Skype for Business Online Connector Retires in February 2021

Part of Skype for Business Online Retirement Process

As has been well advertised, Microsoft will retire Skype for Business Online on July 31, 2021. Organizations should now be well on the way to deploying and using Teams to replace Skype for Business Online. Or, if they’re really brave, moving to a different communications platform.

The Skype for Business Connector includes the New-CsOnlineSession cmdlet, used to establish a new remote connection to the Skype for Business Online endpoint. Once a connection is made, the cmdlets used for policy management can be imported into a session and used. Documented in Office 365 notification MC230065 on 15 December, Microsoft will retire the Skype for Business Online connector on 15 February 2021.

Time to Check Scripts

Teams shares a common policy framework with Skype for Business Online, which means that to interact with Teams management policies through PowerShell, many scripts use the Skype for Business Online Connector.

Before the Connector is retired, organizations need to check any PowerShell scripts used to manage Teams management policies, such as:

• Bulk assignment of policy settings to user accounts.
• Managing Teams app setup policies.
• Controlling the background effects people can choose in Teams meetings.
• Allowing users to record personal meetings.

Teams PowerShell Module Replaces Connector

The Teams PowerShell module replaces the connector. Launched in September, version 1.1.16 and future versions contain New-CsOnlineSession and other cmdlets previously found in the connector:

Get-Command -Module MicrosoftTeams -Name *-Cs*

CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------
Function        Get-CsBatchPolicyAssignmentOperation               1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams
Function        Get-CsGroupPolicyAssignment                        1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams
Function        Get-CsUserPolicyAssignment                         1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams
Function        New-CsBatchPolicyAssignmentOperation               1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams
Function        New-CsGroupPolicyAssignment                        1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams
Function        Remove-CsGroupPolicyAssignment                     1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams
Cmdlet          Get-CsOnlinePowerShellEndpoint                     1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams
Cmdlet          Get-CsPolicyPackage                                1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams
Cmdlet          Get-CsUserPolicyPackage                            1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams
Cmdlet          Get-CsUserPolicyPackageRecommendation              1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams
Cmdlet          Grant-CsUserPolicyPackage                          1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams
Cmdlet          New-CsBatchPolicyPackageAssignmentOperation        1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams
Cmdlet          New-CsOnlineSession                                1.1.6      MicrosoftTeams

To use the cmdlets used for Teams policy management, you don’t need to connect to Teams before connecting to the Skype for Business Online endpoint; all that’s necessary is to install the latest version of the Teams PowerShell module and run these commands (Figure 1):

$TeamsPolicySession = New-CsOnlineSession -Credential $O365Cred
Import-PsSession $TeamsPolicySession -AllowClobber

Once a remote connection is made and the cmdlets are imported into a session, you can use policy management cmdlets like Get-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy and Cs-TeamsMessagingPolicy. Updating scripyts should be a matter of making sure that the cmdlets are loaded from the Teams module and removing any reference to the Skype for Business Online connector.

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