How to Manage Your Journey from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams

As most of you know by now, Microsoft has transitioned Skype for Business Online into Microsoft Teams and finally reached feature parity. Starting last month (October 1 to be exact) new Office 365 customer under 500 seats will automatically be onboarded to Teams. Beginning November 1 we have begun offering partner-associated customers automatic upgrades from Skype for Business Online to Teams.

This will ensure that customers have the single, integrated unified communications platform that Teams provides, including: telephony, video conferencing, messaging, and ad hoc meetings, as well as a central location for meeting notes, documents and other materials related to a project. Now that you are refreshed on the what, why, and when – the bigger question is how we do this.

The graphic above provides a high-level overview of how your organization should begin to think about its migration to Teams. Within this, we offer four specific scenarios to successfully move your company to Teams no matter your current business situation and future needs.

Scenario #1: Islands Mode

This scenario is typically for a smaller or simpler Skype for Business deployment that pending some short-term complexity will move everyone to Teams at a faster rate. This provides the best Teams experience from the start for all involved but does require constant communication during the transition and a deep adoption of Teams as Skype for Business will be retired quickly.

Scenario #2: Single Client Mode

This mode applies to a number of situations notably if some of your users need to stay on Skype for Business for an extended amount of time, you are moving some of your Skype for Business Online users to Teams but maintaining a specific group on Skype for Business (SfB) on-premises on the SfB server.

Alternatively, you may have some users in Islands Mode and would like to retire a certain set of users off Skype for Business. This approach also provides a fast on-ramp to Teams but does provide only basic chat and calling capabilities while in transition mode.

Scenario #3: Group Collaboration Only

Group Collaboration (GC) only mode is best for those organizations that have business and technical requirements that cannot yet be met by Teams, such as advanced compliance needs, and the organization as a whole needs to stay on Skype for Business on-premises.

This allows end users to activate the group collaboration piece in Teams but Instant Messaging will stay in Skype for Business.

Scenario #4: Group Collaboration + Meetings Mode

Similar to the GC only mode, GC + Meetings mode is for those organizations that need to remain on Skype for Business on-premises for a longer time commitment, or may be using a 3rd party meeting service.

It does allow you to start the group collaboration piece of Teams immediately, including WebRTC for interactive meetings, but similar to GC only the chat will remain with Skype for Business.