You can now write iOS, Android apps that embed Skype for Business audio & video!

Skype for Business App SDK Preview now available for download

Just over 30 days ago, Microsoft announced a new Skype for Business App SDK Preview for mobile applications.

Now, (well, last week actually but I was away!) that Preview is available for developers to download and play with.

As mentioned in the previous announcement, the SDK’s initial focus is “to enable consumer iOS and Android apps to embed communications from “guests” to Skype for Business users within an organization, via the “guest meeting join” capability.”

The MSDN landing page for the SDK is: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/skype/appsdk/skypeappsdk or you can also use the short link http://aka.ms/skypeappsdk.

Native mobile applications are available for both iOS and Android, along with documentation. For Apple devices, iOS 8 and above is supported. For Android the TARGET_SDK_VERSION is 22 (L); the MIN_SDK_VERSION is 14 (ICE_CREAM_SANDWICH).  The Public Preview App SDK supports armeabi-v7a processors only. You cannot use the SDK on devices with an x86 CPU architecture. You should run any apps in development on a physical Android device. For the Public Preview, emulators are not supported.

There is support in the Preview for both on-premise and Office365 deployments.

There is also a note about versioning. The SDK is expected to be frequently updated so there are guidelines around keeping up to date with the latest version.

More information / blog posts once I’ve had a chance to play with the SDK a bit more 🙂  In the meantime, you can see Richard Taylor (Senior Product Manager) walk through how to use the App SDK Preview to create a iOS Banking application using the samples provided with the SDK (jump to 30mins 20 secs):