Microsoft Teams Rooms vs. Skype (discontinued)

We use Microsoft Teams Rooms across all of our main conference suites. This ensure our staff have consistent meeting experiences in out part of the education sector - meetings generally become hybrid fairly frequently and can even extend to pupils or staff working from home. We did try some of the poly equipment in a classroom environment but due to noise levels and the amount of pupils and staff it quickly became a non starter. We were advised to stick with participant numbers aligned to our purchased hardware before we tried this.

Incentivized

Having interacted with a new replacement tool, Microsoft Teams, it is challenging to recommend Skype, as it lacks some essential features, such as being less equipped with the latest updates, and it is not platform-independent, causing issues on PCs and phones, as well as during calls that might hinder work.

Incentivized

• Camera view selection is a nice feature which allows remote users to choose the camera feedback to select for better experience.
• Live reactions like hand claps, thumbs up, raised hands,etc can be used to indicate to presenters that a meeting attendee has a question. This is cool.
• We can connect our laptop seamlessly to the Microsoft Teams Rooms to share our content or presentation which makes things very simple.

Incentivized

• The instant chat function is great. Very straightforward, easy to use, easy to learn, no technical issues.
• Video calls are pretty easy also, user friendly and a mostly stable connection with no issues.
• Voice calls are easy also, eliminates the need for an external landline or the need to use your cell phone. Clear connections, not really any dropped calls.

Incentivized

• Improve AI Camera to frame participants in large rooms
• no translation captions in real team for multilingual teams
• new elements to introduce quizzes and help with engagement

• Skype is a RESOURCE hog. People who have limited bandwidth will have poor call quality.
• It is hard to figure out how to use emojis and upload images in the chat.
• The background images do not fool anybody....it is clearly not your real background.

Incentivized

I have given this rating as this need to give more than that as it's very helpful for us and makes our work more efficient and fast.

Microsoft Teams Rooms has been very useful for our small business. As mentioned, it has allowed us to connect with our team more regularly, share important information, and keep productivity up by allowing our team to get on remotely and not have to commute to be together in person.

Incentivized

Skype is not as good as Facetime in terms of ease to glance at it and figure out how it works. I think that's a result of Skype trying to be too many things at once. A lot of the menu and UI could be streamlined, and I would jettison some of the additional functions that have been tacked on over the years to simplify. That being said, while some options are slightly hard to find, they all work flawlessly once found.

Incentivized

I am not aware of the current support level for Skype for business, as I have never used even though I have the product. However, the support for Skype's personal paid users is not where it could be. Users who pay for Skype features do not have a clear path to reach out to support. So, rating 6, can be better as soon as I need to use Skype for business support and get a good experience. I will say that I will renew Skype for Business subscription, which is a significant inconsistency on my end. The explanation is that Skype for Business comes bundled with Office for Business, with no additional cost, so why not.

Incentivized

It can be used on the phone via mobile application as well as on the desktop by logging in to the website. Easily installed and ready to use.

Incentivized

I consider MTR better because it first allows integration with all the Microsoft apps and is more cost-effective, considering all the included services such as the Office app, Cloud Storage, and email.

Incentivized

We use Skype in combination with Grasshopper. While Grasshopper acts as a routing toll free number with extensions, if we are making calls directly, we do it through Skype. Skype's desktop and mobile apps are easier to use, and provide unlimited local calls at a flat, affordable rate. Allowing our team to use their existing mobile or desktop devices without additional hardware for business office phone calls is important, and Skype makes that possible

Incentivized

The service provided is up to date, as discussed before buying.

• Increase in Staff confidence to use meeting equipment
• less "device failures" during meetings
• More and more staff have reduced the need to travel to each of our sites for a meeting.

Incentivized

• Skype made keeping in touch with an advisor in Mexico very easy. The initiative there resulted in 5 new partnerships.
• Skype has helped me with account management for at least 3 customers in LATAM--usually it's a fast way to answer a question about a support renewal.
• For about 9 months Skype helped me stay in touch with a colleague in Prague. We would meet once a week to go over sales activities.

Incentivized