Microsoft Skype for Business Online will retire on July 31, 2021

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Microsoft has finalized the retirement time of Skype for Business Online, and the life cycle will be completed on July 31, 2021. After this date, Skype for Business Online will be inaccessible and usable. In the past few years, Microsoft has shifted its focus to Microsoft Teams and plans to completely replace Skype for Business Online. Microsoft believes that Teams is more suitable for business than Skype.

“Lufthansa Group: Skype for Business” by Bastian J. Schiffer is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Before stopping support for Skype for Business Online, Microsoft plans to add a new set of features to Teams, including the ability to streamline messages and call swaps in the first quarter of 2020, and plans to deploy additional features, including:

  • Dynamic 911. A feature of Microsoft Teams Phone System, Dynamic E911 automatically uses the caller’s current location to route to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) call center operated by the local government.  Dynamic E911 will be delivered in Teams for the United States by the end of this calendar year.
  • Shorter Retention Periods. New retention period options will allow customers to limit channel and chat retention periods to as short as 1 day and ensure that when data is deleted it is removed from all permanent storage locations in the Teams service.  Shorter Retention Periods will be available in Teams by the end of this calendar year.
  • Teams and Skype Consumer Interop. Interop between Teams and Skype Consumer will allow users on the two services to communicate using both chat and calling.  Teams and Skype Consumer Interop will be available in Teams in the first quarter of calendar year 2020.
  • Contact Center Integration and Compliance Recording. At Inspire earlier this month we announced Teams partnerships with Five9, Genesys, and NICE to enable Contact Center solutions – and with ASC, NICE, and Verint to provide Compliance Recording.   We’re also working with other Skype for Business Online certified partners to bring other Contact Center and Compliance Recording solutions to market for Teams.

In addition, since September 1, 2019, Microsoft said that Skype for Business Online will stop serving new users and will recommend them to use Teams as the core product of team communication. Users who have already used Skype for Business will retain all access, including the right to add new users, until the retirement date.

Users using Skype for Business Server will not be affected and the company will continue to support the service until at least October 14, 2025.

Via: ZDNet

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