Tips for the perfect Business Skype

Using Skype for business meetings are now a normal situation, especially with the growing number of international virtual teams and the global world where we now do business with every corner of the world.

But are we using Skype to it’s full potential? Probably not. Skype has developed some new interesting features to meet their business users needs and keep up with the numerous other applications to hold conference calls.

Here are some of our favorites ones that we use the most:

Use a Power Point presentation.

When you have your PowerPoint ready, choose “Present Online” on the menu and then just click on “Present Slideshow”. When you do this, everyone on the call will be able to see your PP during the meeting.

Take back control when you are sharing the screen during the meeting.

Skype now allows all participants to take control back while sharing a screen. If you are ready just press: Ctrl+Alt+Spacebar.

Record your meeting.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember everything that was said during a meeting. Now technology can finally save us because we can record our calls on Skype Business. Any activity like audio, video, shared screen or messages will be recorded so you have no doubts on what was the final answer you got from your client next time you have a business meeting.

To do so, just click the … button and click “Start Recording”. You can always find your recorded meetings going to the main Skype for Business screen and click the settings cog dropdown. From there, go to Tools > Recording Manager.

Set contact privacy relationship.

Skype Business organizes your contacts according to the relationship that you have with them, but sometimes you will want to change those according to your needs.

Now you can assign each of your contacts one of five relationship levels. From the start, those within your business will be Colleagues, and those that are not will be External Contacts. Each relationship level has different permissions — for example, Friends and Family can’t see your meeting details and Workgroup members will be able to interrupt your “Do Not Disturb” status which other contacts will not until you choose to become available again.

To alter a contact’s relationship status, right click on their name and go to Change Privacy Relationship. Here you can check their current relationship status and find the best option for you according to the different status available.

Start a poll, a Q&A or a Whiteboard.

Sometimes you might have a large group of members in the same conversation and you need to have their input and get everyone involved in a decision or a creative moment.

These features will make your life so much easier:

Click the Present Content button on the main screen, select More, and then choose either Whiteboard, Poll, or Q&A.

Choosing a Whiteboard, every member will get one on their screen to share, list or draw any ideas; this will help the communication flow enormously.

With the poll, you can choose the questions and the options that will appear on everyone’s screen to answer, they will be able to vote and see the rest of the members’ answers. You can always adjust those settings (if for example you don’t want to share the votes of the other attendees) by clicking “Poll Actions”.

If you choose to create a Q&A during your meeting, the chat window will become a question and answer platform. Members of the call can ask a question, and you can type your answer. This answer will be displayed for everyone joining the call. This feature helps to make the video calls more efficient and avoid the craziness of interrupting for questions and comments.

We hope these tips help you as much as they helped us on your next business Skype call.