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Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft TeamsFormerly Lync
Overview
What is Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams?
Skype for Business was an online messaging and conferencing tool, now superseded by Microsoft Teams.
Recent Reviews
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Popular Features
- Desktop sharing (189)8.888%
- High quality audio (189)8.080%
- High quality video (183)7.777%
- Low bandwidth requirements (180)6.666%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
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What is Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams?
Skype for Business was an online messaging and conferencing tool, now superseded by Microsoft Teams.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Alternatives Pricing
What is Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams combines video conferencing software with team collaboration tools. The communications platform allows MS Office users to conduct conference calls and share files via SharePoint, and join or initiate a group chat.
What is Lifesize Video Conferencing?
Lifesize is a web conferencing platform focused on making video conferencing systems and video conferencing apps work well together, while still being easy-to-use. Their platform incorporates web conferencing software with meeting room devices and wireless screen sharing.
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Product Details
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- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams?
Skype for Business was a unified communications tool superseded by Microsoft Teams.
For personal use, Skype Desktop and Mobile apps are still available for download, but for business functionality the vendor now fully supports Microsoft Teams as the replacement for Skype for Business.
Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Skype for Business was an online messaging and conferencing tool, now superseded by Microsoft Teams.
Reviewers rate Live chat highest, with a score of 9.2.
The most common users of Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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(2581)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(101-125 of 196)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
September 16, 2019
Skype for Business is a bit overrated
We use it to have meetings with people outside of our company via phone, screen-share and video. The goal is to make it feel like everyone is in the same room and be able to work remotely from one another with much more ease than if we did not have it.
- Easy to use screenshare capabilities.
- The clarity in sound when on the phone.
- Allows for a nice chat function.
- Complicated for external users.
- Need to download software to use the screen-share technology.
- Seem to need to redownload fairly often.
September 16, 2019
Easy to use software for virtual or remote teams
I work in an organization with 70+ different sites located hundreds of miles apart. We needed a reliable video conferencing and content sharing software. Skype for Business provides us with that functionality. It has made sharing our work a lot easier as users can share their computer screens to see in real-time what issues are at the other end.
- Quick text chat with your colleagues.
- Excellent quality audio and video calls.
- Very easy to share your computer screen with other team members and if required, give them control of your PC.
- If the computer screen is shared with other users, it slows down the computer speed. It's a common problem across the organization.
- Although it's supposed to be integrated with MS Outlook, sometimes it doesn't accept outlook credentials and keeps asking password although still logged in and working.
- When you are controlling another personal computer, the big black screen showing Skype window keeps popping up.
- The interface needs improvement. MS Teams has a better interface.
September 16, 2019
Review from a small company deployment
Skype for Business is used as part of the Office 365 environment by each employee. It allows for low-cost communications, screen sharing particularly on a one to one basis. Business partners using Office 365 can easily be contacted through Skype for Business.
- Presence has shown.
- Always on for most users.
- Uses limited resources on user computers and networks.
- PBX integration for cloud implementation seems less straightforward particularly for an organization across different countries.
- Crashes often.
- Screen sharing is always a struggle.
- Integration with cloud PBX other than a few Microsoft supported vendors.
September 16, 2019
Big toolbox, but not the best
Skype for Business is used both internal to the department and across the company as a whole as a way to bridge the communication gap between email and phone call. When something brief needs to be communicated, but doesn't warrant a phone call, or needs to be in writing, we use Skype. It works well for quick, easy communications, but needs some improvement in the recall capability.
- Quick, concise communication.
- Availability indicators.
- "Favorites".
- Integration with Outlook contacts.
- Archiving messages instead of a continuous text message style - I want to get the previous messages easier.
- "Time out" and archiving is unnecessary.
September 15, 2019
Communicating with employees and clients is easy with Skype for Business
Our company currently uses Skype for Business for communication purposes between team members and clients when client calls need to be made. We use it multiple times a week to keep in touch with co-workers, discuss projects or current/future workloads, and occasionally speak to clients through Skype for Business when project details need to be discussed.
- Team communication
- Clear voice calls
- Ease of use
- Improved mobile features
- Quicker connections
- Easier video capabilities
September 15, 2019
Skype for Business Review
It is being used by the entire organization, both domestic and internationally.
- It integrates with our phone system.
- Searching and dialing outbound is very streamlined.
- User-friendly.
- Depending on your wifi, Skype can be difficult to log into.
- We've seen dropped calls if the company has a rolling IPO address.
September 15, 2019
Skype for Business keeps getting better
We use Skype for Business as our online meeting tool quite frequently. All meetings have a Skype invite attached to them, which includes a conference bridge. This enables outside users to dial in with an 800 number, while internal users can use their Skype client for voice/video (or call in over phone if they choose). The flexibility here is key. We also use it for desktop sharing frequently (to help demonstrate an issue, or to troubleshoot an issue). Of course, we also use for IM.
Skype (now Teams) is constantly improving. It does, however, need some integration with modern software development tools (Atlassian products, for instance). But I prefer it much more than HipChat or Mattermost. Skype is more intuitive and easier to use.
Skype (now Teams) is constantly improving. It does, however, need some integration with modern software development tools (Atlassian products, for instance). But I prefer it much more than HipChat or Mattermost. Skype is more intuitive and easier to use.
- Online meetings.
- Desktop sharing.
- It needs integration with modern software development tools, even if they are open-source.
September 14, 2019
Great communication tool
We use Skype as our phone system, internal chat, as well as video calling method. We use it across the entire organization, including reaching other companies within our company.
- Instant messaging.
- Availability status.
- Email alternative.
- Calling.
- There is no continuity between the desktop and mobile apps.
- No group functionality, but I suppose that's why Teams exists.
September 14, 2019
The go-to Microsoft chat tool
It's currently the core communication tool used by our users at the office for internal, and sometimes external conversations and occasional collaboration. As we have multiple sites and workers based out of the office, the tools that Skype has provided us have been invaluable in allowing us to keep the teams working well together.
- Ease of use, simple for users to get started on.
- Integrates with Microsoft products, with web extensions now made so easy to access it anywhere, and anytime.
- Screen-sharing can instantly allow a user to better explain an issue to a colleague not based in the office.
- Currently being killed by MS teams.
- Sometimes audio and video quality is better on the non-business Skype platform, which is non-nonsensical but true.
- Recording can be buggy on it.
September 13, 2019
Skype for Business will Help you hit a home run!
We are currently using Skype for Business on our CRM team and with certain vendors. We have used it for the past year to really leverage how we work remotely and with our on-campus team. It is a great tool that allows for a lot of collaboration that we would not otherwise be able to do.
- Manages large numbers of users.
- The ability to share screens and collaborate across multiple desktops.
- The cost is something that is very affordable.
- It's harder to use with some Apple users.
- It's not as robust when you only have two users.
- You can't always use the presentation mode as easily as you should.
September 12, 2019
Wonderful product with simple integration and immediate results
Skype for Business is used across the entire organization to simplify communication across the board. Anyone is able to reach out directly to someone else and that decreases the time for response as emails can take hours some times. It is also useful as an auditing tool to ensure employees are using resources appropriately.
- Easy roll out and simple set-up.
- Almost no learning curve for users, even the least experienced employees can figure out how to contact fellow employees.
- Simplified licensing.
- Need better remotes. I know this is a business software but inner team discussion should be light-hearted.
- Sometimes there is a delay between password changes on the machine and when Skype for Business recognizes it.
September 04, 2019
Decent communication tool, but it's getting old
Skype for Business is used through our company. It is connected to our Single Sign-On system so we can log in with our company e-mail addresses. Since it is connected to our work e-mail and Microsoft Outlook, it enables every worker to reach any other worker in the company. It helps different teams and departments to communicate quicker.
- Connected to Outlook Calendar - You see the live availability status of the other person.
- Connected to Outlook - you can set up "Skype meetings" that include a handy link for the invitees to join the Skype call.
- Connected to company SSO - you can easily search users by their name.
- Decent functionality for sharing different attachments.
- Reliability - Some features might fail (sound in chat, difficulties joining chats, etc.).
- You sometimes get e-mails after the chat happened with some messages from the chat, seemingly randomly.
- Sometimes a bit slow (by today's standards) regarding UI and attachments.
August 30, 2019
Sykpe works for you
Skype is being used across the organization. We use it for instant communication between departments as well as to check on information about contacts. Seeing the availability of co-workers and their contact information immediately is a great help. We also are able to generate emails from the Skype interface, which is very useful.
- Contact information.
- Instant messaging.
- Availability.
- Sending an email should be a front-page option.
August 30, 2019
Skype for Business
Skype is used by the whole campus. It's fantastic because it allows easy communication between departments, and, even better, collaboration, between multiple parties. Many people can be added into a call, very easily, so there's no need for fancy speaker equipment to have a conference call. Everyone can just sit at their own desks in their own offices. The status symbols (away, busy, be right back, available), are instrumental in everyday activities. The status symbols and chat-feature are my favorite.
- Chat
- Status symbols (available, away, busy)
- Syncs to my Outlook calendar and away messages
- Ability to search for people
- Profiles/pictures
- Dialing out is sometimes amiss, the phone will automatically try an internal extension unless I dial 1.
- Not being able to block numbers on my own. I need IT's help.
August 29, 2019
Skype for Business is your go-to for conference calls
Skype for Business is used throughout the company I work for, a company of over 1800 employees. The company has locations in twelve states across the U.S., as well as being in the U.K. and China. It's great to be able to chat.
- Skype for Business is great for chatting with individuals or groups.
- I hold monthly webinars for employees across the company using Skype for Business and the process is seamless.
- My work phone is tied to Skype for Business. I can use the app to manage my business calls and meetings on mobile.
- It's a little clunky when it comes to sharing image files.
- The mobile app doesn't save phone numbers.
- The contacts section could be smoother.
August 20, 2019
An alternative when communicating with clients
We're using it for communicating with clients both nationally and abroad. It's used by my department and also by the commercial area, as we are the ones who communicate with clients. It's an alternative for Google Hangouts (our favorite tool for calls) and it helps us to share screens and images with remote clients, especially when making trainings or when we're defining changes in our services.
- It's a light app to download.
- Don't need any special OS specifications.
- It's easy to share screens.
- It allows many people to connect.
- It's hard sometimes to connect the microphone or audio.
- It's not that intuitive when audio or microphone problems happen. I had to restart a call several times because I couldn't figure out how to connect my microphone.
- Sometimes has some delay when establishing the calls.
Skype for Business is used by my entire organization for web conferencing and intercompany chat and most people use it for voice calls instead of direct phone calls. We formerly used Cisco WebEx and Jabber for these applications.
- Saved chat history (Conversation History). This is a useful upgrade vs. our last tool (Jabber) where I'd have to manually save chats as HTML if I wanted to reference the information later.
- Integration with Outlook. It is convenient having a Skype meeting button built directly into scheduling which inserts the call-in info. I also appreciate that when meetings are scheduled his way, a "join meeting" button pops up in the Outlook meeting reminder. Also, nice that the saved Conversation History on my first point is searchable in Outlook.
- The emoji of a head banging against a brick wall. It often perfectly encapsulates my feelings about work, especially when Skype for Business is failing.
- The ability to record meetings is much better than when we used WebEx. It's built-in whereas with WebEx we had to have some special version to be able to capture the audio from the presenter AND the participants, which often meant the presenter would just have to repeat questions (waste of time). That was super annoying for someone like me who does a lot of remote training sessions, so this is a nice improvement over the previous tool.
- The stability of Skype for Business (SfB) is terrible. Every single colleague of mine complains about frequent skype problems. The problems are also quite varied, so it's more of a "flavor of the week" problem (or flavor of the day in particularly bad cases). A common ice breaker on a call is a quick anecdote about the latest skype problem someone has experienced. While it has gotten slightly better in the ~2 years we've had SfB, I still experience problems at least on a weekly basis.
- Video chat using webcam often completely bogs down my PC (which has hardware specs more than capable of handling it and a gigabit fiber internet connection) to the point where I cannot even use other programs. Example: my team was recently on a call where we were all on video and I was editing a PowerPoint in real-time during the call. It got to the point where I would type something in PowerPoint and after a several second delay, the text would slowly scroll out across the screen like the intro text on some 90s spy movie. Several days later, tried the same thing with the same result. I have complained to colleagues about this and they have reported similar experiences.
- The aforementioned benefit of Outlook integration sometimes becomes a con. Often the Skype meeting plugin will be running so slowly that Outlook will automatically disable it, and I have to manually re-enable the plugin to be able to schedule Skype meetings.
- On chat, I frequently get an error message paraphrased as "unable to deliver message to [recipient name]" so I'll try again. Half the time the recipient DID receive the message so I'm sending the message multiple times. But I cannot assume that when I get that message it is going through because the other half of the time it doesn't. SUPER annoying.
- The previous tool, Jabber, could display screen captures directly in Chat. SfB requires downloading the screen cap. Also, there's no screen cap tool. I know the Win+Shift+S shortcut in Windows 10 to grab a screencap, but many people aren't aware of that so they struggle with the lack of the button. It's a Microsoft tool, so maybe they should add a tooltip about how to screencap...
- Seems minor, but when screen sharing the "stop sharing" button is in a little banner at the top center of the screen that's hidden until you hover over with the cursor. Due to the placement, I and many others frequently click stop sharing when attempting to click something at the top of the screen, such as a browser tab.
August 15, 2019
Skype for your Business
We use Skype for Business at eSilicon in all departments, for 500+ users. We were using it for both instant messaging and conferencing (audio and video) but since last year, we are using it mostly for instant messaging, since we got a better tool for audio/video conferencing. For instant messaging, Skype for Business is still preferred over the new tool.
- Instant messaging -- one thing that Skype for Business does well on the desktop application.
- It's easy to use.
- Good enough quality for audio and video conferencing.
- Office integration. Personally, I love the button "Join Meeting" from the popup reminder before a Lync meeting.
- The biggest issue in Lync is the screen sharing during conferencing. It disconnects many times, and even when it is working, the delay is annoying.
- Mobile app and desktop app don't sync up very well. You can end up having parts of the conversation in both places.
- It is constantly slow in connecting first time when changing network connections, like connect/disconnect to a VPN network.
July 06, 2019
An effective communication software
Currently, Skype for Business is being used across the whole organization. Skype for Business helps a lot, in the part of communicating with team workers, you do not need to send emails or to look after someone around the factory, you just need to send them a skype message, that can be via voice, video, or just a normal message.
- Helps team workers to communicate.
- Facilitates the sharing of information.
- You can present to someone by sharing your screen, even is a conference, where more than two people are presenting.
- Easily can find anyone on the organization, just by searching for his name.
- When you do not have a great network connection, Skype can be very slow, and even freeze the conversation.
- When sharing screen, sometimes it can bug, and you do not see anything, then you have to reset connection.
- I think it lacks of customization options.
It is very easy to use the software. It has a very friendly interface. With it, it is possible to get in touch with people from other sectors without having to go around. Besides being a very light program, it also is a program that does not require much processing power. The cost to the company is very low.
- Very easy to use.
- Low cost for the company.
- Provides lectures (audio and video), plus screen and file sharing.
- Takes up little space and is synchronized via SSO (Single Sing On).
- I believe it could be linked with other Skypes, in addition to internally.
- Needs a good connection to use.
- If the person is offline, it is not possible to leave a message. I think I could change that.
Skype is used for communication between users and clients, that is, we use the tool to take requirements of a new demand or a project that is in development, to take questions with the client about what he wants, and the communication between our team of developers. The whole company uses Skype, much of it for the same purpose. As I mentioned before, it addresses all kinds of communication about new demands or something related to each project.
- Meetings - The creation of meetings is very important because with it you can schedule with clients that are not from your country and everything in real-time.
- Screen Sharing - Allows the user to visualize a project together with his client, so that everything becomes simpler.
- Video Call - We can make audio and video call.
- Integration with Office 365 applications.
- Need a good internet to do video conferencing.
- Sometimes it happens to be with several conversations and the program locks and closes all of them.
- The case of not being able to trace previous conversations, does not have a function to recover the same.
June 29, 2019
A great communication software
Skype for Business is being used by the whole organization. We use Skype for Business for all of our communications, whenever someone needs to talk to anyone. This saves a lot of time. For example, you do not need to walk around the factory to reach someone, you can just send a message or even call him on Skype. Furthermore, you can add video and voice to conferences, to share information, share presentations, present them, share files, images, gifs...etc.
- Some of its most powerful desktop features include group chat, integration with Outlook, and configurable settings (such as changing the minutes before the status changes to inactive).
- It's very easy to use, and also works as an IP Phone, so you can't only talk to other Skype users.
- It is highly popular and almost every organization uses it, so it is quite helpful in reaching out to other organizations, like client stakeholders and project managers, in an informal way that has previous validation, and is already done in terms of account creation and authenticity when it comes to organization email configuration.
- It is relatively intuitive and easy to roll out enterprise-wide.
- It is hard to trace previous conversations. You cannot recover all conversations.
- When your network connection is not good, Skype will probably freeze.
- Sometimes the initial message does not pop up for everyone in the chat.
June 14, 2019
Shrinking the World
Skype for Business is being used as the primary online meeting tool right now. It is used across the organization and even with our outsourced IT. It is mainly used for online meetings and sometimes as a quick chat between colleagues. It addresses the need of physically present in a meeting.
- Skype for Business is easy to use. It is flexible in the sense that if you have a mic and earphone then you can use them or else you can receive a call on your phone to be in a meeting.
- You can watch another person's screen.
- You can get control to do troubleshooting on other person's computer.
- I don't know if Skype for Business can integrate with personal Skype which would give it more flexibility to use as then you can connect to individual users who don't have the business license.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Skype for Business is being used as a web communicating software for interaction with other associates and our clients to discuss upon the project status as well as clarifying doubts. we can easily communicate with other team members by simply searching their user name or by using their employee ID number.
- It contains messaging services for better communication.
- We can make audio and video calls.
- We can share our data and media to other users.
- The call quality is very great.
- We can present our screen to other users.
- We need to have a secured high-speed broadband connection.
- The software is not available for free.
- The chat messages are not saved after some point of time.
- The size of media files to shared is limited up to 25mb.
May 29, 2019
Fantastic communication tool for businesses
I quite like Skype for Business as it helps my organization to keep in touch with anyone throughout the whole business, I can see who reports to who in the organization chart and I can use this tool on the go, without going offline even for a second. My company always uses this product for meetings.
- Easy to use
- Great and intuitive interface
- Stable network connection
- You can't setup channels like you can in Slack
- There could be more customization options