Communication is an important and influential aspect of the workplace.
It is quite common for people to be given a task or part of a discussion, but not know what to do next. Statistics show that 57% of employees don’t receive clear instructions on tasks and that 57% of managers don’t feel comfortable communicating with employees. This is true for groups and teams that are under one roof. But what about teams where members work from different parts of the world?
Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business are great communication tools. Microsoft Teams is clearly superior to Skype for Business. This is not a mystery. These differences will be explored in the article.
Both tools have revolutionized the way we communicate and exchange ideas. They both offer amazing UI and an incredible collaboration experience. The way they work is different.
This article will explain the key differences between technology and processes, as well as how your business can benefit from these technologies. Let’s get started.
Microsoft Teams vs Skype For Business
1. Persistent Chat
Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams both allow real-time chat. Dispersed teams require an alternative to phone calls for long-standing issues.
Both calls and videos can be productive but interruptions due to absence often disturb deep work and interfere with it.
Skype for Business, along with other software like Lync or Microsoft OCS, changed the way businesses communicate. Skype for Business was different. Chats were closed after a business day or when the chat was finished. Chat logs in this case were saved to certain platforms such as Outlook and Exchange.
Microsoft Teams introduced persistent chat to fill this gap.
Microsoft Teams enabled a unified presence. People could see when you were available, busy, or on a call.
You can also create an “out-of-office” message in Teams. If you mention you or send a private chat, stakeholders will be reminded that you are out of office.
Teams will now display a notification in Activity feed if you have a missed phone call or a voicemail.
2. Messaging
Teams can be set up to provide a continuous stream of information on a topic. It’s similar to persistent chat between people. You can create teams per department, per project or per customer basis.
Any member of your group can share files, messages, emojis and GIFs with other members of their team. Any member of the group can start a meeting by clicking on the “Meet Now” button.
3. New Collaboration Features:
The Guest Access feature allows anyone with a business email account or consumer email account, such as Outlook.com, Gmail.com to join a call and be a ‘guest in Teams’ with full access and control over the chats, meetings and files.
Teams can now support Vietnamese, Romanian, or Indonesian languages. You can also create up to 200 channels per team.
4. Meetings
Many of the features of Skype for Business are similar to those of Teams, making it easy and intuitive to adopt Teams. Both tools share many common features, including screen sharing, call recording, file uploads, and file uploads. The interface changes from blue-purple to allow you to host a meeting within the pane which contains all your team members as well as one-on-one chats.
Other cool features of Microsoft Teams include:
You can choose to blur or modify the background
Whiteboard masking: When a team member is drawing on a whiteboard, they won’t have their body in the way
Live captions and live events are available to all users, even those who do not have access to Microsoft Teams.
5. Integration
Skype for Business integration was initially limited to calling and connecting from telephony systems. Third-party apps such as Zapier provided IFTTT functionality.
Microsoft has announced that Skype for Business will no longer be compatible with third-party audio conference providers, as part of its integration with other collaboration apps.
Microsoft Teams is packed with your most important apps and should be added to your Microsoft Teams tenant in the Teams app store.
The Teams app store combines a variety of apps that allow you to bring your favorite apps into Microsoft Teams. This reduces switching between tabs and apps, and allows for hours of productivity.
6. Storage
Microsoft Teams creates a new team and a new SharePoint site backend when you create it. Every document or file you upload to the team, either in the team messaging area of the files tab, will be saved to SharePoint.
You must however have a license