Teams/Skype Interoperability has Been Delayed

One of the big feature updates coming to Teams that many have been waiting for is the ability to chat with Skype contacts inside the Teams application. Microsoft stated that this feature would be available by the end of April but that timeline has come and gone.

The company has posted a new message to its admin center and says that the initial feedback from the early adopters was sub-optimal. Because of this, the company is delaying the rollout completion to the end of June as they make changes to the code that is enabling the federation.

This isn’t a significant delay but for those who are waiting for the functionality, like myself, it is a bit frustrating. That being said, if the functionality is riddled with bugs, waiting another month or two isn’t nearly as bad as having a poor user experience.

Teams/Skype federation began rolling out in March of 2020 and initially, I did have some access to the feature. What was odd, and is potentially a reason for the delay, is that to find my account when searching inside of Teams, you had to search for the original account I used to sign up for MSN messenger with, pre-Skype merger.

Yes, you read that correctly. My Skype username, which is now my MSA, after migrating it from my old MSN credentials, would not surface my account. Searching for the username I used, about a decade ago, for my MSN account would locate my Skype name; hopefully, this is one of the issues Microsoft is updating.

For now, you will need to continue to wait for the update to roll out but with a new date for the end of June, you won’t need to wait too much longer.