In July at its annual partner conference, Microsoft told attendees that its Teams group-chat platform had reached "feature parity" with Skype for Business Online[1]. Today, August 24, Microsoft made that proclamation official, saying it has delivered on its roadmap for bringing Skype for Business Online features to Teams.
"We are pleased to announce we have completed our roadmap for bringing Skype for Business Online features and functionality into Teams," officials said via today's blog post. (Here's a link to the migration roadmap[2].)
Credit: Microsoft
Last year, Microsoft announced plans to replace Skype for Business Online with its Teams group-chat platform[3].
In today's blog post about the achievement, Microsoft highlighted the messaging, meetings, callings and device-ecosystem enhancements it has made in Teams "in recent weeks."
In the calling arena, where Microsoft had the most work to do in bringing Skype for Business Online features to Teams, here's what Microsoft says it now offers in Teams:
- Boss and delegate support
- Call queues
- Auto-attendant
- Consultative transfer
- Do-not-disturb breakthrough
- The ability to forward a call to a group
- Out-of-office support
- Direct Routing for bringing a user's own telephone service to Teams
Microsoft's roadmap for the Skype for Business/Teams transition still lists several enterprise voice features as "coming in Q4 CY 2018" (by the end of the quarter). On that list are Call Park, Group call pickup, a preview of location based routing and Shared Line Appearance. I've asked Microsoft if the company already is making these features available to Teams users; no word back so far.
Update (August 24): Ah, so those four features were never part of Skype for Business Online in the first place, a Microsoft spokesperson said. The full statement:
"There are four