Welcome to Office Mechanics coming up on today's show with all the recent
announcements about Skype for Business
formerly Lync, we'll dig deeper into what this means for you. We'll also give you an
early look at the updated Skype for Business
Windows app and if you're an Office 365 or server admin
keep watching cause we're going to show you how you can take control over you UI updates
to manage the experience for users
Office
Office Mechanics
So I’m joined by BJ Haberkorn from the Skype team. Welcome.
Hey thanks Jeremy. It's great to be here to give
everyone an early look at some of what's coming with Skype for Business
This is what people formerly knew as Lync, right?
Yeah that's right
Skype for Business is the next version of Lync with new clients
updates to the Office 365 service and a new server.
we've got new features in each of those
on the server for example we added
new high availability options including SQL server alwayson support
Great stuff. So, why don't we we start with the Windows client the desktop app
for Skype for Business and give us a quick view that.
Yeah I'd love to
we have a tech preview out now. Some other folks here may have tried it out
this new Windows client that we'll show it has all the capabilities of Lync
for users and for admins but we changed the user interface
it's really the best of Skype and Lync we're taking advantage of the
familiarity of hundreds of millions of people who use Skype every month
to make Skype for Business really easy to adopt
You really see it if you get into a live call. Here I'm showing a live video call
and it looks just like Skype although this is Skype for Business
at the bottom you have what our designers like to call the four
core controls these are things you just use over and over again
so the front and center
starting and stopping video, muting
Here, the sharing or presenting option, here's a place where you see that
we've kept everything that Lync had as well
I can share my desktop I can share one program
I can upload and share a PowerPoint file there are few other places here
where you can see
Lync all the Lync feature set. In fact we took the opportunity to improve
discoverability of some of the features, acting on some other feedback from
maybe some other folks that are online with us today. For example
in Lync lots of customers using it as their phone system and they told us
we'd like the call controls to be easier to find.
So they're accessible right from call window
you know, here you can see the dialpad, I can transfer
to another number, I can switch between devices if I use more than one.
Now of course we didn't change just the active call window
let me minimize this I'll show you a couple other things. The first is what I minimize
you see the Skype call monitor comes up
so if I go and I bring any other app up I've always got the reminder
and I've got the communications, they're handy
and I don't forget that I'm talking to you
The other thing, if you look at just the main UI you'll see a mix of
Skype and Lync. You know from a Lync perspective I still got the different
tabs, my contact list
my recent conversations, a dial pad, my upcoming meetings
you know in my contact list itself, you know here again these are the same contacts
I had in Lync. I can pick any contact and start a conversation from there
One of the things that's really great is we've added video connectivity
to Skype users and now you can connect to the entire Skype network
anyone on Skype in addition we added directory search
right into the Skype for business client. So, I want to show you this
I'll pick the name of the producer
of Office Mechanics and I'll just show you how this works
Here I am searching my corporate directory but you can see if I
click on the Skype directory tab, I'm now searching all the people in Skype
they're quite a few Allees you'll see at the bottom it says
too many matches to show them on one screen
so actually it's a progressive search. What I'll do is I'll
add her first name and you'll see it's narrowing down a bit
and actually we're down to four. The top one is actually Celine.
we talked to her about it before, the second one is her mom
who is in Great Britain
the other two, you can see there's a woman in france with the same name
and I could search further, I could add location to narrow it further
That's really great to see. So I know these are just the Windows desktop apps but
when will this release and what about the mobile apps?
Yeah the Windows desktop as we mentioned
tech preview now, were actually gonna put this into the
April update of Office 2013. So not only Office 2016 but Office 2013
we're going add it to iOS and Android over the next few months
That's really important because right now if you're managing
Office 365 ProPlus or using
a new Skype for Business Server in the future that April update is going to come
And it's actually
hit users on patch Tuesday for April but they're a couple things that you can do
right to take control over that?
Yeah that's absolutely right Jeremy. We think most people are going to want to
use this new UI
but we give administrators the ability to control it
with switches to go back to actually to the Lync UI within this very client.
So there is a couple ways that we can manage those updates for Office 365
ProPlus our Office 365 business we can pause updates for up to 12 months
so for example, if you want to stay on the March build, you can do that
but there's even a more elegant way now. You can use PowerShell to actually pause
the updates for the Skype for Business online service only
what that means you'll run on a simple script in cmdlet against your tenant
Let me see how that works. So in my case I have a
I have a powershell script that i've built, a very simple one with about
four lines and that's basically going to run a few
a few commands to log me into the service, once I've done that
run that as administrator, that will actually give me server
rights in order to administer the service. Just type my password in there.
And now I'm in and now I can run the one cmdlet that I need here in order to
turn off
the updated Skype for Business client UI. Now that's going to revert me back to
the Lynk UI look and feel.
Yeah so, let's take a look at what happens. I'm gonna close Skype for Business
And I'm gonna restart it, let me close it first
Now you'll see
when I restart it right from that opening splash it already tells you that it's Lync
and once I sign-in you'll see that the UI is back to Lync with the
square pictures it's a dead giveaway right there. So the client itself has
both UIs in it and that policy switch lets you pick
between which one your users will see.
This is really important if you want to
take control over that updated look and feel. Maybe have some time to communicate
out to end users
or test the changes. And all this is coming again, importantly, in the April update
for all Office 2013 builds including Office 365 ProPlus
Let's take a look at what's coming on the time line
Yeah the tech preview is already out
and I hope some of you have tried it. In April on patch Tuesday
this will go generally available and along with that will start changing
the online service new branding in the admin portal
So you're going to see all the Lync branding, the strings go away and be replaced the Skype for Business right
That's absolutely right and then in May on May 1st the Skype for Business Server
goes production and you can download it
in the Download Center.
What I'm really excited about is what's coming this summer
because I got a couple big announcements there, right?
Yeah, really big things coming here, Enterprise Voice in the cloud which has
two pieces
one is the feature set that you need to eliminate PBX phones and PBX systems
for users the other is the ability to call phone numbers worldwide make and
receive phone calls. We'll do a tech preview this summer
in the US and we'll get to general availability by end of year
the other thing here is actually some big news on the hardware side
both from Microsoft and from Polycom one of our strategic partners
Polycom at the Enterprise Connect Show in March announced the whole family a devices
purpose-built for Skype for Business called Polycom RoundTable
and what these do is these allow you to take any meeting room
and turn it into a Skype for Business meeting room. The most exciting thing they
showed was something called the Polycom 100
fairly low-cost device and you can connect to existing
projectors and displays and you go from having a meeting room that just stand
alone to a Skype for Business one
And beyond that even on the Surface hub we're doing somethings there too, right?
Yeah the surface Hub. We've now shown it twice both at Enterprise Connect in March
and back at the Windows 10 event in January and it's a great device for
in-person collaboration but it's got a built-in Skype for Business
meeting experience as well so really I think for a bunch of the new meeting
scenarios people are going to want to use that Skype
integration on Surface Hub
and some related news that's really great that's coming along
with ExpressRoute updates that we have right now
you can use ExpressRoute to connect a private are managed when
directly into Azure services and what's coming in Q3 in 2015 you'll be able to
directly connect to
Office 365 almost like it's a node on your own WAN
but even better for that from a Skype for Business perspective is we're going to
be making enhancements to that service so we can have better
real-time media been connected through that private WAN right to
Office 365
and Azure ExpressRoute
Yeah this one is really important
for real time media you want the ability to manage the experience end-to-end
One of the things we'll do with the carrier partners working on ExpressRoute
is enable quality of service markings to go end-to-end, for voice, for video
for sharing, which allows you to ensure a great experience for people
using Skype for Business
So lot's of great exciting news coming but what do I do now to get prepared for all
these changes
Yeah there are two big things, first if you have a download the tech preview
download it try it out have some here people try it out. You know in parallel we
made a bunch of resources available
these are resources to help you deploy and train your users
so go check those out and get ready for patch Tuesday coming in April
And of course stay up to date with all the news be sure to check out the Office blog
daily and tune in on Wednesdays or as news breaks for Office Mechanics, thanks for watching
and goodbye for now.
Office Mechanics
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