Microsoft recently announced a series of improvements to its Skype platform including upcoming “much anticipated” Skype for Business Preview for Mac OS X El Capitan. The preview is rolling out right now and is available on demand to IT Professionals who can sign up on SkypePreview.com.

Skype is already a powerful platform for inter-group communication, which makes it a go-to for DevOps teams to keep in touch with all the moving parts of product development already. That Skype will integrate with other Microsoft products for group and project management (such as Office 365) means that it can be used to track issues, identify resources and drive orchestration for a team.

Microsoft boasts that Skype for Business provides best-in-class enterprise communication by providing friendliness and usability. Amid the features that may be of interest to DevOps teams is easier file transfers, joining meetings right from the client and integration with OneNote (providing a level of shared documentation).

For IT departments concerned about losing data as it flows across PCs, Macs and mobile devices, Skype additionally has Intune integration to secure and save data.

Bringing people together useful for DevOps

Chat and inter-connectivity is never overlooked in Ops, especially because ops teams tend to be issue-oriented and being on a team means staying up-to-date and in touch. Skype is already an efficient platform for asynchronous communication (via chat) and rapid updates (via calls and video). As a result, it may have a significant role for any DevOps team.

Amid the various function improvements within Skype for Business include not just quicker conference call management; but also the ability to keep Skype around while doing other work and making it easier to attend discussions (while muted) similar to having a PC-mobile-based walkie-talkie.

For most DevOps and Agile environments much of deployment and configuration will likely be partially or entirely automated; but organizations are run by humans who use face-time and communication to understand decisions and resolve issues. Skype not only provides the chat interface (with file sharing) which makes collaborating easier; but it also gives video chat for those times that DevOps teams need to come together to get work done.

Of course, how individual teams use automation and people to get software updated and deployed differs hugely, but chat, voice and video communication all play a role.

Image credit: Microsoft

Skype for Business for developers

New features aside, Skype is a platform that provides its own APIs and as a result delivers a way for developers to write applications that can bridge and connect (or plug-in). The developer platform for Skype has not changed very much, but it is still worth reviewing.

To make this easier, Microsoft has documentation on the Skype Developer Platform on MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network). The docs include access to the Skype Web SDK general reference and API reference as well as Skype URIs, for developing methods to trigger Skype events from mobile apps, web pages and external applications.

For PC and MacOS, Skype Desktop Components provide the Skype Lync 2013 SDK, which allows developers to plug into Skype and embed actions into collaborative applications. Examples of collaborative software used by DevOps teams that use Lync includes Atlassian Marketplace (Atlassian Pty Ltd) Skype Connector for JIRA and a Skype Connector for Confluence.

Using the Lync SDK, developers can also build connectors for their favorite DevOps collaboration software to hook into Skype.

Featured image credit: via Pixabay