Item: Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Return on Investment

We can take quick actions because of the more agile communication.
We can be more flexible with our meetings, people can join in when they are out of the office, and so on.

Usability

It is a good tool and connects to other Microsoft applications well. But problems with Skype Meetings (mainly sound), slowness (for 2019), and arguably better-competing applications do not allow me to give it a higher grade.

Support Rating

I am not familiar with support for Skype for Business because I have always fixed my problems with the help of my colleagues or by trial and error. Using the application it seems to me that overall development is slow, meaning that it looks and feels kind of old for 2019. Also, there are same recurring technical problems throughout the years. But all this is expected from a huge company like Microsoft.

Alternatives Considered

Google Hangouts and Slack

I personally like to use Slack for quick meetings with my colleagues. It feels intuitive, fast, and has good screen-sharing functionality. Google Hangouts is another similar tool that I have used. It has worked well and I have not had any problems with it.

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365 Business, Atlassian Confluence

Likelihood to Recommend

Good for big organisations with many teams and departments. It is possible to connect it to company e-mails and other systems which helps to be more efficient with communications. I have also heard that it's good for security issues - with proper set-up you can use the program to share internal documents safely.

I would not recommend it for communicating with the customer because there are quite a few awkward problems, like having no sound in a call. It might happen that you need to awkwardly say, "Can you hear me now" over and over and then scramble to restart Skype or find a new program that works. Not that big of an issue with internal communication though.

Decent communication tool, but it's getting old

Overall Satisfaction with Skype for Business (formerly Lync)