Life is busy and filled with too many options. Staying connected, with all this noise, can sometimes be challenging. And in a world of choice, having a familiar place to share with the people who are closest to you, can go a long way. Today, we are introducing the next generation of Skype to make experiencing life together, every day, simpler.
Rebuilt from the ground up, the new Skype vastly improves the ways you can connect with your favorite people and, of course, chatting is front and center. We’ve made group chats more lively, expressive, and—most importantly—personalized, so you can chat the way you want. With the new Skype, you’ll have countless ways to share life’s moments together, every day. Wherever life takes you, Skype allows you to seamlessly create, play, share, and do more with the people you care about most.
Your everyday place for personal connections
We want to help you deepen connections within your personal network. There’s only one of you in this world, so now you can show-off your personal style by customizing Skype with your favorite colors. When in a conversation, you should always make sure your voice is heard, or more specifically, your emoticon is seen! By simply tapping on the reaction icon next to any message or video call, you can now easily express how you feel at any time.
And the next time you’re on an adventure exploring the world (or relaxing poolside on a deserved break), share your experience with Skype’s new feature: Highlights. Highlights lets you create a highlight reel of your day with photos and videos, so you can share everyday moments. To post a Highlight, swipe to access your camera, take a photo or video, then post it to your Highlights or send it directly to your contacts or groups. Once you post a Highlight, your friends and family can react to it with emoticons or by jumping into a conversation. The new Skype is your canvas, and now you’re free to share in more expressive ways with your closest friends, family and groups.
Your one place to share, chat, and explore
Of course, relationships go beyond simple conversations. With the new Skype, it’s even easier to turn talk into action with group conversations, add-ins, and bots*. The new “Find” panel takes center stage, and makes Skype infinitely searchable. Looking for seats to a big game? Pull ticket pricing and seating options directly into the chat with the StubHub bot. Trying to find the perfect recipe for the brunch you’re hosting? Discover the latest trends with the BigOven add-in and learn the many ways you can make that avocado toast. Planning a weekend getaway with old friends? Chat with the Expedia bot to check flight times and pricing. And that’s just the start. New add-ins and bots will continue to be added, making your Skype experience even more rich and robust. With the ability to connect to your favorite businesses and brands from within the app, the simplest conversations can pave the way to lasting memories.
Available everywhere, so you can go anywhere
We’re really excited to share this new Skype with you. We think it’s the best Skype we’ve ever built—inside and out—and it’s been designed to make it easier for you to use for your everyday communications. Now, Skype can be with you for all life’s moments, no matter where the world takes you—on your favorite devices, to smart speakers, and beyond.
Skype has been a part of your life since 2003. Yet, our promise to you has always stayed the same: to help you create meaningful connections, regardless of the distance, in new, simple and intuitive ways. And with the new Skype we’re closer than ever to bringing your world together.
Today, we begin rolling out the new Skype worldwide, coming first to mobile and then to desktop. It will be available first on Android devices, releasing gradually over the coming weeks, followed by the new version for iPhone. Versions for Windows and Mac will be released over the next few months.
Visit the new Skype.com feature page to learn more and check out the new features in the videos below. For questions, please visit the FAQs. We look forward to hearing your feedback in our Community!
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At last year’s Microsoft Build conference, Satya Nadella announced Skype’s leap into the world of conversational computing, officially opening up the Skype platform with the debut of Skype chat bots—intelligent helpers you can add directly into your chats to make life more productive and fun.
We’ve learned a lot in the past year, and have been taking feedback from our great bot partners, hackathons, and online communities to make Skype the best possible experience for both consumers and developers.
This year at Microsoft Build 2017, we are thrilled to take things even further, evolving Skype as a platform for bots to a fully extensible and open platform for developers to integrate their technologies in order to build great conversational experiences.
What’s New
Evolve – Skype Bots are evolving: This time last year, we announced the first preview chat and calling bots available on Skype. Since then, the capabilities and intelligent APIs have evolved tremendously to enable a blend of natural language and rich GUI interactions. Bots can chat in both 1:1 and group conversations, and can use video and audio cards with quick actions to guide the conversation. And today we announced our real-time video SDK preview for enabling interactive video experiences.
Expand – Talking video bots: These new bots can now be a direct participant in 1:1 or group Skype video calls using the real-time media platform for bots being released in preview. This platform provides real-time, voice and video streams of a Skype call which allows developers to build personal, immersive communications experiences with services and brands. Developers can now use their creative talents to create engaging, entertainment, and educational assistance bots with rich and interactive media content built into the experience.
Extend – You can now build your service directly into Skype: In the next few months we’ll be rolling out Skype Add-ins, a new feature to make it easier for developers to integrate their applications into 1:1 and group conversations. Developers can build on their existing web investments and provide consumers unique ways of bringing experiences into their Skype conversations without leaving the app.
Embed – Bring Skype chat to any website:Another new feature, Skype Web Control, lets developers bring the Skype chat canvas onto any website with only two lines of code. Web Control works with both bots and real Skype accounts, meaning you can easily chat with a bot, business, or individual from any web-control enabled website without needing to sign into Skype. And if you are a business owner or independent developer, you can easily use web control to plug your relevant Skype chat window into Bing to maximize exposure.
Monetize – Bot Payments: Now, as a developer, you can easily enable payments in your bot through the Microsoft Bot Framework, allowing consumers to make purchases directly in a Skype Bot chat, with the security of Microsoft Checkout, giving consumers the power to purchase directly through a bot without switching apps.
Grow – More surfaces for Skype: We’re also happy to share that Skype calling will be available on the Harmon Kardon Invoke, with voice activated commands that enable users to call individual contacts, businesses, or even communicate directly with talking bots, meaning your Skype experience can extend further than ever before. Stay tuned for more to come in this space in the near future!
This past year has been a fantastic learning experience for all of us as Skype and we strive to enable the best conversational experiences that help people be more connected to the things they care about, and more productive in their daily lives. We’re excited to continue to evolve the Skype platform into the best canvas for communication powered experiences. In addition to building more intelligent bots, developers can now also extend the power of the Skype canvas with Add-ins and even embed Skype directly on their website. Whatever your scenario, we want to help developers create the optimal experience across the entirety of a conversations, empowering them to surprise and delight consumers in the process.
Office 365 is a universal toolkit for collaboration with more than 85 million monthly active users, designed to address the unique workstyle of every group. Through integration with Outlook for email, SharePoint for intelligent content management, Yammer for networking across the organization, and Microsoft Teams for high-velocity, chat-based teamwork—Skype for Business is the backbone for enterprise voice and video meetings in Office 365.
As communication and collaboration become increasingly vital to the way work gets done, customers are turning to Skype for Business in Office 365 for all of their conferencing and calling needs. People around the globe conduct over one billion meetings per year on the Skype network, and usage of Skype for Business Online has doubled in the last year.
Today, as the annual unified communications industry conference Enterprise Connect kicks off in Orlando, we’re pleased to announce several new enhancements and partner solutions for Skype for Business in Office 365, which advance our goal of putting communication at the heart of productivity with Skype:
Availability of Auto Attendant and Call Queues, two new calling features in Skype for Business Cloud PBX.
Preview of the new Skype for Business Call Analytics dashboard, which provides IT admins with greater visibility to identify and address call issues.
New meeting room solutions from our partners, including Polycom RealConnect for Office 365, which enables customers to connect existing video conferencing devices to Skype for Business Online meetings; and the new Crestron SR for Skype Room Systems, which seamlessly integrates with the Crestron control and AV systems.
Availability of Enghouse Interactive’s TouchPoint Attendant, the first attendant console for Skype for Business Online.
“Skype for Business Online is becoming part of our DNA.” —Menakshi Sehwani, regional IT business partner for J. Walter Thompson Europe
A complete, enterprise-grade communications solution
This week, we’re releasing Auto Attendant and Call Queues, two new advanced calling features in Skype for Business Cloud PBX. Auto Attendant provides an automated system to answer and route inbound calls using dial pad inputs and speech recognition. Call Queues enable incoming calls to be routed to the next available live attendant in the order they are received.
This continues the rapid innovation over the past six months we have released into the service including:
Expanding PSTN Conferencing to more than 90 countries with dial-out to 180 countries.
Extending PSTN Calling to France, Spain and the UK, with preview currently available in Netherlands.
Enabling thousands of customers with hybrid deployments.
Skype for Business Server Cloud Connector edition to connect their on-premises telephony assets to our cloud voice solution.
With Skype for Business, companies can replace their legacy meeting and phone systems, and enable their employees to join meetings, as well as to make, receive and manage calls right within Office 365—all on any device. Skype for Business Cloud PBX also provides central management within the Office 365 admin console, making it seamless for IT admins to manage communications alongside email, content and collaboration.
Simplified manageability and control for IT
Today, we are also announcing a preview of Skype for Business Online Call Analytics—a new dashboard in the Office 365 admin console that gives IT admins greater visibility to identify and address user call issues, such as network issues or headset problems. Customers tell us some of the greatest benefits of moving their communications to the cloud are the ability to consolidate all their meeting and calling systems into a single solution and streamline provisioning and administration. Customers have also asked for more visibility into calling data to help address user support inquiries. Call Analytics provides rich telemetry data in real-time to help IT admins troubleshoot issues and improve the user experience.
In addition to investing in IT management capabilities like the Call Analytics dashboard, we also released new authentication capabilities to enhance security in Skype for Business Online, including multi-factor authentication for PowerShell, certificate-based authentication, and custom policies for client conferencing and mobility.
“We want IT at Henkel to be an enabler for the digital world of the future,
and with features like Cloud PBX in Skype for Business, we live up to that role.” —Markus Petrak, corporate director of Integrated Business Solutions for Henkel
Making meeting rooms more effective
For meetings to be as effective and engaging as possible for all participants—no matter their location—groups need web and video conferencing with features like screen sharing, IM and whiteboarding. At the same time, organizations want to take advantage of the full Skype for Business experience while leveraging their existing conferencing assets. Today, Polycom announced their RealConnect for Office 365 video interoperability cloud service will be generally available in North America in April. The RealConnect service enables customers to connect existing videoconferencing (VTC) devices to Skype for Business Online, at a low cost of ownership, and with ease of provisioning for IT and simplicity for users.
“Polycom RealConnect for Office 365 simplifies the video world by connecting Skype for Business online users with those using other video systems,” said Mary McDowell, Polycom CEO. “This cloud service protects customers’ investments in existing video systems as it allows these users to join a Skype for Business meeting with a single click.”
In addition, this week Crestron is introducing its SR for Skype Rooms Systems solution. As a next-generation Skype Room System, the Crestron SR will deliver a full native Skype for Business experience and has been designed from the ground up to seamlessly integrate with the Crestron control and AV systems. These Skype Rooms System solutions transform conference rooms of all sizes by providing rich audio and HD video and content sharing in the room. Remote participants have quick and easy join-meeting functionality and the ability to make phone calls. Customers are already seeing benefits from the Logitech SmartDock that was shipped in October of 2016.
“User adoption is critical for our IT success, and Logitech SmartDock with
Skype Room Systems makes it easy to collaborate over video.
The fact that it is highly affordable enables us to light up multiple rooms
for the price of a single traditional video conference room.” —Franzuha Byrd, director of IT for Morgan Franklin Consulting
Business solutions on Skype for Business
Just as Skype for Business powers communication across Office 365, our partners and customers are taking advantage of Skype for Business APIs and SDKs to develop custom apps that bring real-time communications capabilities into line of business applications and enterprise solutions.
From Enghouse, which is using Skype for Business to more efficiently route inbound customer calls with its new attendant console, to Smartsheet, which has incorporated Skype for Business into their collaborative work management platform, companies are making Skype for Business the backbone of custom communications scenarios.
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What the coming educational VR revolution teaches us about the tech’s future
Imagine the following scenario: A fifth-grade science class has just begun and the teacher makes a surprise announcement — today the students will be dissecting a frog.
I’m sure you remember dissecting a frog as a kid — the sour-pickle odor of formaldehyde, the sharp scalpels slicing into rubbery skin. You don’t have to be an animal rights activist to grimace a bit thinking about it.
But here comes the paradox. In this scenario, like-minded fifth-graders who are queasy about cutting open animals are excited to participate in this dissection. Indeed, no animal was harmed when the specimens were collected. What’s more, the teacher promises the students that they won’t have to clean up a messy station afterward.
How? Thanks to the paradigm-shifting creations of zSpace, an educational VR/AR company, students can harmlessly dissect an animal on an interactive screen known as the zSpace 200. Students wear a special pair of glasses equipped with sensors and use a stylus that allows them to engage with a virtual image that can be turned or even disassembled.
By importing VR/AR into the classroom, one minute students can explore the anatomy and organs of an animal without harming it, and the very next build and test circuits or set up experiments that test Newton’s laws.
For young students who have been inundated by tech in almost every other domain of their lives, this form of learning comes naturally.
“Kids say, ‘Well of course it should be like this.’ They believe they should be able to reach into a screen, grab something, pull it out, and interact with it,” said Dave Chavez, chief technology officer of zSpace.
The next step in the democratization of knowledge is VR.
As for parents (and the rest of us), we continue to adopt the tech slowly. In 2016, only 6 percent of Americans will own a VR headset. While this can be attributed to cost and other barriers to entry that are being knocked down as the technology evolves, learning more about how VR is being used to reshape student engagement and communication teaches us more about how it will soon shape our digital experiences by serving as a conduit for previously impossible connections.
“Virtual reality puts people first,” said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg after his recent demo onstage at Oculus’ Connect Conference. “It’s all about who you’re with. Once you’re in there, you can do anything you want together — travel to Mars, play games, fight with swords, watch movies or teleport home to see your family. You have an environment where you can experience anything.”
The democratization of experiences
Throughout history, monumental developments have expanded society’s access to education. In the early first millennium BCE, the first written alphabets appeared and provided an easy medium for recording information relevant to the common good, whether it be a religious text or a business transaction.
The following centuries witnessed the creation of books and libraries, which then allowed for written content to be stored and accessed by more than just the super-wealthy.
Johannes Guttenberg’s invention of the moveable-type printing press in the 1450s made it even cheaper and more efficient to publish and purchase books on subjects like philosophy, mathematics and commerce. In the 20th century, the computer and internet transformed educational access more than any other past advancement, democratizing the world’s collective knowledge to anyone with a connection.
A student’s capacity to discover and learn will no longer be limited to the environment around them.
The next step in the democratization of knowledge is VR. This emerging educational platform will make it possible for students to virtually visit museums in other continents, communicate in virtual learning spaces with fellow students in Johannesburg, Beijing or Sydney or attend a lecture at a prestigious university thousands of miles away. It can not be overstated how important this is for the future of education — a student’s capacity to discover and learn will no longer be limited to the environment around them.
From a UNICEF Teacher’s Handbook based on facilitating the education of children around the world:
“Children learn best from experience. Children learn by doing, using their senses, exploring their environment of people, things, places and events. They learn from first-hand and concrete experiences as well as vicarious forms of experiences. Children do not learn as effectively when they are passive. Active engagement with things and ideas promotes mental activity that helps students retain new learning and integrate it with what they already know. If it is not possible to always provide concrete, first-hand experiences for the student, efforts must always be exerted so that the student will be able to understand the concept in a clear and concrete way.”
With educational VR, it will always be possible to provide concrete first-hand experiences. While the current cost of adoption is too high for VR to reach under-funded schools, it will eventually decrease, as is almost always the case with new technologies. In the time that it takes, I’d bet the world becomes a fully connected place.
The internet democratized knowledge, VR will democratize experiences. It will continue to shrink an increasingly globalized world and facilitate better communication and collaboration across physical spaces. It will be the next innovation in the transmission of knowledge that not only shapes how we learn, but how we conduct business and maintain relationships with our friends, family and like-minded people, wherever they may be.
How VR enhances communication and collaboration
Increasingly, the success of businesses hinges on their ability to communicate and collaborate.
VR is the perfect medium for achieving these ends. Because VR will become a more and more integral part of the business world, the earlier students are exposed to non-gaming uses of VR, the more prepared they will be to interact in the virtual work spaces of tomorrow.
Some students learn best by hearing, others by seeing. With VR, you get the best of both. Educational visionaries that develop educational VR hardware and software are not just improving learning; they are rethinking it altogether.
One of the features that distinguishes the aforementioned zSpace 200 from other VR educational technologies is that students can easily collaborate and speak with one another while using their VR computer.
“The most profound thing I’ve ever heard a teacher say is that many technologies build a barrier between us and the kids but this seems not to,” said Chavez.
Far too often, VR is mistaken to be a solitary, lonely experience.
But even VR platforms that place the user in virtual worlds are not necessarily isolating experiences. Immersive VR Education, a developer headquartered in Ireland, has created a social learning platform called Engage. Engage gives educators the tools to create their own lessons and immersive experiences, all without needing to commit a line of code. Inside these immersive lessons, teachers and students can connect and use collaborative tools like an interactive whiteboard.
“In virtual reality when the avatar is two feet away from you, it really feels like they are two feet away from you,” said David Whelan, CEO of Immersive VR Education.
Whether inside the Coliseum or a hospital ER room, Engage allows educators to transport their classroom to wherever it is most relevant to the students.
“People learn best through experiences or doing tasks themselves. So if you are teaching, say, Aircraft maintenance and you are working on a Boeing engine. [In VR] You can bring in an engine, you can bring in parts, and have 4 or 5 students come in and collaborate in the virtual space. You [the educator] can say, ‘Alright guys you have 45 minutes to put this engine together and the students can lift parts that may weigh 4 or 5 tons, and manipulate them quite easily,” said Whelan.
For now, apps like this are primarily designed to shift how students and teachers interact in today’s learning spaces. In the future, educational work spaces such as Engage lecture halls will double as business boardrooms or co-working spaces for creative problem-solving.
Far too often, VR is mistaken to be a solitary, lonely experience — as a technology for play that enables escapists to further isolate themselves in a digitally created world. But this could not be further from the truth. Indeed, Facebook has invested so heavily into VR because their company’s vision is to connect the world.
“This is really a new communication platform,” said Zuckerberg after acquiring Oculus. “By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.”
The challenges facing educational VR in the U.S.
Much of the material VR companies are innovating for classes will not be purchased for personal use but by school districts, colleges and universities. The price for the hardware and software will not be cheap. For example, the Oculus Rift retails for $599.99 at Best Buy. Persuading these constituents to adopt VR/AR will be a challenge.
Marketing will be critical for getting constituents to adopt VR in schools and higher education. VR edtech companies will need to develop innovative marketing strategies that drive educational organizations to invest in VR. The impediments facing the adoption of VR edtech are similar to those VR faces in being adopted in other domains. Once parents see the upside of educational VR, they will become more comfortable with VR enhancing other forms of communication and its application in other work spaces.
VR educational companies will need to get creative not just when it comes to promoting VR to educators but also speaking with local and state politicians.
Convincing early adopters to buy into educational VR systems like zSpace and Immersive will be critical for its spread.
To give an example, one of zSpace’s biggest challenges is simply to get people to see it. Once young kids see it, they are enamored.
“I’ve seen a kid run out to the curb and yank his mom out of the car…and tell her ‘Mom, look at this! Look at what I did!’ It makes me want to tear up,” said Chavez.
“A lot people see VR as a gaming or entertainment peripheral, so the biggest challenge is getting educators who have been teaching lessons the same way for years and years to change their mindset,” said Whelan. “We have to convince them that it isn’t just a new way of providing the same old content, this a completely new way of teaching.”
Especially during this time when state legislatures are gutting educational budgets, VR educational companies will need to get creative not just when it comes to promoting VR to educators but also speaking with local and state politicians. This latter group must be persuaded that educational VR is worth the price. To persuade them, educational VR firms need to get in front of parents, students, teachers, administrators and political leaders. Educational VR innovators must convince them that the windfall warrants the upfront investment.
The next horizon in VR education
Where will educational VR head next? One possibility is that museums will begin to use 360-degree cameras and transform their collections and elaborate corridors into material that students all over the world can interact with by wearing an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. Imagine a sixth-grade student in rural Arkansas putting on a VR headset in his social studies class. The teacher tells the class, “Today we are going to visit one of the greatest art collections in the world, the Louvre.” The app then transports the student to the gallery that houses Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
What would normally cost several thousand dollars and constitute a luxury trip that most American students could only dream of can become an immersive, interactive component of the students’ curriculum.
These virtual spaces will consist of customized avatars that can express features ranging from happy to confused. It won’t be long before a fourth-grade class in Newark, New Jersey will be able to go on a virtual school trip to the British Museum with a class of fourth graders from Kyoto, Japan. While the kids are on the virtual school trip, their parents can attend to their VR business meetings.
You may think this sounds like sci-fi, but 10 years from now this futuristic school trip to the Louvre may seem like the Atari of VR.
“I’m old enough to remember when computers came into schools first in the late 80s and early 90s. They sat there for years gathering dust because teachers didn’t want to touch them,” said Whelan. “But just like computers, VR will creep its way into education. In fact, I believe it will be adopted much sooner because people my age are teachers and accustomed to the rapid change of technology.”
Whelan also points out that VR set-ups are actually much cheaper than early PCs.
“When PCs first came out they were two or three thousand dollars, now you can get a really decent VR headset connected to a PlayStation for under 800 dollars, and the technology is just going to become cheaper.”
VR will be the next link in the sequence that has witnessed the human urge to connect and enhance communication stretching back several thousand years. It is a reimagination of what education can become and it will prepare students for a connected future of democratized virtual experiences and global communication and collaboration.
Skype’s year of inspiration, celebration, translation and innovation
As 2016 comes to a close, we’re looking back at the moments that have marked our year here at Skype. With a mission of doing things together whenever you’re apart, we’ve developed more text, voice and video features to make it even easier for all of you to share experiences with the people that matter most.
Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of 2016:
Skype Bots: We released some intelligent little helpers to increase productivity and make planning tasks easier than ever. From finding gig tickets with StubHub, to planning flights to your perfect vacation with Hipmunk and Skyscanner, or simplifying shipping with UPS—you can achieve so much more, right from a chat window. We’re looking forward to taking the next steps in artificial intelligence and conversational computing in the upcoming year.
Skype Translator: Since 2014, Skype Translator has been breaking down language barriers, making it easier for you to connect with people around the world. This year we added Arabic and Russian to our seven existing spoken languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese (Mandarin), Italian, and Portuguese). These languages have joined over 50 IM languages in text-to-text translation—bringing the world closer together.
This week we’ve started to roll out the next milestone for Skype Translator: voice translation for calls to mobiles and landlines for users on Skype Preview for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. This means you can use Skype to call people on their phones* and communicate across languages—even if they don’t have Skype. So now you can save time before you travel by calling a restaurant to book a table, or a hotel to make a reservation, without worrying about the language barrier. (*Requires Skype Credit or a subscription to use. To learn more, please visit Skype.com.)
As we mark the two-year anniversary of Skype Translator, we’ve seen people from all over the world using it to connect to friends, family and enable them in business. One of the stories we came across was that of New York fashion designer Bing Cai, founder of ‘Alouit New York’—a company that creates comfortable stilettos (yes you read correctly!) and uses Skype Translator to communicate with their factory in Italy.
See how Skype Translator helps inspire and encourage people to think beyond all limitations:
Skype Preview for Windows 10: We’ve been working closely with the Windows team to build a new Skype—redesigning the app to work seamlessly with Windows 10 and taking advantage of the Universal Windows Platform. This summer, we rolled out a faster and easier way for Windows 10 customers to use Skype which comes installed on the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
Group video calling on mobile: Group video calling continued its evolution when we introduced the feature on mobile phones and tablets—enabling you to video call up to 25 people on the go, so nobody gets left out.
New personal expression content: We had fun teaming up with Marvel Studios, Coldplay, Monty Python, Angry Birds, Tangerine Band, The Late Late Show and Sir Paul McCartney to create original Mojis and emoticons to add to our collection.
Check out our new holiday themed emoticons and Mojis that will help spread the festive cheer. You can also record a personalized Skype holiday card video to share over Skype, or on social networks including Facebook and email!
#SkypeTogether: 2016 saw our partnerships with advocates and influencers come together to form #SkypeTogether—unique ways to access our social community, directly within Skype itself. We kicked it off with #SkypeFit, where we connected a community of health conscious people with influencers via YouTube videos, challenges and Skype group chats. #SkypeTogether also saw our first ever influencer-focused gaming collaboration: #GamingWithSkype. Over the summer, we partnered with ESL and 343 Studios (the makers of Halo) to engage gamers within Skype and via Twitch. At present, we’re excited, to be working with One Nation of Gamers (ONOG) on an exclusive Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft tournament.
Your stories: 2016 has seen lots of inspiring stories showcasing new and original ways that people use Skype. Here are a few highlights:
Dr. David Nott used Skype from the UK to oversee surgery in war-torn Aleppo, Syria.
Jenn Nicken, founder of The Chef & The Dish, offers cooking classes over Skype with chefs around the world.
The 2016 Skype-a-Thon which featured classrooms from 75 countries, travelling almost 10 million virtual miles over Skype, in 48 hours.
From Antarctica to the North Pole, and out of this world to the International Space Station—this year has been full of exiting Skype stories. And we can’t wait to see where you’ll take Skype next!
From the Skype & Managed Solution families to yours, we wish you happy holidays and a wonderful New Year!
NGA Human Resources builds a more engaging employee experience with move to Office 365
By Russell Sheldon, chief information officer, senior vice president for HR consulting, application services and global technology, as written on blogs.office.com.
At NGA Human Resources (NGA HR), the way we engage with our employees—and what we believe it takes to be a great employer—centers around building a positive employee experience. This is what we do on a daily basis for our customers, and it’s equally true for our internal operations.
When new employees join the business, regardless of location or job function, it is vital that they feel part of our global organization. (We operate in more than 35 countries, serving customers in more than 145 countries in 25 languages.) All employees need to be connected, engaging in the company culture that drives our success as a business.
In the digital economy, technology, location and time zones should not be a barrier to productivity. Given our global presence, using technology that promotes worldwide collaboration is critical. In turn, collaboration and the sharing of ideas are paramount to fostering talent. We enact our belief that employees everywhere should feel connected to their organization and that they should be able to work as easily together as they do individually.
Our corporate objective is to make HR work better for businesses. To do this, we have to make the workplace a great place for people to work. For example, we rely on the same HR and payroll platform internally that we use to empower millions of our customers’ employees around the world.
As a business and a services provider, NGA HR has a policy of investing in innovative technologies that drive business efficiencies and improve the employee experience, while continuing to adhere to the strictest compliance requirements.
That is why, when our G Suite (formerly Google Apps for Work) contract came up for renewal, we took the time to evaluate what we require as a global organization. We reviewed the market for cloud-based business tools that would help us achieve the scope of global collaboration and individual productivity that we want for our employees, yet still maintain the highest level of data security.
We selected Microsoft Office 365 and migrated our back-office applications and internal collaboration platform from Google to Office 365. We believe that Office 365 presents more aligned business services that will make it easier for us to grow, develop, and most importantly, retain our talent. Employees want to work for an organization that uses technology to improve their work experience so they can collaborate and innovate more effectively to contribute to its growth. This is the inherent value of effective business productivity tools.
A perfect example comes from our chief executive officer, Adel Al-Saleh. Today, he uses Skype for Business Online to host video calls with our 300 global leaders, something that was not possible before. Now the leadership team meets more frequently, using interactive virtual discussions to speed decision making on a global scale. I run a team of approximately 2,000 people around the world. I use Skype for Business Online to connect in real time with 30 of my senior managers, dramatically reducing the time and cost of business travel and freeing up my time and budget for allocation to more strategic requirements. Also, now that we can rely on the de facto industry standard for office collaboration, our commercial teams are responding to RFPs and collaborating on documents more efficiently than ever.
Because Microsoft includes intuitive collaborative capabilities throughout Office 365, it’s easy to be productive. You can kick off a Skype for Business Online call from your inbox and access all Office documents from any device. Now mobile employees stay in touch with work using minimal effort.
The fact that we had more than 8,000 employees regularly active on our Yammer enterprise social network just four weeks after we went live demonstrates that Google was not addressing the need we had for companywide collaboration. Today, we have listened to our employees, and we are providing them with the same ease of communication and access to data that they are used to at home.
Also, with Office 365, we can maintain a hybrid environment. This is hugely advantageous to us when working with customers whose data cannot leave their geographic borders. NGA HR manages the payroll data of millions of employees around the world every year, so we take data security very seriously. We can assure all customers that Office 365 meets our internal compliance mandate and European data privacy standards. It adheres to the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party (A29WP) opinion on cloud computing around basic principles of transparency, purpose limitation, data retention, access and disclosure restriction. We also took into consideration the positive opinion of A29WP on the Microsoft Cloud business solution, in line with European data transfer and protection clauses.
Our relationship with Microsoft got off to an incredible start with the highly successful implementation of Office 365. Thanks to the close collaboration among NGA HR, the Microsoft FastTrack team and Microsoft partner Content and Code, we migrated 8,000 employees across the globe, with all their data, in just 12 weeks.
The deployment and change management expertise of the FastTrack team helped us meet our strict deadline, imposed by the expiration of the Google contract, with comfortable breathing space. With a minimal learning curve, everyone in the organization is more mobile, connected and agile. The feedback from employees is positive, and we are already seeing great results. Today, NGA HR is looking forward to even greater collaboration and localization of our global business.
Having independent contractors at companies of all sizes is the new normal. Busy seasons demand extra bandwidth, full-time employees take temporary leave or unique/temporary roles need to be filled.
Whatever the reason, getting support from contractors can provide scale, flexibility and specialized skills to your team—which is why their popularity continues to grow. For example, 51 percent of companies say their need for contingent workers will continue to grow within the next three to five years. Alongside, the talent pool is changing to match this trend: By 2020, 43 percent of the U.S. workforce will be freelancers.
Finding the right contractor for the right job is only the first step. They’ll likely be working outside of your office, but will still need to rely on the resources your internal teams use daily. If you want to enable your contractors to do their best work, you need to ensure they have the right tools to collaborate with your internal teams.
Here are four tips to set your independent contractors up for success:
#1—streamline communication
Make it easy for your contractors to stay in touch. Set up technology that allows them to communicate with and get to know your internal teams. This can (and should) come in the form of many tools, so they can choose the ones they prefer. Enable them to send instant messages to anyone in the company. Promote the use of video conferencing and screen sharing for efficient collaboration. Not only will this increase productivity, but it will allow full-time employees and contractors to build more personal relationships with face-to-face communication.
Will your independent contractor be working across several teams or projects? If so, then you may want to consider a chat-based workspace—not just for them, but also for the rest of your team. They shouldn’t struggle to keep up with dozens of private instant messages about similar projects. Instead, get them on a threaded group chat that allows for more organized web-based collaboration.
#2—share files with ease
Depending on when and where your contractors work, coordinating across time zones and locations may be a factor in their success. Avoid a situation where a contractor is stuck waiting for a team member to come online to gain access to files. Instead, opt for cloud-based file sharing and storing. That way, contractors can get the files and documents they need around the clock to get the job done. And with permission settings, you can restrict and permit access to the specific files an independent contractor needs, and revoke access when a contract ends.
#3—stay on the same page
Enhance collaboration with the ability to co-author (edit and work) on the same online documents. It’ll prevent excessive back-and-forth on email between team members. Digital files automatically sync and update over the internet, so your team is always looking at the most up-to-date version. And since your files live in the cloud, you’ll always know who made the last edit and can review and revoke changes if you ever need to go back to an older version.
#4—secure your data
Security may not always be top of mind for your employees and contractors—but it is for you and your IT team. Strike a balance between giving your extended team what they need while retaining control over your company’s data. The file access you give to your freelancers doesn’t need to last forever. When their contract is over, simply revoke access remotely. Even if your independent contractor has used their own device to access your data, cloud-based tools can delete your company’s files from that device.
With the right technology and infrastructure, independent contractors can become an effective extension of your team. Forget disruptions, lost files or a lack of security. The right tools can solve those problems and help your teams do their best work.
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Road realities—how to support your road warriors with tech
The road warrior travels from city to city, meets with potential clients and attends conferences and industry events. And their travel requirements don’t seem to be slowing down. According to the Global Business Travel Association, spending on business travel reached record-breaking levels of $1.2 trillion in 2015, and is expected to rise to $1.6 trillion by 2020.
Your road warriors bring your products and services into new markets, diversify clientele and strengthen existing relationships. They’re helping your business grow—now more than ever.
Doing their jobs from the road, however, can prove very difficult without the right productivity tools. So, how do you know if they have what they need?
Start by understanding the common challenges they face. Whether it is hosting meetings, collaborating with colleagues or meeting deadlines, you can make sure they are set up for success.
Here are four productivity fears that often strike business travelers while they’re on the road:
Did I forget to save files from the company server before traveling?
Secure file access shouldn’t be a privilege for in-office employees only. Being able to tap into the company server to access important resources is a basic requirement for most jobs. For employees who are on the move, it’s critical to have such access anywhere, anytime. Whether in a hotel lobby or a cafe, they should be able to connect to Wi-Fi and get their work done. When company documents are secured in the cloud, your employees can continue with business as usual, from virtually anywhere.
Will time away impact day-to-day communication?
For road warriors, productivity is dependent on seamless communication and collaboration with in-office teams. Without face-to-face interaction with colleagues, employees can sometimes feel disconnected—and the ability to connect in multiple ways can make all the difference. Secure video conferencing and messaging tools can bridge the communication gap, allowing business travelers to chat with team members and conduct online meetings on the fly.
Can we successfully collaborate while I’m in another location?
Teamwork is essential to business, whether your employees are on the road or huddled in a conference room. Business leaders must consider the value of technology that lets business travelers create, co-author and share documents in real-time. These abilities enable teams to accomplish tasks and meet deadlines together, from virtually anywhere. Now, with technology for sharing and collaborating remotely, it’s easier than ever.
What happens if I lose my connection to the internet?
Travel often happens during business hours. While on a train or 30,000 miles in the air, your road warrior still needs to email, build sales decks and meet deadlines. But sometimes technology falters and they could lose internet connectivity for minutes or even hours. At times like these, they can rely most on tools that save their work (documents, presentations and even email files) onto a hard-drive while offline and upload upon reconnection. While they’re offline, they can continue to read emails, compose drafts, edit files—and keep making work happen.
The productivity of your traveling employees is only as good as the technology that supports them. As a business leader, you have the power to provide technology that helps them do their jobs while on the road.
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Road realities—how to support your road warriors with tech