Last year, Microsoft announced that they would soon retire Skype for Business in favor of Microsoft Teams. Skype for Business has served us well within its design. However, since the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the campus has seen a huge shift in the adoption of Teams, with regular use by more than 1,400 Chico State employees. Teams is more than just instant messaging; it is a persistent, chat-based collaboration platform, with document sharing, video conferencing, and integration with Exchange and Office 365.

Unfortunately, there is not cross-compatibility that allows for messaging between Skype for Business and Teams. This may create gaps in communication between users of the different platforms. It is important to recognize that using Skype for Business and Teams together is not feasible; we must wholly adopt Teams. To this end, Chico State will decommission Skype for Business on December 31, 2020 in favor of Teams.

Although communication between these services is not possible, both services may be run simultaneously to ease transition difficulties. Until December 31, 2020, you may choose to use both services as you and those you communicate with become more comfortable using Teams.

You can begin your transition to Teams by visiting Software Center or Self Service on your campus-managed device, and downloading Teams at any time. Because Teams has more features than Skype for Business, we recommend that you view some of the tutorials that Microsoft has made available. You can find these tutorials at: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/microsoft-teams-video-training-4f108e54-240b-4351-8084-b1089f0d21d7 . Microsoft will also be hosting live training opportunities to help our campus community transition to Teams. Keep an eye out for these sessions in future campus announcements. 

If you are currently using Skype for Business for telephone service, Computing and Communications Services will be reaching out to you shortly to migrate your telephone service to another platform.