Skype for Business is an enterprise unified communications tool that provides services such as Instant Messaging, presence, online collaboration, desktop sharing, and voice and video communication. Features include:
Instant Messaging: send messages with rich-text formatting.
Contact management: message a single colleague, several, or a whole group.
Availability management: show your status; set automatically by your Outlook calendar availability, or manually configurable.
Access level management: control which of your colleagues can view your availability information.
Integration with Microsoft Office programs: view contact availability instantaneously; save and track conversations for future reference; bring other users in to comment on documents and spreadsheets without switching applications.
Desktop sharing: allow participants in a conversation to view your screen and collaborate on work.
Voice and video communication: communicate with users either using voice or video over the Internet
Some accounts are enabled for Enterprise Voice which allows you to reach people outside the University by dialing their phone number in the same manner that is done through the traditional telephone/PBX service. These accounts can also be reached by extension number that is assigned to the account. Currently, these accounts are limited to IST internal use.