Outlook mobile to support scheduling Microsoft Teams Meetings, when it makes sense

Last week (21st Feb 2019) Microsoft announced that the Outlook mobile app will support creating and joining native Teams meetings. That sounds great, but the announcement was slightly odd:

Every Outlook mobile scheduled meeting will be a Teams meeting?

“If your organization is enabled for both Skype for Business and Teams, the option to create Teams meetings will replace the option to create Skype meetings for your users in Outlook mobile. If some of the people in your organization still need to create Skype meetings, they can continue to do so from Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac and Outlook on the web.”

This made no sense, the plan was that if you had Teams enabled at an organisational level, Outlook mobile would schedule Teams meetings, even if that user was a Skype for Business user. Many companies are using Teams in some shape or form, but are not ready for all Outlook mobile scheduled meetings to be Teams meetings.

Fortunately, Microsoft heard the feedback and have updated their plan

Outlook mobile will schedule either Teams or Skype for Business meetings depending on your coexistence mode

This makes much more sense. The experience in Outlook mobile will be based on this coexistence mode setting at the tenant and the user level. The user level setting, if present, will take precedence over the tenant level setting. For example, regardless of the tenant level setting, if a user’s coexistence mode is “Teams Only” or “Skype for Business with Teams Collaboration and Meetings”, then Outlook mobile will schedule Teams meetings instead of Skype for Business when creating Outlook mobile events.

Similarly, if a user’s coexistence mode is “Skype for Business Only”, “Skype for Business with Teams collaboration”, or “Islands”, then nothing changes. They will continue to have the option to add Skype for Business meetings in Outlook mobile.

Coexistence mode in Teams Admin Center	Meetings solution in Outlook mobile
Teams Only	Teams
Skype for Business with Teams Collaboration and Meetings*	Teams
Skype for Business with Teams Collaboration*	Skype for Business
Skype for Business Only	Skype for Business
Islands	Skype for Business

Reference: MC175147

Native Teams meeting join button in Outlook mobile

In addition, for customers who have also started to use the Microsoft sync technology for Outlook mobile (MC165218, see below), there will be a new Teams Join button in calendar events.

This makes it easy to Join a Teams meeting and will be available for all coexistence modes as users could be invited to Teams Meetings even if they are not enabled to create Teams meetings themselves.

Customers who are not using the Outlook mobile sync technology yet will continue to be able to join Teams Meetings using the weblink in the meeting description.

Note that the addition of the Teams Join button does not replace the Skype Join button. The Skype Join button will continue to be offered for Skype Meetings, and the Teams Join button will be offered for Teams Meetings.

Microsoft sync technology for Outlook mobile (MC165218)

“Microsoft sync technology for Outlook mobile”  is Microsoft removing the Stateless Protocol Translator in Azure and using a native Microsoft sync technology, connecting Outlook for iOS and Android directly to Exchange Online. By removing the middle tier component, the end to end latency between Outlook for iOS and Android and Exchange Online will be reduced. This was announced in November 2018 and began rolling out in December 2018.

MC165218