I mean honestly, they just can’t leave well enough alone. Skype for Business was working great so Microsoft decided to replace it with Microsoft Teams. What’s even better? They rolled out the app to all the users without enabling the required settings on the administrative IT side – the result was a half working application, confused users, and pissed off IT people. 👏
Great. but How Do I Get Microsoft Teams Working?
Here’s the deal: Teams is going to eventually replace Skype for Business but they can both work side-by-side. In order to get them working together there are some settings your Global Admin must enable in your Office 365 tenant. Below I will show you the areas and options so you can make the switch with less pain. One “gotcha” you should be aware of, once you change the settings it takes 2-3 hours for the user’s apps to show the chat option and other UI changes. It also happens at different times for your users so doing the change after hours might make sense.
To get to the administrative page for Teams / Skype for Business, there is a new URL. Navigate to https://admin.teams.microsoft.com
I’ll show you how to change the organization settings entirely but if that doesn’t work for your situation you can also modify these settings on a per user basis. You can also create a “messaging policy” that you can apply to multiple users. For now, expand the organization settings on the left hand navigation pane. Click “Teams Upgrade” and you will see the following page:
Under the coexistence mode drop down you will get the options available.
Now, we have currently enabled the “Islands” option since it allows full functionality on both applications. Each app is it’s own, “Island”. I imagine the goal behind these options was to allow admins to force users to migrate one step at a time by slowly moving functionality from Skype for Business over to Microsoft Teams. Eventually, Skype for Business will be end of life so it’s probably best that you start planning your migration soon.
Drop a comment if you have any questions or feedback.
Happy Configuring!
