Will there be something similar for Teams, for when Skype goes away soon?

[robbely]

As the title says.

[schrmh]

Afaik Skyperious is for P2P Skype chats. Skype abandoned hose years ago. So the real issue is getting the current chats out of the current Skype. I read some message indicating Skype chats can be accessed in Teams but giving it is Microsoft and I lost access to chats multiple times due to MS doing stupid things including when they forced cloud chats to people and hid P2P chats....

Edit: Ah, probably nevermind; somehow missed that:
#67 (comment)

[robbely]

Afaik Skyperious is for P2P Skype chats. Skype abandoned hose years ago. So the real issue is getting the current chats out of the current Skype. I read some message indicating Skype chats can be accessed in Teams but giving it is Microsoft and I lost access to chats multiple times due to MS doing stupid things including when they forced cloud chats to people and hid P2P chats....

I have found the Skyperious app very good for creating and accessing local copies of Skype conversations. However, I was referring to the recent news that Skype is being shut down in May and accounts are being migrated to Teams. It would be useful if Skyperious (or similar) moved over to Teams too to continue to be useful.

[suurjaak]

MS Teams is a very different beast altogether. And they really have not made it easy to get anything out of there. There are dozens of open requests on Microsoft Feedback Portal asking for export functionality in Teams, some years old already.

On the other hand, Teams does look to have an externally accessible API available. So, ostensibly, it should be possible. Although there is the added complication of access rights with personal vs corporate accounts - corporate admins seem to be the only ones who can access corporate stuff.

If I was a daily user of Teams, I would be somewhat interested in looking into this, but at the moment I do not use Teams for anything, professional or personal. However, I still do not know what I will replace Skype with, so far it has been the only way to keep in contact with some people. Maybe, if I start using Teams for those, I might get more motivated.

[rpodric]

This would be especially important if what's being discussed here is true:
https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/c3427fed-598f-ee11-a81c-0022484f9f6d

Does anyone know if it's really that limited?

I should add here that MS says that it's not:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-long-do-files-and-data-remain-available-for-in-microsoft-teams-free-1d2d9efd-1ba9-4b2b-a788-e89517dfb883

So the above post may be talking about something related, like perhaps the chats themselves scrolling out of view.

[robbely]

If I was a daily user of Teams, I would be somewhat interested in looking into this, but at the moment I do not use Teams for anything, professional or personal. However, I still do not know what I will replace Skype with, so far it has been the only way to keep in contact with some people. Maybe, if I start using Teams for those, I might get more motivated.

I know it's a little off topic, but if you do find a replacement that is as good, that allows local backup, storage or even synch of readable chats, can you post it here :)

[suurjaak]

This would be especially important if what's being discussed here is true: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/c3427fed-598f-ee11-a81c-0022484f9f6d Does anyone know if it's really that limited?

Teams client is actually a tad less limited than Skype client in this regard, which is not saying anything good. The scrollback in messages is similar - that to see an earlier message, you need to scroll back to it manually. But Teams has a better search than Skype, in that you can actually search over all conversations. However, the message you can directly jump to is stand-alone, without the immediate history around it.

I know it's a little off topic, but if you do find a replacement that is as good, that allows local backup, storage or even synch of readable chats, can you post it here :)

The only things I've found are some browser extensions that allow for saving the currently open chat, from a Teams browser tab, into a local file, like Teams Chat Backup.

[rpodric]

@suurjaak That's good. Perhaps that thread I posted was about the chats themselves scrolling out of view after 30 days, not that they're not searchable.

In case this helps the previous poster, there is an export (for Teams Free, only), which sounds exactly like Skype's:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/export-or-delete-your-data-in-microsoft-teams-free-1ed6ac68-5fb4-41be-9861-1a4127fecf68

About that API you mentioned, I'm not sure that would help a Skyperious effort since the MS Graph API is a per-tenant thing that's intricately setup with permissions etc and private to them, not a generally accessible API, as I understand it. And it wouldn't apply to Teams Free at all.

[robbely]

Are there any alternative chat apps (not Teams or Skype) that provide local copies of chats in a similar way that Skyperious does for Skype?

[suurjaak]

My knowledge on other chat apps is limited.

WhatsApp provides exports as plain text plus shared files.

Signal provides encrypted backups that can be loaded to Signal on another device, but there are tools to export chats, like https://github.com/carderne/signal-export, providing HTML/Markdown plus shared files.

I do not know if there are solutions that would provide a single chats repository.

[rpodric]

I wonder if we're overthinking this. Skyperious supports importing what you can request to be exported from Skype, right? Teams (consumer) has that same export request feature. So at that point, can't it just be imported to Skyperious in exactly the same way? Sure, there's no Skyperious connectivity with Teams, and every time you do it it's the entire history (not just what changed), but the above isn't bad, I think.

[suurjaak]

Perhaps indeed. I do not have an active Teams account to verify with, but a lot about the export requesting and results looks very similar from Skype to Teams.

So perhaps importing a Teams export in Skyperious would work out of the box. Or if not, could be made to work without major effort.

[robbely]

I made a request re a possible Teams variant of SkPy here, hopefully something can be done to be able to backup chats locally from Teams in the same way as with Skyperious.

Terrance/SkPy#297

[difkye247]

Regarding the history export, I found that Microsoft Teams, like Skype, supports this function. I'll provide you with the link and image

After I downloaded the exported data, I found it was extremely similar to that of Skype. Could you check it

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/export-or-delete-your-data-in-microsoft-teams-free-1ed6ac68-5fb4-41be-9861-1a4127fecf68

[difkye247]

You can use your Skype account to log into Microsoft Teams. Microsoft migrates the Skype chat history to the Microsoft Teams application