Move required users before decommissioning your on-premises environment
Important
Skype for Business Online operated by 21Vianet in China will be retired on October 1, 2023. If you haven't upgraded your Skype for Business Online users yet, they will be automatically scheduled for an assisted upgrade. If you want to upgrade your organization to Teams yourself, we strongly recommend that you begin planning your upgrade path today. Remember that a successful upgrade aligns technical and user readiness, so be sure to leverage our upgrade guidance as you navigate your journey to Teams.
Skype for Business Online, excluding the service operated by 21Vianet in China, was retired on July 31, 2021.
This article describes how to move required users to the Microsoft cloud before decommissioning your on-premises Skype for Business environment. This is step 1 of the following steps to decommission your on-premises environment:
Step 1. Move all required users from on-premises to online. (This article)
Step 2. Disable your hybrid configuration.
Step 3. Migrate hybrid application endpoints from on-premises to online. Any existing hybrid application endpoints won't be discoverable between the time you perform Step 2 above until you complete this step. You should plan to do both steps 2 and 3 in the same maintenance window.
Step 4. Remove your on-premises Skype for Business deployment.
Move all required users from on-premises to the cloud
Any users that you'll continue to use after completing the migration must first be moved from on-premises to the cloud. You move users by using the on-premises administration tools. For details, see Move users between on-premises and cloud.
Although it's possible for users with on-premises Skype for Business Server accounts to use Teams, these users don't have the full functionality of Teams. These users can't interoperate or federate with any other user still using Skype for Business (whether online or on-premises). Nor can these users receive PSTN calls in their Teams client. Therefore, you must move these users to online. This step also ensures any contacts or meetings created in Skype for Business Server are migrated to Teams.
To check if there are any remaining users in your on-premises deployment, run the following cmdlet in a Skype for Business Server PowerShell window.
Get-CsUser -Filter { HostingProvider -eq "SRV:"}
If any users are returned, review the output to determine if any accounts must be moved to the cloud, and, for any such users, follow the steps here. For user accounts that are no longer needed, run the following Skype for Business Server PowerShell cmdlet:
Get-CsUser -Filter { HostingProvider -eq "SRV:"} | Disable-CsUser
Note
Running Disable-CsUser will remove all Skype for Business attributes for all users meeting the filter criteria. Before proceeding, confirm that these accounts are no longer needed going forward.
You're now ready to disable your hybrid configuration.