Teams and Skype for Business are available to everyone at the University through Office 365. They are both communication and collaboration applications that offer instant messaging and conferencing capabilities.  Unlike Skype, Teams is formally integrated into the Office 365 (O365) environment, and this allows Microsoft to offer expanded capabilities.

 

Microsoft will formally retire Skype this coming year in lieu of the more feature-rich Teams.  They are not preventing interaction between Teams and Skype in the interim, but the respective products exhibit compatibility issues with messaging, conferencing, and document sharing that can impede or disrupt interaction.  Our goal is to support services that facilitate communication and collaboration, especially if they are essential for telecommuting.  We plan, therefore, to transition the University to a Teams-only environment on August 7.

 

As part of the transition, new ITS configured workstations will only have Teams installed by default.  We will provide training sessions throughout July and have arranged a public presentation to be virtually hosted by Microsoft on July 13.  This event will also be recorded and made available afterwards.  ITS will communicate frequently with the community about these changes and opportunities.  We ask that you encourage your constituents to familiarize themselves with Teams and to take advantage of learning options at their convenience.  Information about Teams, including details about the transition and a comparison between Skype and Teams, is posted on kb.uconn.edu.

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