Skype For Business - O365 Presence

[Divaldo]

We are looking at the possibility of our students using the SfB app on their own devices when out with staff on school trips.

 

We'd like them to download the app before we leave school, then use that to instant message or call teachers whilst we are out and about somewhere.

 

This is all working fine, but we need the teachers to be able to prevent students from messaging or disturbing them at other times, like when we are back in school or in the evening and at weekends. I had assumed that changing their status to something like 'Busy' or 'Do Not Disturb' would do this, but even when this is set, students can still message them and their messages pop up on the teachers' devices instantly.

 

It seems that the skype status is pretty pointless. Ok, it gives users an idea of how likely they are to get a fast response from someone if they're in a meeting, but it doesn't actually 'do' anything. Am I missing something?

 

Is there any other way we can set Skype to work for students only during school hours?

 

Thanks folks.

[bald_pig]

All the status does is inform the person that's trying to message the user, and mute notifications, so there's no noise.

 

That's all it's advertised as, to achieve what you want you'd have to keep disabling and enabling the S4B access rights in the admin centre.

[Divaldo]

ahhh ok, thank you. My misunderstanding then.

 

We'll have to ditch Skype then as we don't want students to be able to message staff out of school hours.

 

Much appreciated.

[bald_pig]

You can just disable it, then enable it for the students during the trip. Can be done in 365 admin and by powershell iirc

 

[Divaldo]

thanks, we are looking for something teachers can manage themselves really, so they don't need to get IT support to enable and disable things. We have trips in and out of school every day for various different members of staff so it would be good if teachers could make themselves available or unavailable as required.

 

I thought setting themselves to 'Do Not Disturb' would accomplish that.