Skype for Business Reviews

We are using Skype for Business mostly for meetings.

Skype for Business could improve the interface. It could be easier to use. Additionally, it's hard to find the people or add people you want to communicate with.

I have been using Skype for Business for approximately four years.

I have found Skype for Business to be stable.

Skype for Business is a scalable solution.

We have approximately 350 people are using this solution. All departments are using it.

The support for Skype for Business is good.

The initial setup of Skype for Business was simple.

We did the deployment of Skype for Business in-house.

We are using the subscription-based version of Skype for Business. There is a free version of the solution.

We are in the process of moving to Microsoft Teams and it is integrated into Microsoft Office.

I rate Skype for Business a six out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for business purposes. We use it for virtual meetings. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The deployment is very fast.

It needs to be easier to use. The product is very heavy. It's very unmanageable. It used to take up a lot of memory of my computer system. 

There are not many options, in terms of some other third-party integration. The adoption of Zoom primarily spiked during the pandemic and is sort of better. This solution is now being used much less.

The solution isn't scalable.

I've been dealing with the solution for one and a half years so far. 

The solution is very stable and unmanageable. 

The product doesn't really scale all that well.

We have about a hundred users on the solution. 

I don't have any experience with technical support. I can't speak to how they are in terms of helpfulness or responsiveness. 

I'm also familiar with Microsoft Teams or Zoom.

The initial setup is not overly difficult. It's pretty straightforward in general. A company shouldn't have any issues with the process.

The deployment is also quick and only takes a minute or so.

I handled the implementation myself. I didn't need the help of any consultants or integrators.

While it's my understanding that users would need to pay for a license, I have no visibility on the costs involved. 

I'd rate the solution at a five out of ten.

I wouldn't really recommend the solution to other users or organizations. I'd rather suggest Zoom or Microsoft Teams, which are better options.

It has benefited my organization because I can use it on the phone, I can use it on a laptop, wherever I want. The communication channel is very easy now and I can call and chat. It's experienced. Together, my team manages everything. It's very easy.

There are many valuable features. For collaboration purposes, there are many motivation integrations.

We have found that there is a lag because it cannot integrate with the internal landline. It's easier to integrate in the U.S.

We use a link as a browser calling so only calling is available. 

I have been using Skype for Business for one year. 

You need to follow the guidelines for the HN to be built on multiple servers and multiple in procedures. It's not a big challenge. The stability and the scalability are not a big challenge at all.

We haven't received high availability. There is no problem because you need to follow their guidelines, build the HN high availability solutions. We don't have an issue. 

There are 900 users who use it in my company. It's used on a daily basis. 

Microsoft support is fantastic. I don't have any problems.

People are working from home and this collaboration is efficient and we see real-time collaboration happening from the teams. This is a very good solution for work from home concepts.

In the next release, I would like to see the ability to do group calling. 

I would rate Sype for Business a nine out of ten. 

The solution has improved the flexibility of meetings for our organization. For example, I can use it from my phone or laptop. I can use it wherever I am. It's increased our communication channels.

It has everything in one place from sharing to team management. It makes everything easy.

There are many valuable aspects of the solution. For collaboration purposes, there are many integration capabilities. 

Making calls and having meetings is easy. 

There are a lot of very fundamental functions on offer.

There is sometimes a lag, often because this is not integrated with a few fields. We are in India, so we have some restrictions on some key integrations. For example, it cannot integrate with our internal landlines. When I was in the United States, this wasn't a problem at all.

We need some sort of functionality whereby users can use a link as browser calling. Calling only is what is available to us. That's not in every country, however, just a few. They should make it standard across the board around the world.

The solution isn't connected to Microsoft Teams, and I feel like there is better communication on that particular solution. The group capabilities are a bit less than Teams.

I have some standard meetings that happen on a regular basis, and it would be nice if I could just go directly to them from Skype instead of looking into my calendar and clicking on a link.

Group calling is not available on Skype right now.

I've been using the solution for almost a full year at this point. The company has been using the solution for five years.

The stability of the solution is great. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash. We don't face any challenges with the solution in that sense.

We have limited employees, so we've never really experimented with scaling the solution. I can't speak to how easy it would be to expand the solution.

We have about 900 users on the solution right now.

We use the solution quite often. It's used on a daily basis.

We get our technical support from Microsoft, who owns Skype. They've always been fantastic. We have been satisfied with the level or response we get.

The implementation of the solution was handled before I came to the company, so I didn't participate in the initial institution. I don't know if the product has a straightforward or complex setup.

I believe that deployment took place under the supervision of another team.

With work from home situations increasing, and a company would benefit from using this solution. The collaboration capabilities are great and allow for real-time interactions within teams. It's perfect for remote work.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Recently, we all went remote, so we needed a way to implement virtual meetings on a large scale and we utilize Skype for Business for these purposes. It might have a lot to do with the response to COVID and getting more people connected for remote access.

The solution connects to meetings pretty well. 

I like the fact that it opens up your video conferencing, and, in many cases, the audio at the same time. 

It's very useful that the solution can save conversations.

The implementation could be improved.

In my case, I don't necessarily pick up audio, so I have to dial in. I have two connections. One is a visual and one is strictly for audio calls. Some other users aren't experiencing that issue. It's inconsistent and I'm not sure why. I also can't say with certainty that this is a Skype problem or if something else is causing the discrepancy. 

There seems to be some sort of setting whereby it pretty much keeps instant messenger open all the time. I don't know what the settings are, or if this can be switched off. I believe there's an integration with that, where it assumes a certain status. I haven't had a chance to manually change it or to look into how to adjust it. 

The integration with Outlook could be improved.

There could be more opportunities for setting up your current status.

The solution feels like it's pretty bare-bones. There could be some additional features added, perhaps on the statuses or something of that nature because as it stands now, it's pretty sparse. I have heard that they're going to be introducing some features pretty soon. I hope that's the case. 

I've personally used Skype itself for years. However, in terms of utilizing Skype for Business, I've only been using the solution for the last month, or, more accurately, about three weeks.

The solution seems to be pretty stable and is just as stable in the business version as the regular version. I haven't had any issues whatsoever with crashes or glitches. However, it does feel like it's pretty bare-bones.

The solution is pretty scalable. You can use it across the company, and certainly within IT. Since everybody's working remotely now, with COVID-19, I think it scales quite well.

Even when you add people, it's still easy to manage many multiples people in a single meeting

I don't know how many people in our company are actually on it at this point. I imagine it's quite a few, however, I'm not sure of which departments that are using it, or if it's been deployed across the board.

I've logged into technical support a few times on the Microsoft store. They used to actually go through edX at one point. They may have their own portal now. I've looked at it for various products such as SQL, Visual Source Code, etc. and not just for Skype, so I can navigate it pretty well. I've been helped there. They do have paths to different types of certifications and stuff. I have not gone through any of that myself, however.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's not complex at all.

We're just a customer.

I'd advise other organizations that the implementation is pretty smooth as far as installations go, so they shouldn't be afraid to give it a try. Using it is very straightforward, and it just sits on your desktop as an icon, so it's easy to access when you need it.

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use Skype for all of our video conference purposes.

Skype for Business and video conferencing makes it easier to work from home.

The most valuable feature is stability.

The quality of calls has to be improved. I don't know whether it is a server problem that is taking away from the quality, but I have found that it is sometimes poor.

We have had trouble with scalability when trying to host large meetings.

We have been using Skype for Business for close to three years.

Stability is good but there are issues with call quality.

I would rate scalability average because I have found that there is an upper limit to the number of people that can be added to a conference. I'm not sure whether it is depending on the license that my organization has, but I do find that scalability is an issue in a large conference scenario.

It is used across our organization, with close to 15,000 or 16,000 users.

Our in-house team is responsible for technical support, although if they cannot handle the problem then they contact Skype. When this has happened, our problems have been resolved very fast.

I have been receiving meeting invitations from outside of our organization using other solutions, such as Webex. When I attend those meetings I use their software.

Our in-house IT group pre-installed this solution for me. They also handle our support.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The most valuable feature is the ease of organizing and setting up a meeting.

It is integrated with my Outlook, which is helpful.

The quality of the meetings is very good.

We need a feature where you can virtually raise your hand to silently let the presenter know that you have a question.

I have been using Skype for Business for between five and seven years.

The meetings can easily be expanded. Once you have the link you can push it, even in a WhatsApp group, to have all of your invitees become part of the meeting. The typical meeting for me is about 30 people.

We have begun using Microsoft Teams in place of Skype for Business and it is very good for collaboration. However, it is also missing the "raise hand" feature.

The initial setup was not difficult for me. 

My understanding is that Skype for Business will be retired in July of 2021, so I am in the process of migrating to Teams.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is for chat and we use it for internal meetings. We also have a federation between a couple of companies, so we also use it for virtual meetings across those companies that we have the federation with. It is our preferred chat and video solution nowadays. 

My last customer used it and Polycom, but Polycom was historic because of the meeting rooms. And the meeting rooms tended to be set up for Polycom, so if you were doing meetings from one meeting room to another one, then we'd switch to Polycom. Otherwise, it was Skype For Business.

The simplicity and ease of use are the most valuable features. It's so much easier and quicker than writing an email to someone and waiting for them to read it. If you actually see in Skype For Business that they're online and free, and you just put your question into there, it's a lot faster. The increase in productivity for messaging people is the number one reason for using it.

With respect to installing it in a large multinational, I find that installing it so that it gives decent performance across the company, can be a bit of black science. The ease of configuration or the lack of decent tooling to pinpoint your problems is probably its biggest issue. That's not just an issue with Skype For Business. That's pretty much across the board with unified communication systems.

What I'd really love them to provide would be an easy method of linking or connecting to other Skype For Business personnel in other companies who are also using Skype For Business without having to set up a federation. There are lots and lots of companies now using Skype For Business with other unified communications products. You can send someone a link, and then they can come into your Skype For Business meeting. We have issues trying to do Skype For Business.

I've been using this solution since 2006 when it was called Communicator. It's actually been 14 years. 

We quite often see glitches where it jitters and stuff like this, but that's all to do with the wide-area network links. I'm sure we could improve that if our unified communications guys had better tooling and understanding of the complexities. What we see is that in most companies the implementation is not optimal.

I haven't actually had to contact Microsoft support about Skype For Business related issues. Technical support with Microsoft depends upon your support contracts. If you're paying for the highest level, then it's absolutely fantastic.

You get what you pay for. The standard support contract is no worse or better than any other company. I have to say, the few times that I've had to call Microsoft with a priority support call, and the technical account manager gets put on it and keeps on top of the Microsoft side and stuff, then that goes really well. As well as you could expect it to go. I don't have any experience with Microsoft technical support when it comes down to Skype For Business.

Times in the past with respect to Azure issues that I was experiencing, I know that both the premium and the next level down, they were both absolutely fine. I always ended up talking to people that knew their stuff and when it was resolvable, it got resolved.

I definitely recommend the product. If you are in a complex distributed environment, with offices with varying levels of connection and various different bandwidths of connections and latency, that it's worth spending the extra money to get someone who really knows their stuff with respect to unified communications to set up Skype For Business across their organization. Someone that understands the pitfalls, because how your infrastructure is built is key to whether you're going to get a decent and stable experience or not.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. I would give it this rating purely because of the fact that when it gets installed across a complex environment, you really need someone who knows their stuff to install it. But once it's installed properly, it's absolutely fine. It does what it says on the tin.