Beyond expectation
Limited features for business collaboration find it lacking in terms of advanced features.Business depend heavily on communication tools …
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Skype for Business was an online messaging and conferencing tool, now superseded by Microsoft Teams.
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Popular Features
- Desktop sharing (189)8.888%
- High quality audio (188)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Skype for Business was an online messaging and conferencing tool, now superseded by Microsoft Teams.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 GoTo Connect?
GoToConnect, from GoTo, is a cloud-based business phone system with built-in web-based video conferencing solutions. It includes features such as call analytics, call recording, softphone, fax to email, voicemail to email, and desktop integration.
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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Skype for Business was a unified communications tool superseded by Microsoft Teams.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Skype for Business was an online messaging and conferencing tool, now superseded by Microsoft Teams.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).
Comparisons
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Reviews
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Skype is mainly used as the main web-based communications tool for interacting with customers through several ways including video chat, video conferencing and instant messaging. It is also used to connect with colleagues within the organization and collaborate on tasks opening a door for ideas and boosting productivity among employees.
- We can host up-to 250 people into a Skype conference from the comfort of their homes.
- It operates on all devices helping users link up and communicate at any time.
- There isn't much of a learning curve for users to operate.
- It is not advisable to have many chats open at the same as this may cause unresponsiveness.
- Users should be patient when sharing large files as this can take time to complete.
We sometimes host conferences or virtual meetings with Skype for Business, though we usually only use it when another org insists. We rely on Zoom more often, due to stronger security features and the sensitive nature of our work, as well as regular Skype when we need to "call" people into meetings. Both versions of Skype are primarily used when we think that the the security trade-offs are worth the ease of adding users without an internet connection or smartphone.
- Easy to add people to a call.
- Easy screen-sharing and other hosting actions.
- Skype in general is probably still the most internationally-known teleconferencing software.
- It has the worst security of any teleconferencing apps we use; a huge problem in our line of work.
- Logging in is always a nightmare for some reason.
- Need totally separate software to use Skype for Business vs regular ol' Skype; you'd think they could just layer them both into one system.
April 26, 2021
Good, simple collaboration tool
It is being used across the whole organization, which then filters down to use by individual departments/schools. Individual departments manage their own installations of Skype for Business, rather than this being centrally managed by the organization. It is being used mainly for instant messaging, but is also used for video/conference calling, and remote assistance/sharing. The business problem it addresses is trying to find a really good collaboration platform/software that has many capabilities, and is easy to install and easy to use from a user standpoint.
- It is easy to use by end-users. There really is no formal training that is involved for users to learn how to use the platform. This saves time/money both from a user and company standpoint.
- It's good at working across different devices, such as Apple OS/iOS, and Windows/Android devices. This is good especially since users in many organizations are using different devices for their work.
- There is good integration with this software within multiple programs such as Microsoft Office, Outlook etc. This helps users to be more productive when doing work in those programs.
- It has less/limited features to really be used as a big collaboration tool/platform in an organization. It is fine for small scale/individual collaboration though, such as chat, file sharing, etc.
- It is missing features to be able to integrate with other Microsoft collaboration/sharing tools such as OneDrive and SharePoint.
Skype for Business (now Teams) is used as our primary Instant messaging standard. It is also used for adhoc calls and desktop sharing. It has become the standard due to its integration with other Office/Msoft products, and general universal use in the IT space. It is easy to deploy, and the interface is generally recognizable to users.
- Easy to Deploy
- Microsoft product integration
- Presence status works well
- It is not a tool for developers (ie, Mattermost); it does not have developer type integration.
April 26, 2021
Still an alternative? Yes, depending on your scenario...
We use Skype for Business to solve the problem of communication with companies that haven't migrated to Teams yet. It helps us to chat with them, without hav[ing] to install a new chat application or change the way they use the application. It's being used by almost our entire organization.
- Add Groups to Main Screen
- Block Users
- Block Groups
- New features
- Communication with other tools
- Old interface
April 25, 2021
Excellent for remote work!
We use this product firm-wide. We use it for all of our calling and messaging needs. This product really saved us during the pandemic when we were all forced to go remote. Just plug in a headset and bam you have a full feature phone that you can use.
- Messaging
- Calling
- Meetings
- None that I can think of
April 25, 2021
A communication app that woks well.
Internal meetings and webinars are hosted by our marketing department using Skype for Business (formerly Lync) conference. This is a wonderful free interchange meet-up, particularly for pandemic days where we won't all be available at the same time. Its sound quality is exceptional, making it suitable for synchronized substance and conversation exchanges on internet services.
- If you need to chat with colleagues easily and conveniently, Skype for Business (formerly Lync) is ideal. The Outlook integration is fantastic.
- Participants can securely be welcome to the meeting by sharing links.
- Collaboration is greatly facilitated by screen sharing and the opportunity to provide meetings.
- The ability to send images, folders, and documents easily.
- It will take some time for the screen to reset. text buffering can be excruciating at time[s].
- It's not easy to share large files.
- When I have several chats open at the time, Skype becomes unresponsive.
April 25, 2021
Skype for Business, A Good Tool for Bankers
Skype for Business is used as a means of communicating between colleagues. Similar to texting on a cell phone. [The] video camera sometimes lags and in my case locks my laptop.
- Can view if a user is available to contact.
- I can change my status to inform colleagues I'm out of [the] office.
- Video capability.
- [The] program seems to lag. Not sure if it's a program issue or [an] employer issue.
- [The] video camera is not as clear as [the] Microsoft Teams video camera.
April 25, 2021
Skype for Business: Meet & Greet Business
Skype for Business is majorly used for interaction with customers and for internal communication among colleagues. Currently, the use case varies by department. Because of its simplicity and inclusion with Microsoft Office account, it is easy to use, well-integrated, and enables effective communications. From ideas to collaboration, Skype for Business addresses multiple needs of group & team meetings, presentations, hiring, and information sharing.
- Team meeting & presentations
- Group calling
- Taking interviews
- Recording a meeting
- Group chat
- Noise cancellation could have been better
- Joining without login feature should be added
- All recordings on one page [are] missing
- Metting insights and analytics are missing
- Background effect should be improved
April 25, 2021
Skype for Business for Instant Communication
We are using Skype for Business as our internal chat program. Not for the meetings but for short conversations, calls, video chats, or screen sharing generally. Unfortunately, we can not connect other Skype for Business users that are not in our company due to restrictions but it serves effectively still. We use it on daily basis for just any type of conversation.
- Instant messaging
- Instant calling
- Screen sharing to an individiual
- Interface
- Multiperson meetings
- File sharing
We're currently using Skype for Business alongside Microsoft Teams. [In] the past few years we used it as a communication and collaboration tool to host 1 on 1 calls and meetings. But Since a year we're [phasing] out the use because Microsoft is pushing Microsoft Teams as part of the Office 365 suite as the preferred replacement for Skype for Business.
- Voice calls over the network
- Chat in real-time with [colleagues]
- The possibility of video-chatting with coworkers
- The mobile client uses a lot of data (not suited for mobile data)
- Voice quality is not always good
Skype for Business is being used across the organization, but it´s our 2nd or 3rd choice in terms of usage.
During pandemic video calls are our "normal life" therefore we need solutions that can bring the best of online meetings with high quality and display a set of different tools to employees to use.
During pandemic video calls are our "normal life" therefore we need solutions that can bring the best of online meetings with high quality and display a set of different tools to employees to use.
- Imbedded app on notebooks
- Recognize brand
- Microsoft
- Audio/Video quality can improve
- Mobile app [doesn't] work properly
- I don't see their product improvements compared to [the] competition
We have been using Skype for Business across our entire company for instant messaging and simple video calling between our users. Most of our users are okay with the product, but as we introduced other platforms with chat capabilities, it became more apparent how Skype for Business was lacking for full integration and compatibility with other services such as Office 365.
- Sending text messages to other users.
- Sending files between users.
- Simple video meetings between users.
- Logging in with SSO when you have a mixed Exchange and Office 365 environment.
- If something goes wrong with the product, troubleshooting can be difficult.
- No easy, direct way to fully uninstall the product. In our instance, it's linked to the Office suite, so if we want to remove it, we have to uninstall the entirety of MS Office.
April 23, 2021
Helped all areas of our business stay connected
Skype for Business (formerly Lync) has helped all areas of our business stay connected. Students, staff, and faculty all used it before the Teams integration. Students were able to interface with faculty on course matters, and staff on enrollment and other business. ITS was able to use Skype for Business (formerly Lync) to connect with any user who needed assistance.
- Communication
- Connectivity
- Support
- Chat management
- Support
- History is hard to view
April 23, 2021
Skype for Business requires zero training and everyone will know how to use it instantly!
Skype for Business is being used across the whole organization, we use this for daily IM chat and Skype calls within the organization, it helps to bring people closer and able to know the person is online or busy depending on their status.
- Easy to use, the same interface as Skype user version.
- They have a mobile app that wasn't working very well in the past, but has been improved a lot now.
- The status of the person shown on my Outlook as well and it makes communication seamless and easy to start a conversation.
- Missing the history as it has to link with the Outlook which most of the time doesn't work.
- Mobile app sometimes not responding.
- Would be great if Skype could help to schedule a meeting too.
April 23, 2021
Good communication solution for any company
Skype for Business has been used to internal communication via text message and also as a replacement of other VoIP services. People commonly use it to set up meetings, making use of a bunch of features such as screen sharing, video conference or simple call conferences. Use of this tool ended up in budget savings and improvement of communication, which implicates productivity gains.
- Ability to create contacts and manage them in groups, or add whole Distribution Lists from MS Exchange to make communication with the teams.
- Ability to quickly make calls with groups or people rather than using traditional phone plans or expensive VoIP's.
- Ability to share whole screen with participants of the meetings or share specific contents, such just a power point presentation, which is good for privacy.
- It can sound like a silly comment, but emoticons change climate of conversations among the teams. So in my book Skype could have more emoticons and GIFs.
- OneDrive could be more integrated with Skype. However we know that Microsoft has implemented a tool called MS Teams, which seems to be an upgrade over Skype for Business.
April 23, 2021
Skype review
Skype is used across the whole department in my company. I usually use it to conduct meetings and to chat with the teammates. Since it is synced up with Outlook, the insights it provides regarding status and availability of people help me in understanding when to expect a reply from the person.
- Sync up with Outlook.
- Ability to change the availability status.
- Secure messaging.
- Audio and video calls.
- Emojis.
- Interface is dull.
- It's load time is high. It takes a lot of time to start.
- Attachments takes long time to deliver.
Our company has previously used Skype for Business to call B2C clients in other nations to save on the client's phone bills. Some clients appreciate this, but more often than not we now use WhatsApp for this purpose. For video calls between teams during the pandemic, we have used Google Meet instead which is a great free alternative that does not require clients to set up an account.
- Clients are generally familiar with it.
- Good quality video and sound.
- IM feature is not as slick as Slack.
- Can be expensive.
- There are better alternatives in my opinion.
Skype for Business (formerly Lync) is our communication system for our company. We started using it when it was called Lync and happy still use it. Initially it was only our instant messaging system, but when looking for a phone system, this was the easy replacement as we had already installed it.
- Communicating using Skype for Business (formerly Lync) is easy and intuitive
- It scaled really well to our company
- Ready to move to the cloud version
- The GUI was a bit dated but has since been improved
- Skype for Business (formerly Lync) will eventually disappear, as it will move to Cloud Teams
April 23, 2021
Skype for Business - easy to use and effective
[Skype for Business (formerly Lync)] is being used in our organization to communicate, share documents, and provide remote support. It helps us stay in contact quickly and makes collaboration a breeze.
- Ease of use to chat
- Sharing files quickly
- Providing remote support
- Occasional connection issues
- Video quality sometimes choppy
- Security issues in the past
We previously used Lync, but switched to Skype for Business [(formerly Lync)] when Microsoft changed the name/platform. This is currently used across the entire organization. This is our primary instant messaging application and incorporates seamlessly into Outlook. It offers us the ability to quickly collaborate with others.
- Skype integrates perfectly with our Outlook Address Book so looking up contact info is super fast and easy.
- The ability to quickly make long-distance (or International) calls via Skype meetings saves us time and money.
- Being part of our Office 365 license, simplifies the installation because it gets installed when we install Office suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc).
- Typically updating the Outlook application requires you to close out of the Skype application (since they are tied together).
- By default, it links your Skype status to your Outlook calendar. This feature is nice if you have a meeting, it will show you as "In a Meeting". However if you simply have a reminder on your calendar (such as a lunch break) it will show as In a Meeting.
- The screen sharing feature is helpful, but when sharing mouse/keyboard with someone else, not all windows are visible. For example, if the UAC appears and asks for admin credentials, the "remote" user will not see that prompt or have the ability to type into that field. This is an issue for IT Support technicians who need to provide administrative credentials without the end user knowing what they are.
April 23, 2021
The old TEAMS
[Skype for Business (formerly Lync)] is used departmentally, it was being used more before we went full deployment with Teams.
- Phone audio replacement
- Conference calls
- Some other solutions are better or make it a little easier to do screen share and remote support
April 21, 2021
My use of Skype in a normal day
I think Skype for Business is the best app you can use to message with your colleagues. I use it to contact all the different departments and even someone overseas. It's addressing of course the biggest problem in a company like mine, communication and exchange of information. I love to make calls and the conference option is a plus.
Also the favourite feature save a lot of time and it’s easy to use.
You can dig in the organisation three by seeing the details of the employees and understand their role.
Also the favourite feature save a lot of time and it’s easy to use.
You can dig in the organisation three by seeing the details of the employees and understand their role.
- It's easy to use.
- it's fast as possible.
- It's solid and modern layout of the app and I had no issue during the day using it.
- No set up required. Just login and you’re good to go
- I don't like sometimes the search engineering. Some time it is not so immediate.
- I cannot see if my colleague read the message that I send to him.
- It's a little annoying the notification system.
- The layout should be a little redesigned for non experts users
April 21, 2021
A must have for corporates
Skype for business is used across the whole organization and is a must-use for us. It serves as a great alternative to Webex but there is no need of clicking to get a link and start. File share and screen share are the vital functions along with taking control of different user's screen.
- Group conversation: Very useful to chat with multiple people and be able to talk with them and able to video conference them. We have used it to train our interns who were remote to company's location.
- Screen Share: this is a major advantage for easy communication and taking the other person's screen control is an excellent function that Skype for Business provides.
- File Share: Very easy to share files, photos, data etc.. Just drag and drop!
- Group chat/Voice chat can be improved, sometimes it does not connect or does not have a very easy way to connect.
- File sharing to group of people at same time causes issue sometimes where certain people not able to view files.
April 14, 2021
Skype For Business
We used it for group calls all over the country and (world). We are able to review all HR /Payroll issues that may arise that need a fast resolution
- Able to connect all levels of Management
- we are able to hold "in house " conferences from anywhere
- connection issues is number 1