Prior to August, when someone in Skype sent a message it showed up in my Teams client. And when I sent someone who had never used Teams a message, it showed up in their S4B client. Which was *exactly* the way I wanted it to work. And then Microsoft rolled some … enhancements. Now there’s an Island mode where messages are delivered to whatever platform originated them. Or a TeamsOnly mode when you’re done. Or a SkypeOnly mode when you’re not using Teams yet. And they’re working on some intermediary modes that will let you use Skype only but Teams for some limited subset of functions. I want what I had before their change!
And I finally figured out how to do it. It’s ugly. And eliminates the nice ad hoc “go try out Teams and use it whenever you want”. In addition to the tenant-level mode, there’s a user-level identity. Set anyone who wants to be a teams user to UpgradeToTeams.
PS O:\> Grant-CsTeamsUpgradePolicy -PolicyName UpgradeToTeams -Identity T05826@example.com
WARNING: Users with this policy will become full Teams-only users. They will no longer be able to use Skype for Business clients, except to join Skype for Business meetings. For details, see http://aka.ms/UpgradeToTeamsPS
Messages sent from both Teams and Skype users to them will appear in their Teams client. Which is great; but, with the tenant in Island mode, they’ll still find themselves needing to log into Skype to talk to someone who is over there. You might be able to change the tenant to SkypeOnly (or the inverse, change the tenant to TeamsOnly and enumerate specific S4B users) but I don’t have a test tenant to, well, test that. But I can set anyone who isn’ta dedicated Teams user to be a SkypeOnly user.
O:\> Grant-CsTeamsUpgradePolicy -PolicyName SfBOnly -Identity T03826@example.com
And now T03826 will always get messages in Skype — even if e05826 sends them from Teams. And e05826 will always get messages in Teams — even if e03826 sends them from Skype. Amazing — I’ve managed to get back to where I was in July!
If the SkypeOnly user logs into Teams, they seem to be able to do anything they want … even sending messages to others in Teams. For the Teams recipient, there will be two listings for the SkypeOnly user. One with a Skype logo which will deliver messages to their Skype client (which also happens if you start a new chat and enter their name). Another, without the Skype logo, will deliver messages to their Teams client. Which they might miss if they’re not using Teams regularly.
