Skypexit – Why and How to Transit from Skype to Teams

Our Swedish colleague, Microsoft MVP Mårten Hellebro spoke last month at the Microsoft Ignite The Tour Event at Stockholm. He had come up with this clever word of Skypexit and I immediately fell in love with this word. I might use this word from now on but will always remember to give credits of it to Mårten. This one word tells a lot.

Mårten’s session on the first day wrapped up perfectly the story of Why and How to Transit from Skype to Teams as soon as possible is so important. He shared migration scenarios for the exit and best practices for running Teams and Skype in parallel, in so called Islands Mode with the aim of eventually reach Teams only mode.

Why is it so important to let go of Skype and take on Teams? Well first, Teams is built on new technology in Azure. Secondly, development of Skype has ended. Teams has most of the features Skype has and to be honest, do we really need all the same features, as the Modern Way of Working brings us new ways to communicate and collaborate anyway. This picture wraps up well the rapid change in technology.

I do remember Lync, but my youngest colleagues have never even heard about it. We must keep in mind, that the younger generation wants the latest and greatest tools available. We, seniors, can let go of old tools, adopt new tools and be as productive and efficient as others, or even more productive and efficient as we have the years and years of expertise that we have gained.

Microsoft Ignite The Tour Stockholm

An IT Team member from Metso Corporation, Heli Stapels and myself took the time and attended this two-day event in Stockholm. Stockholm was the closest city of the Tour, which includes 16 other cities by the way, and it was very convenient, cheap and easy to attend the World Class Event like this.

It has been few years since I have attended a Microsoft Event and the Microsoft Events App was a new and such a handy tool: with the App we were able to create My Conference Learning Path, a schedule with chosen sessions by attendees individually. It turned out to be a perfect tool for Heli and me, as we did not remember which sessions we had chosen. With the App, we quickly checked weather we were in the same session or not.

Kaisa Jussila ja Heli Stapels

The Event had various categories and topics to choose from. I chose mainly Teams related events as a “Teams Power User” wanting to learn more and Heli chose more widely anything from SharePoint and O/M365 to Teams. In the Event like this, with many thousand attendees, you do not want to call or chat to ask where the other one is – you want to be able to tell the session room number.

We also learned for example about Microsoft Teams Data Residency and Security, Governance, Compliance and Teams logical architecture. We also got a good reminder of how to make your Teams Adoption successful and why it is so important to prepare your Admin team to gain full engagement to ensure the best possible support for the End Users. During the sessions, both Heli and I were smiling as Metso has rolled out Teams for the whole global organization in short time with great success of Adoption.

Annual Microsoft Ignite Event usually is held after summer holidays/end of the year and the Tour was to our knowledge a first of a kind. Next year, hopefully location is Helsinki, but if not, we do hope to see some Finns on the stage. We have great stories to share, excellent Experts and industry leader Consultants and Trainers to offer as speakers. And as we at Sulava are open to global projects too, networking with international attendants is very welcomed. Next Microsoft Ignite will take place from November 4th to November 8th in Florida.

To sum up my learning from the Event: Target to Teams only Mode as soon as possible! Do this with Microsoft Partner, plan and schedule it well and do it as an Organic onboarding driven by your users. This way your End Users will get the human approach to new technology and the support they need.

Teams adoption is not an IT project, it is a Change Management Project of New Ways of Working. IT can own and drive the project, but Communications and Training representatives must be taken onboard from the start. The tour is ending with sold out last city, Mumbai. Looking forward to the Tour of 2020!