Someone needs to Slap the Microsoft-Skype abortion employees

[tszaboo]

KEBKAC? The ads are annoying, but whatever.

[bd139]

Skype for business is a total pile of shit. We got it when we inherited office 365 when the CTO decided he'd had enough of running exchange. This was mandated by the business as the one true tool because of the spec sheet. One year down the line and we're using Slack internally (started on an internal rebellion by the sales team) and just phone each other and clients.

Seventy thousand concurrent connections (out of a total user base of 150,000) and twenty thousand of those with enterprise voice going well here thanks.

My current outfit is merely 375 people which means we have more power to effect change. Larger enterprises tend to have different parameters to define success as the IT teams steamroll projects through based on specification sheets and marketing. The metrics to define success are always tailed for capital expenditure rather than operational expenditure, the latter of which can be feasibly distributed across other business concerns my immeasurable friction. I bet if you polled them, you will find what the organisation defines as success metric, the users don't. The users are the business.

This observation comes from 20 years' experience dealing with companies of similar size to yours in the defence and finance sectors.

Avaya's platform has a better TCO on a company that size.

[Richard Crowley]

Almost 20000 people work at our site, around 10000 just on my campus. They took all our office phones away from us a couple of years ago and gave each of us a Jabra USB headset to plug into our laptop (or desktop) computer.  Using Lync (now Skype for Business) as our "office phone". I believe they did the same at most of the other sites, at least the ones in North America.

At least from my perspective it has resulted in a much lower phone call volume because it is so fiddly (unless you are on the phone all the time).  More IM and email, etc. which is fine with me.  Only recently (with some stealth background "update") did my laptop start "ringing" through the speakers. Before that, you had to be wearing the headset to hear the "phone ring".  And if you get a call during one of the enforced "work pace break" periods, the computer is locked up so you can't answer the call.  Sigh.  Oh well, I guess it wasn't important or they would have sent an email.

OTOH, you can place and receive calls from anywhere you are, as long as you have internet connectivity.  And many people travel a lot and don't even have fixed offices (cubicles) anymore.  So perhaps better for them.  The conference rooms still have wired (but IP) fancy speaker phones, and there are even some vintage wall phones in places. So they must still have a few old-school phone switches.

Several years before that, they integrated the voice-mail system into Windows Exchange so messages arrive in email.  For a while they even had auto voice-recognition so that you got voice-mail as text email.  But with all the different languages spoken around here (and the thick accents non-native speakers have) there were some pretty amusing errors in voice-recognition, so they abandoned it.  But from my perspective it was reasonably good and I was sorry they shut it off.

They also integrated Microsoft's notion of meeting scheduling into Exchange and it has been a long series of cobbled-together kludges which have never equaled the VAX-based system we had 30 years ago.  Apparently Microsoft has no conference rooms (people have large enough hard-wall offices that they just meet in somebody's office) so the conference-room scheduling is only now (after 20 years) becoming usable.

The dark side of "progress" here in the 21st century.

[Avacee]

Thanks to Microsoft "always making improvements, such as enhanced quality, better reliability, and improved security" and because they "want everyone to experience the best Skype has to offer" Skype no longer works on Windows Phone 8.1 and many other devices.
Link to Microsoft telling users how stopping Skype working for them is to their benefit https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA34763/which-skype-enabled-devices-or-platforms-are-no-longer-supported

A windows phone had been ideal for my parents due to a combination of cost, familiar UI (not that tech literate) and the few apps they used actually existed for winphone.
Support was pulled with zero contact from Microsoft/Skype even though their accounts contained their email details and Skype could have sent a Skype Message but instead my parents tried to use Skype one day and got a generic network connection error message and I only found out for them after googling. Guess what score I give Microsoft out of 10 for customer satisfaction?

Time to get them a couple of android phones.

[netdudeuk]

Skype for business is a total pile of shit. We got it when we inherited office 365 when the CTO decided he'd had enough of running exchange. This was mandated by the business as the one true tool because of the spec sheet. One year down the line and we're using Slack internally (started on an internal rebellion by the sales team) and just phone each other and clients.

Seventy thousand concurrent connections (out of a total user base of 150,000) and twenty thousand of those with enterprise voice going well here thanks.

My current outfit is merely 375 people which means we have more power to effect change. Larger enterprises tend to have different parameters to define success as the IT teams steamroll projects through based on specification sheets and marketing. The metrics to define success are always tailed for capital expenditure rather than operational expenditure, the latter of which can be feasibly distributed across other business concerns my immeasurable friction. I bet if you polled them, you will find what the organisation defines as success metric, the users don't. The users are the business.

This observation comes from 20 years' experience dealing with companies of similar size to yours in the defence and finance sectors.

Avaya's platform has a better TCO on a company that size.

Actually, we determine success by clear and meaningful metrics such as the continuous month on month increase in total calls, conferencing minutes, etc., etc. plus a constant demand for more EV numbers.

[netdudeuk]

At least from my perspective it has resulted in a much lower phone call volume because it is so fiddly (unless you are on the phone all the time).  More IM and email, etc. which is fine with me.  Only recently (with some stealth background "update") did my laptop start "ringing" through the speakers. Before that, you had to be wearing the headset to hear the "phone ring".  And if you get a call during one of the enforced "work pace break" periods, the computer is locked up so you can't answer the call.  Sigh.  Oh well, I guess it wasn't important or they would have sent an email.

OTOH, you can place and receive calls from anywhere you are, as long as you have internet connectivity.  And many people travel a lot and don't even have fixed offices (cubicles) anymore.  So perhaps better for them.  The conference rooms still have wired (but IP) fancy speaker phones, and there are even some vintage wall phones in places. So they must still have a few old-school phone switches.

Several years before that, they integrated the voice-mail system into Windows Exchange so messages arrive in email.  For a while they even had auto voice-recognition so that you got voice-mail as text email.  But with all the different languages spoken around here (and the thick accents non-native speakers have) there were some pretty amusing errors in voice-recognition, so they abandoned it.  But from my perspective it was reasonably good and I was sorry they shut it off.

They also integrated Microsoft's notion of meeting scheduling into Exchange and it has been a long series of cobbled-together kludges which have never equaled the VAX-based system we had 30 years ago.  Apparently Microsoft has no conference rooms (people have large enough hard-wall offices that they just meet in somebody's office) so the conference-room scheduling is only now (after 20 years) becoming usable.

The dark side of "progress" here in the 21st century.

I'd say making calls is actually easier than ever.  You can call directly from an email, an entry in SharePoint, a mention in MS Teams, etc.  No need to look up a phone number.  Even for your external contacts.

Check out the Surface Hubs for good conference room experience.

[Richard Crowley]

I'd say making calls is actually easier than ever...

Yes, MAKING calls is probably easier.  But RECEIVING calls is much more fiddly.  Until a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't even hear the "phone ring" unless I was wearing the headset.  Then I have to dig out the headset and put it on, and swing the mic boom down (because it is in the way when I'm not on the phone.  Then I have to try to find the little pop-up message and click it to connect.

[eugenenine]

Not just lync/skype, have you had to use Word/Excel/Visual Studio/Sql server management studio.  I find a bug in each nearly every day.

[RoGeorge]

Skype for business is a total pile of shit. We got it when we inherited office 365 when the CTO decided he'd had enough of running exchange. This was mandated by the business as the one true tool because of the spec sheet. One year down the line and we're using Slack internally (started on an internal rebellion by the sales team) and just phone each other and clients.

Seventy thousand concurrent connections (out of a total user base of 150,000) and twenty thousand of those with enterprise voice going well here thanks.

My current outfit is merely 375 people which means we have more power to effect change. Larger enterprises tend to have different parameters to define success as the IT teams steamroll projects through based on specification sheets and marketing. The metrics to define success are always tailed for capital expenditure rather than operational expenditure, the latter of which can be feasibly distributed across other business concerns my immeasurable friction. I bet if you polled them, you will find what the organisation defines as success metric, the users don't. The users are the business.

This observation comes from 20 years' experience dealing with companies of similar size to yours in the defence and finance sectors.

Avaya's platform has a better TCO on a company that size.

Actually, we determine success by clear and meaningful metrics such as the continuous month on month increase in total calls, conferencing minutes, etc., etc. plus a constant demand for more EV numbers.

 

[netdudeuk]

Skype for business is a total pile of shit. We got it when we inherited office 365 when the CTO decided he'd had enough of running exchange. This was mandated by the business as the one true tool because of the spec sheet. One year down the line and we're using Slack internally (started on an internal rebellion by the sales team) and just phone each other and clients.

Seventy thousand concurrent connections (out of a total user base of 150,000) and twenty thousand of those with enterprise voice going well here thanks.

My current outfit is merely 375 people which means we have more power to effect change. Larger enterprises tend to have different parameters to define success as the IT teams steamroll projects through based on specification sheets and marketing. The metrics to define success are always tailed for capital expenditure rather than operational expenditure, the latter of which can be feasibly distributed across other business concerns my immeasurable friction. I bet if you polled them, you will find what the organisation defines as success metric, the users don't. The users are the business.

This observation comes from 20 years' experience dealing with companies of similar size to yours in the defence and finance sectors.

Avaya's platform has a better TCO on a company that size.

Actually, we determine success by clear and meaningful metrics such as the continuous month on month increase in total calls, conferencing minutes, etc., etc. plus a constant demand for more EV numbers.

 

What's your problem with that approach?

[Brumby]

My problem is not seeing how those metrics relate to a business model.

I may have missed something - but what sort of business makes those metrics relevant?

[Brumby]

Failures of this magnitude are rarely precipitated by the programmers themselves.


Some middle manager drank too much of the "touch ui" kool-aid, then paid outside consultants $2mil to tell him what consumers want in an app.

He forwarded the resulting 60 slide presentation to the programming team and told them to make something exactly as described.  Any dissenting opinions were remvoved from the team as they were not team players.

After destroying the morale of his programmers and creating a worthless monstrosity, the manager then got the marketing department to put together a snazzy presentation and presented his successful Skype 2.0 project to the next layer of management.  This upper management has of course never used Skype before and simply loved the colorful charts in the PowerPoint.

Everyone above ground level thinks that Skype 2.0 is a smashing success.

... I've heard that song before.

More than once.

[bd139]

My problem is not seeing how those metrics relate to a business model.

I may have missed something - but what sort of business makes those metrics relevant?

This was a big QED for my original point. The metrics are IT delivery derived, not business derived.

Another broken company I'll be dragged in to fix one day though ... reckon I'll get myself a nice new Keysight supply afterwards

[RoGeorge]

Actually, we determine success by clear and meaningful metrics such as the continuous month on month increase in total calls, conferencing minutes, etc., etc. plus a constant demand for more EV numbers.

 

What's your problem with that approach?

I was reading it like this:

A guy is coming from outside. He is entering the room, and start complaining about the weather:

- Man, it's a shitty weather outside, it just started to rain!
- The weather is fine. Actually, we have here a very accurate Weather App that shows the today temperature is even bigger than yesterday.

- Dude, it might be hotter, I don't know, and I don't know if hotter is better or worst for the long run, but I tell you: it just started to rain, it's windy and dusty and shitty. Look at the window!
- Sorry, we don't care how the weather actually feels to you. The metrics shows that last year there were 7 billion people, so 7 billion weather users. This year there are 7.7 billion people living under the weather's sky, so a 10% YoY increase. The weather must be greater than ever.

[netdudeuk]

Actually, we determine success by clear and meaningful metrics such as the continuous month on month increase in total calls, conferencing minutes, etc., etc. plus a constant demand for more EV numbers.

 

What's your problem with that approach?

I was reading it like this:

A guy is coming from outside. He is entering the room, and start complaining about the weather:

- Man, it's a shitty weather outside, it just started to rain!
- The weather is fine. Actually, we have here a very accurate Weather App that shows the today temperature is even bigger than yesterday.

- Dude, it might be hotter, I don't know, and I don't know if hotter is better or worst for the long run, but I tell you: it just started to rain, it's windy and dusty and shitty. Look at the window!
- Sorry, we don't care how the weather actually feels to you. The metrics shows that last year there were 7 billion people, so 7 billion weather users. This year there are 7.7 billion people living under the weather's sky, so a 10% YoY increase. The weather must be greater than ever.

Simple then.  You read it totally wrong.

[Alex Nikitin]

Actually, we determine success by clear and meaningful metrics such as the continuous month on month increase in total calls, conferencing minutes, etc., etc. plus a constant demand for more EV numbers.

 

What's your problem with that approach?

I was reading it like this:

A guy is coming from outside. He is entering the room, and start complaining about the weather:

- Man, it's a shitty weather outside, it just started to rain!
- The weather is fine. Actually, we have here a very accurate Weather App that shows the today temperature is even bigger than yesterday.

- Dude, it might be hotter, I don't know, and I don't know if hotter is better or worst for the long run, but I tell you: it just started to rain, it's windy and dusty and shitty. Look at the window!
- Sorry, we don't care how the weather actually feels to you. The metrics shows that last year there were 7 billion people, so 7 billion weather users. This year there are 7.7 billion people living under the weather's sky, so a 10% YoY increase. The weather must be greater than ever.

Simple then.  You read it totally wrong.

Simple for me - I've just stopped using Skype. It is inconvenient not to use is (and I am investigating alternatives) but not as inconvenient as the feeling I get when I try to use the updated version... .

Cheers

Alex

[Brumby]

My problem is not seeing how those metrics relate to a business model.

I may have missed something - but what sort of business makes those metrics relevant?

This was a big QED for my original point. The metrics are IT delivery derived, not business derived.

Unless the revenue to the business is directly attributable to IT delivery, this is a problem.

It's like looking a tachometer and saying how well you're going, when it's the speedometer and odometer that are actually showing important information.

Another broken company I'll be dragged in to fix one day though ... reckon I'll get myself a nice new Keysight supply afterwards

If the wrong metrics are being used, then that probability will go up.


Another risk is that once metrics are established - and linked to benefits or penalties - expect people to exploit any opportunities they discover to skew the metrics in their favour.  In such cases, even well founded metrics will quickly lose relevance.  As critical as this corruption would be, there is an impediment in noticing this.  Many will lean on the metrics as being "the" guide and to question them risks the wrath of higher management.

[bd139]

Appropriate Dilbert:

[Howardlong]

Tail wagging the dog has regrettably been a recurring mentality beloved of management consultancies for about a decade plus. Since they outsourced most of businesses' business already, they have to justify themselves in another way now.

IDO - Insight Driven Organisation - seems to be the latest mantra, where everyone's driven by numbers coming out of data warehouses. Even AI, the decades old technology that's yet to have much impact outside of academia, is now regularly appropriated and slipped into your average MBA's lexicon. I guess IoT has lost some ground as a result, so we should be thankful for small mercies.

[bd139]

Sad but true.

My current gig's CXO level team is somewhat more clued than the average so I'm grateful there. They can get another renewal this year

I asked our CTO earlier if we would reconsider skype and his exact words were: "I hope you are fucking joking?" ... fortunately I was

[Brumby]

Bullseye!

Appropriate Dilbert:

... and there are going to be people in "Management" that will need to have that explained to them.

[strangersound]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle

"The Dilbert principle refers to a 1990s theory by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing."

[DimitriP]

so a 10% YoY increase

...and with the new version os skype attempting /trying/forcing the merging of a skype account into a "microsoft account", it must have caused some sort of uptick in the number of  "microsoft accounts".
Therefore in "improvement". 

[G7PSK]

I have a skype pro subscription, have had since it was first available. I don't get any adds and every thing seems to work fine except the "skype homepage is unavailable at present" and has been for the last year but that does not seem a problem I can log in adjust setting etc still, not even sure what the home page is.