Microsoft Details Coming Updates to Skype for Business

At its Ignite conference today in Chicago, Microsoft announced a number of updates that it will provide for Skype for Business in the coming months. This summer, the product will be updated with new attachment and co-authoring features. And later in 2015, Skype for Business will be able to broadcast meetings to up to 10,000 people.

“Modern meetings require that participants in any location can see, hear and collaborate within the meeting as easily as if everyone is sitting in the same room,” the Skype for Business team explained in a blog post announcing the coming features.

This one is a bit light on specifics, but here’s the news.

Skype for Business Server is now generally available. This follows last month’s release of the Skype for Business Windows desktop and Skype for Business in the commercial versions of Office 365.

Developer changes. The Skype Developer Platform has been improved to support Skype for Business Server, and there is a public preview release of the new Skype web SDK, enabling developers to build “tailored experiences for the web that integrate communications (messaging, A/V, presence) directly in-line with their own content and activities.”

Pre-loaded meeting attachments. Coming this summer, this feature will speed meeting start times by automatically downloading meeting content at the start of a call.

In-call co-authoring. Also coming this summer, this feature will make it easier to initiate a co-authoring session so that multiple people can work together on a single document right from within a meeting.

Meeting broadcasts. Skype for Business will support meetings of up to 10,000 people with dynamic playback starting “later this year.”

Plus, there’s an infographic.