We reported at the end of the summer than Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams will become a single solution. Microsoft confirmed this at Ignite 2017 in September. Teams will become a single communication client, taking the core features from Skype for Business. Office 365 users will not be getting the integration instantly. Microsoft published a roadmap for migrating Skype for Business features over to Teams. The new update is part of the first wave of those features starting the move. Microsoft published a Tech Community post discussing the new features. Advanced calling features will improve the communication quality of Teams. Additionally, the company is introducing “full featured” dialing capabilities: “Today we are releasing new calling capabilities in Teams, providing full featured dialing capabilities, complete with call history, hold/resume, speed dial, transfer, forwarding, caller ID masking, extension dialing, multi-call handling, simultaneous ringing, voicemail, and text telephone (TTY) support. You can expect this to roll out over the next few hours and should come soon to your tenant.” To use these new features, companies will need Phone System (previously Cloud PBX) from Office 365. This feature is available as an add-on or comes already installed on Office 365 E5. Microsoft Teams users will need to have a Calling Plan subscription.
Integration Roadmap
As mentioned, Microsoft introduced a roadmap for its Skype for Business/Teams integration. Among the new features making the migration are:
Messaging — Screen sharing during chat and federation between companies Meetings — Meeting room support with Skype Room Systems and cloud video interoperability capabilities that allow third party meeting room devices to connect to Teams meetings Calling — Use your existing telco voice line to activate calling services in Office 365. Other features — Record a meeting and store it in Teams, have transcription added, and be able to search the meeting for key terms
