Skype for Business will switch to Teams telephony

By Marianne Fuglsang Welling Farsinsen, AAU Communication and Public Affairs. Photo: AAU photo

Many employees currently use Skype for Business for phone calls, but from 20th March it will instead be Teams that will automatically handle incoming calls. This is also where all activity that used to take place in Skype for Business will take place in the future.

Employees who have an AAU mobile subscription for their mobile phone with Telenor will not experience any changes, except if calls to Skype for Business are forwarded to the mobile phone, then this setting will have to be made again in Teams.

What does this mean for me?

The switch from Skype for Business to Teams telephony will take place on the 19th of March 2024 from 16:30 onwards. From the morning of 20 March 2024, employees will therefore use Teams instead of Skype for Business to receive incoming calls and other activities. All incoming calls from the morning of the 20th of March will automatically be channelled into AAU employees' Teams.

During the actual period of the move, telephony via Skype for Business and Teams may be unstable. ITS therefore recommends that any scheduled phone calls/meetings in the period from 19th March at 16:30 to 20th March at 8:00 are moved to either before 19th March at 16:30 or after 20th March at 8:00.

"We try to make the switch to Teams telephony as smooth as possible for all employees. We take care of everything that can be moved automatically from an employee's Skype for Business account to Teams. From the moment the switch is made, Skype for Business will be available for a month so that employees have the opportunity to retrieve, for example, contact groups that they have created manually. Likewise, already scheduled meetings and conference calls in Skype for Business can be held as planned during a transition period until 20th April 2024, after which Skype for Business will be closed for all AAU activity," says Per Bach, Head of Infrastructure and Support, ITS.

If employees today have forwarded Skype for Business calls to an AAU mobile subscription on their mobile phones, this setting must be made again from Teams.

All instructions for Teams telephony can be found at https://www.its.aau.dk/vejledninger/from-skype-for-business-to-ms-teams

More benefits of Teams telephony

The reason for switching from telephony via Skype for Business to Teams telephony is that Microsoft is no longer developing new and better features or updates for Skype for Business, as the focus is instead on developing and improving the security of the telephony part of Teams. As AAU already uses the Microsoft 365 platform for all employees, it also provides better integration between meetings, file sharing and telephony to provide a single platform.