Teams and Skype interoperability delayed to the end of June

Initial feedback from the early rings suggests there is still some work to complete on the code

Dev Kundaliya
21 May 2020

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Microsoft has pushed the rollout of the Teams/Skype interoperability to the end of the next month.

The software giant was earlier expected to begin rolling out the feature in March and make it available to all Microsoft Teams users by the end of April. But, the company changed the rollout timelines to May, which was also reflected in its updated Microsoft 365 Roadmap.

The company has now posted an update on the Microsoft 365 admin centre stating that the initial feedback from the early rings suggests that there is still some work to complete on the code to enable the interoperability feature.

"Based on learnings from our early rings, we have made the decision to make additional changes to the code, which have delayed the rollout," the message states.

"Thank you for your patience. Your Teams and Skype for consumers users will soon be able to chat and make Voice over IP (VoIP) calls to one another."

The delay clear suggests that Microsoft wants to ensure that the interoperability feature is not rolled out with flawed code, degrading the user experience.

It is also worth noting that Microsoft has not yet updated its Roadmap to reflect the new timeline, and it still shows that the "General availability" of the new feature is expected in May 2020.

Skype/Teams interoperability, when rolled out, would enable Teams users to chat with their Skype contacts from inside the Teams application. But the feature, when finally ready, won't be available for all Microsoft Teams users. It would need to be manually enabled by Office 365 admins in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.

This much-anticipated feature will come at a time when Microsoft Teams has more daily active users than Skype.

The company said last month that Teams usage had increased to more than 75 million daily active users, up 70 per cent from 19 March. Skype, in comparison, has 40 million daily active users.

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced a variety of new features to its Teams platform to improve IT admins' ability to manage apps and to enhance end users' experience.

Some new features being rolled out for Teams include customisable extensions for software apps, integration of apps like Bookings, tools for building bots that work with Teams, among others.