How Teams meeting invitations differ from Skype for Business

 

Microsoft Teams focuses on Team collaboration and is pushing the limit on Intelligent Meetings, utilizing the Cognitive Services of Azure to bring in the meeting details before, during and after to have a successful meeting.

I wanted to show the differences in setting up a meeting between ad-hoc/scheduling a meeting in Teams and Skype for Business.

 

 

Scheduling:

To schedule a meeting for Skype for Business the only location is to create the meeting invitation in Outlook:

  1. File -> New Skype Meeting
  2. Once the meeting invitation populates, it generates the meeting URL from the conferencing service based on your Skype for Business conference policy. 
  3. In addition you have the ability to setup and configure the pre-meeting Skype Meeting options where you have the ability to:
    1. If users have to wait in the lobby and which users don’t.
    2. Who is assigned as a presenter.
    3. What features participants are allowed to use:
      1. Disable IM
      2. Mute all attendees
      3. Block attendees’ video

Ad-hoc:

To create an Ad-hoc meeting in Skype for Business simply , click the drop down arrow -> Meet Now, press the Alt key and click Meet Now

Once you are in the meeting you have the ability to modify the in-meeting options, which allows you to modify the Skype Meeting options:

  1. If users have to wait in the lobby and which users don’t.
  2. Who is assigned as a presenter.
  3. What features participants are allowed to use:
    1. Disable IM
    2. Mute all attendees
    3. Block attendees’ video

 

 

To create a meeting in Teams you can do it in 2 different places, the Teams meetings can only be scheduled. Currently there aren’t any options to create an Ad-hoc meeting.

Schedule a Meeting within Teams itself:

  1. What you can do:
    1. Invite people from your contact list
    2. Create the meeting in a Channel or just have it as a private meeting
  2. What you can’t do:
    1. Setup pre-meeting options
    2. Only have yourself in the meeting

Schedule a Meeting within Outlook:

  1. What you can do:
    1. Invite people from your contact list
    2. Only have yourself in the meeting
    3. Setup as a private meeting
  2. What you can’t do:
    1. Setup pre-meeting options
    2. Create the meeting in a Channel

Microsoft Team is changing and very agile in it’s development cycle, the Teams Roadmap includes Outlook meeting updates from other platforms and conferencing policies. I am hopeful that we will see the meetings feature parity between Skype and Teams meetings.

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