Grovety Inc. – developing products based on Skype for Business

The way we interact with clients is changing. Our obsession with messengers and social networks has made people less willing to communicate on the phone or in person, especially with businesses. We started spending much more time on the Internet. Do you have a question? Google it. Need to buy something? Hello, Internet. Bills to pay? Why stand in line at the bank – long live online-banking! It seems that almost everything can be done online, which really saves you a lot of time.

Skype made a big splash in the communications field when it was released in 2003. The name “Skype” is short for «Sky peer-to-peer», which corresponded with the technology used. Peer-to-peer (abbreviated P2P) implied a direct connection between users.

Today we would like to talk about an extremely useful function of Skype for Business for those who constantly use the mobile app but aren’t always at their desk.

In order to use S4B on the phone, you can simply download the app from the store and log in with your login/password.

As part of a monthly Microsoft Office update Lync turned into Skype for Business in April 2015. It combined the functionality, informational security and manageability of Lync with the Skype interface, as well as expanded functionality.

Let’s see what changed?

What is this article about?
In this article, we would like to talk about what Microsoft offers in its Lync SDK for producing ‘pretty’ interfaces and new Lync-client possibilities.
We will talk in detail about UI Suppression Mode interaction with Lync client, which we had to deal with while developing our own corporate messenger based on Skype for Business. Most im-portantly, I will do my best to describe the constraints we had to face at length.

In Skype for Business

It is not always enough to simply add necessary contacts to ‘Favorites’. It is more convenient to create groups of contacts with a certain name for a specific project (‘X’), department (‘marketing’) or event (‘lunch break’).

In Skype for Business you can add all your important contacts to Favorites. To add a person to Favorites right click a contact’s name and choose ‘Add to favorites’. Skype for Business automatically adds people you contact most often to this group in order to provide you with a quick access, which basically makes your life easier :)

Skype for Business is excellent software for communication and collaboration. However, it is not always that easy to use. It has many functions but if you don’t know for sure, it can be pretty complicated to find them. How often do you read software products instructions? I think we all know the answer to that =). Let’s find out how Skype for Business works.

You open Skype for Business to discuss something with your colleagues, right? You talk to some of them constantly, and just every once in a while to the rest. Let’s start with the last group.
Where do I begin if I need to contact a colleague I haven’t spoken to in a while or maybe even never?

Do you remember we promised you some useful tips? :)

“That may be,” said the Scarecrow, “but you made a promise. You must keep your promises.”
L. Frank Baum. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

There are several ways to show what’s on your screen, or screen sharing as it’s more commonly called, on Skype for Business (Microsoft Lync). The easiest way is to install EasyLy and share your screen with it. Just kidding (although there is a grain of truth in every joke ;)). We’ll explain how EasyLy simplifies the process at the end of this post for those who are interested.

Slack has recently announced its plans for voice and video chat, directly stepping into territory historically dominated by Microsoft Skype and other solutions similar to it. It seems that this is not the only conflict of interest between the global IT giant and one of the most successful Silicon Valley start-ups so far.

According to the TechCrunch IT news portal, Microsoft was considering Slack as a potential acquisition in a deal estimated to be worth $8 billion. These plans never came to fruition, as the idea did not have enough support from within Microsoft. In particular, from Bill Gates and Satya Nadella, the chief executive officer of Microsoft, neither of whom found the idea compelling enough. Gates instead insisted that Skype and its new functions need to be developed more, and that the focus should be on increasing the competitiveness of Skype for Business, the main advocate of Microsoft's interests against the army of corporate communicators, headed by Slack.