Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls
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I have a client with an Office 365 Business Premium license who's asked about using Skype for Business for conference calls. They are currently setup with voip.ms account and FreePBX powering their calls, which currently includes conference calling. I've not spent much time looking at Skype for Business so wondering if someone here who's spent more time exploring can help me with any gotchas, "no don't bother it sucks because...", or maybe point me to a good resource where I can do some research.
They have a Yealink CP960 in their boardroom which has been amazing but it looks like they would need to purchase a new conference phone that specifically supports Skype for Business (unless I can simply swap the firmware to the one that supports Skype).
They have no intention of using Skype for each user, just for their conference calls.
Any thoughts or pointers?
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@NashBrydges said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
I have a client with an Office 365 Business Premium license who's asked about using Skype for Business for conference calls. They are currently setup with voip.ms account and FreePBX powering their calls, which currently includes conference calling. I've not spent much time looking at Skype for Business so wondering if someone here who's spent more time exploring can help me with any gotchas, "no don't bother it sucks because...", or maybe point me to a good resource where I can do some research.
They have a Yealink CP960 in their boardroom which has been amazing but it looks like they would need to purchase a new conference phone that specifically supports Skype for Business (unless I can simply swap the firmware to the one that supports Skype).
They have no intention of using Skype for each user, just for their conference calls.
Any thoughts or pointers?
What's so wrong with their current setup that they are looking at other solutions they don't know about?
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Skype for Business is now Teams. So the answer is hell to the no.
Honestly, it has always sucked.
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It's an additional license to enable conferencing.
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It works, but it cost more on top of the existing licensing.
Conferencing allows something like up to 500 callers at a time -don't quote me.
Whereas standard sfb allows 8 callin users at a time which is sufficient for a lot of our users. But our users also don't know how to schedule conferencing without a conference number.
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@Obsolesce Their current setup is actually working really well. They're exploring options and before we got to talking about what would be needed, thought I'd check with the community here to get some info.
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@DustinB3403 said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
It works, but it cost more on top of the existing licensing.
Conferencing allows something like up to 500 callers at a time -don't quote me.
Whereas standard sfb allows 8 callin users at a time which is sufficient for a lot of our users. But our users also don't know how to schedule conferencing without a conference number.
From my reading, Teams includes conference calling for up to 250 people which is way more than they need. Is there something I may have missed?
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@JaredBusch said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
Skype for Business is now Teams. So the answer is hell to the no.
Honestly, it has always sucked.
Yeah, I'd read that it was now Teams in another thread on ML. Out of curiosity, is there anything specific you can share as to why it sucks? I've not really spent much time with Teams.
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@NashBrydges I did say don't quote me.
250 is probably the number, but in any scenario 250 or 500 doesn't matter as we'd never have that many.
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@NashBrydges said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
@JaredBusch said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
Skype for Business is now Teams. So the answer is hell to the no.
Honestly, it has always sucked.
Yeah, I'd read that it was now Teams in another thread on ML. Out of curiosity, is there anything specific you can share as to why it sucks? I've not really spent much time with Teams.
Having worked with it this past week, I would literally classify it as malware. It is aggressive and invasive. It has multiple apps that if you can't kill them all reinstall components you just removed. It's truly evil.
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Well we all know Scott tends to be a bit overzealous with MS bashing.
While the SfB platform and Teams is a bit much it does function well enough.
Specifically if you require SSO, calendar syncing etc.
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Thanks for the perspectives.
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@DustinB3403 said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
Well we all know Scott tends to be a bit overzealous with MS bashing.
I just don't give big companies a free pass for making malware. If anyone else did that, no one would question it. MS does it, and it is "MS bashing" to treat them like anyone else. Invasive, unwanted software is what it is, no matter who makes it. MS isn't a special snowflake.
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@scottalanmiller said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
@DustinB3403 said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
Well we all know Scott tends to be a bit overzealous with MS bashing.
I just don't give big companies a free pass for making malware. If anyone else did that, no one would question it. MS does it, and it is "MS bashing" to treat them like anyone else. Invasive, unwanted software is what it is, no matter who makes it. MS isn't a special snowflake.
Sadly, MS started doing this hard core in Windows 10. You uninstall shit in 1507, and when you upgrade to 1607 that shit returns. Like it is impossible for MS to look at the old config before the upgrade and apply that same config post upgrade.
MS is clearly SHOVING Teams down everyone's throat - they indicated in a release note at some point that Teams was going to be auto deployed to all O365 users of the full Office install. And I've definitely seen that be the case at one client.
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@Dashrender said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
Sadly, MS started doing this hard core in Windows 10. You uninstall shit in 1507, and when you upgrade to 1607 that shit returns. Like it is impossible for MS to look at the old config before the upgrade and apply that same config post upgrade.
OneDrive comes to mind when I read this :pouting_face:
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@Dashrender said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
MS is clearly SHOVING Teams down everyone's throat
A clear sign that they don't believe that people will choose it on its merits.
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@bnrstnr said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
@Dashrender said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
Sadly, MS started doing this hard core in Windows 10. You uninstall shit in 1507, and when you upgrade to 1607 that shit returns. Like it is impossible for MS to look at the old config before the upgrade and apply that same config post upgrade.
OneDrive comes to mind when I read this :pouting_face:
Another product they clearly don't have faith in to be chosen on merits. And I agree.
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@scottalanmiller said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
@Dashrender said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
MS is clearly SHOVING Teams down everyone's throat
A clear sign that they don't believe that people will choose it on its merits.
Now this statement is a borderline bash. Sure it's shoving.. but at the same time, knocking off/replacing an incumbent is often challenging to say the least.
I won't go so far as to say they won't.. but I definitely see where you're coming from.
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@scottalanmiller said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
@bnrstnr said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
@Dashrender said in Using Skype For Business For Conference Calls:
Sadly, MS started doing this hard core in Windows 10. You uninstall shit in 1507, and when you upgrade to 1607 that shit returns. Like it is impossible for MS to look at the old config before the upgrade and apply that same config post upgrade.
OneDrive comes to mind when I read this :pouting_face:
Another product they clearly don't have faith in to be chosen on merits. And I agree.
Now this one I mostly disagree with. Because - consumers. Consumers will frequently kill something without ever actually knowing what it is, why it can be good, etc. In this case I think MS is trying to get consumers to use it for backups if nothing else. Granted, they should be selling it that way and they aren't.
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So to be the devils advocate here - anything that comes pre-loaded on your OS should be classified as malware if you immediately remove it once the OS is operational.
LibreOffice - malware I don't want it - don't install it. But every time I install nix it's there!
