Microsoft announce that Kaizala will retire on 31 August, 2023. Unsurprisingly, the recommendation is for customers to move to Teams and all Kaizala Pro capabilities are already in Teams.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3RaB9YU, with useful links for customers who need to make the Kaizala to Teams transition.
Microsoft introduce Teams Essentials, a standalone Teams offering aimed at small businesses.
It’s $4 per user per month available through CSP partners or directly from Microsoft’s website and allows unlimited group meetings for up to 30 hours with up to 300 participants.
This site is useful for seeing how Teams Essentials compares to other plans aimed at smaller businesses such as Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Standard: https://bit.ly/31LrCSX.
Find the Teams Essentials announcement here: https://bit.ly/3pF2plr, and resources for partners selling Teams solutions here: https://bit.ly/3rJOSvB.
Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard and Premium Device SLs are added to the October 2020 Product Terms document.
Microsoft announced these products back in July 2020 when the Meeting Room licence was rebranded as the Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard offering, retaining its price of $15 per device per month, and the Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium offering was launched in certain countries for $50 per device per month.
This new offering contains all the licences included with Teams Rooms Standard (Teams, Skype for Business Online, Intune) and also incorporates a remote management service where Microsoft manage and monitor Microsoft Teams Rooms.
Find the original announcement here: https://bit.ly/39ACu6j and a useful product FAQ here: https://bit.ly/34jOaYA.
Microsoft announce two new promotional offers for Microsoft Teams, currently available for EA customers with existing paid-for Teams licences.
The first offer is free Audio Conferencing licences until the end of the enrolment, and the second is a 35% discount on the new Advanced Communications offering. Both offers are available until 31 January, 2021.
There will be corresponding offers available through CSP and Web Direct later in the year.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/33NIFkN.
Microsoft announce that Advanced Communications is available from August 1, 2020.
This adds a new set of capabilities for Teams, costs $12 per user per month and may be added on to any licence that includes the Teams service.
It supports large meetings enhancing the standard Teams limits from 10,000 to 20,000 attendees, 15 to 50 concurrent events, and event durations from 4 to 16 hours. Note that these limits are already uplifted for all Teams users until 1 October, 2020 – find details of that here: https://bit.ly/3lf2fON.
It also supports integration with ISV compliance recording and contact centre solutions, and will support custom branded meeting lobbies in the near future.
Find details of what’s included here: https://bit.ly/31r24b8, the announcement itself here: https://bit.ly/3hsYl2l, and a useful FAQ here: https://bit.ly/34vzoQr.
Priority notifications for Teams grants users the ability to continually send notifications that repeat every two minutes for up to 20 minutes on all messages marked as urgent. Originally, priority notifications were available as a promotion to all Teams users until 1 April 2020, but this has been extended until the second half of 2020 to enable all users to connect urgently with their colleagues during the coronavirus pandemic.
Find the announcement here:Â https://bit.ly/2V8flm5, and learn how to use priority notifications here:Â https://bit.ly/3cc9lOL.
Microsoft announce that Skype for Business Online will be retired on 31 July 2021. Customers will be migrated to Teams between now and then, and starting 1 September 2019 new Office 365 customers will be onboarded directly to Teams. It’s worth noting that this announcement doesn’t affect either the Skype Consumer service or Skype for Business Server. You can find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/2KreuaK with further details, including customer information on migrating to Teams. There’s also a link to Forrester’s whitepaper: “The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Teams”, or find it here: http://bit.ly/33oWVPW.
Microsoft announce at Inspire that they’re launching a trial of Teams in CSP from 1st August, 2019. It’s aimed at customers who have yet to see the value of the cloud, or who are perhaps using a standalone service such as Exchange Online.
Watch the 20-minute session that covers this new offer here: http://bit.ly/2Z9s0o6, with this particular slide at 13:13.
Microsoft Kaizala is a simple and secure mobile chat app for work – think the WhatsApp you know with a whole load of features added for businesses.
If you’re new to the world of Kaizala you can download the free mobile app for your iPhone or Android phone, and there’s a great interactive demo to get you started here: http://bit.ly/2X27wN4.
Kaizala Pro adds additional management and reporting features and you can see a summary of these additional features at the bottom of this page: http://bit.ly/2X3mVwI. A recent announcement from Microsoft confirms that Kaizala Pro is rolling out globally from April 2019 and is included in Office 365 F1, E1, E3, E5, Business Essentials, and Business Premium licences.
We can also expect Kaizala functionality integrated into Teams in the next 12-18 months. Find that announcement here: http://bit.ly/2EzHp92.
Skype for Business Online features and functionality are moving into Microsoft Teams. From a licensing perspective, additional services such as Audio Conferencing and Phone System will continue to be Add-on licences, and from a technical perspective from 1st October, 2018 new Office 365 customers with less than 500 seats will be onboarded to Microsoft Teams and will have no access to Skype for Business Online.
This is a useful FAQ with lots of information on the whole Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams upgrade topic: http://bit.ly/2pL5Rwz.