skype for Business Server? Our organization is not ready for Teams yet.

When the rumors started to fly about this integration, we had several customers contact us with concerns about their current investments in Skype for Business server. Microsoft are still committed to evolving Skype for Business Server and a new release will be available in Q4 2018 as well as a shiny new client. So do not panic, they are not pulling the plug just yet.

If you would like further information about Microsoft Teams, then please don’t hesitate to contact us.