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Skype for Business was an online messaging and conferencing tool, now superseded by Microsoft Teams.
Recent Reviews
Awards
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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Skype for Business was an online messaging and conferencing tool, now superseded by Microsoft Teams.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.
Features
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Product Details
- About
- 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Skype for Business was a unified communications tool superseded by Microsoft Teams.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Skype for Business was an online messaging and conferencing tool, now superseded by Microsoft Teams.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 and Ratings
(2583)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(101-125 of 195)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
September 16, 2019
Easy to use software for virtual or remote teams
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Team communication
- Clear voice calls
- Ease of use
- Improved mobile features
- Quicker connections
- Easier video capabilities
September 15, 2019
Skype for Business Review
- 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
- Online meetings.
- Desktop sharing.
- It needs integration with modern software development tools, even if they are open-source.
September 14, 2019
Great communication tool
- 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
- 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!
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Contact information.
- Instant messaging.
- Availability.
- Sending an email should be a front-page option.
August 30, 2019
Skype for Business
- 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 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
- 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.
- 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
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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 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
- 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
- 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
May 28, 2019
All you Need to know: Skype for Business
- Cross-Team collaboration
- Screen-sharing for visual presentations
- Easy-to-use video conferencing
- Multiple screen sharing with different parties on the same call.
- Easier way to set groups.
- No restrictions of the size of messages.