No longer the simple team player it used to be
December 03, 2021
No longer the simple team player it used to be
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Skype for Business (formerly Lync), now part of Microsoft Teams
I was a Lync user for many years and loved it. I made the switch to Skype for Business with no difficulty because they were very similar. When Lync was no longer supported, training people on the switch was not difficult because of so many similarities. Going to Skype for Business (formerly Lync), now part of Microsoft Teams, is a whole different story. My IT networking staff doesn't like it either. If a user wants to use Teams only for chatting, it doesn't make since to open Teams for only that purpose. Because Microsoft Teams has channels, this adds confusion for chatting. More features add more complexity, which can be more difficult to understand. Teams stills allows our organization to talk amongst departments as Skype did, which addresses our scope of need.
- Keeping Teams Chat front and center helps with workflow--especially the one-and-done answer or even chatting back and forth if necessary
- Power users can use Teams in Chats and Channels; Channels are especially good for group projects
- Teams Chat saves your chat history in the event you need to view the conversation in the future to refresh your memory
- It requires more memory because of all the other features in Teams, so it takes a little more time to load than Skype did.
- The layout of the new Teams chat is not as user friendly as Skype was. More features are not always better for simple use.
- Merging Skype with Teams has made things complicated for our users who only want to use it to chat. We do have some older machines and chatting in Teams uses more memory than Skype did.
- Since we subscribe to the entire Office 365 package, it is economical for conferences, although many of our users prefer Zoom over Teams because of simplicity. So we have purchased some Zoom licenses as well because of this.
- Having the Teams Channels feature is very nice for group projects, so the versatility of Microsoft Teams is a plus. We have both features in one product--Chat for quick conversations and Channels for more in-depth project conversations.
- Zoom
Our school district uses both Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Many of our users prefer Zoom over Teams because they say Zoom is easier. Not considering just the Chat feature, I like the ease of setting up a conference in Teams and sending out the calendar event. The integration of Teams with Outlook is great. Because Microsoft Teams works seamlessly between Chat and Microsoft Teams other features, the Chat features are embedded.
Do you think Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams's feature set?
No
Did Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams go as expected?
No
Would you buy Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams again?
Yes