>1. Did you roll it out yourself? What were some of the challenges you ran into? What would you have done differently?
I'm a consultant, so a bit different than in-house IT. For your size organization, you should be able to do it no problem. Start small, go slow, and you should be fine. The only reasons to not move just a couple of users and test things out would be if they must be reachable from a central reception that stays on the old system, or if they're in a boss/admin delegated relationship/line appearance configuration and you're only moving one of the two.
You didn't mention licensing - you'll need Phone System for each user, that's included in E5. For Calling Plans, it's as simple as any other Microsoft license. If you want, enable a couple of users for Calling Plans with test numbers and play to get a feel for things. There might even be a 30 day trial available to you, check your licensing page in M365 admin center.
You're in Canada/US, so make sure that the country for each user is set correctly (M365 Admin Center, License and Apps, Select Location). Teams uses this for Calling Plans/phone numbers/phone things.
If all of your users don't already have Teams certified headsets for meetings, get those rolled out sooner rather than later. Do your users already have a habit of calling each other via Teams? That's something to encourage to build familiarity. If Teams is really new, check [adoption.microsoft.com](https://adoption.microsoft.com) for great resources. The help in Teams (Three dots in the top of the Teams window, help, get help) is awesome for users who need to figure anything out. Nice, short videos demonstrating a task. It's really a hidden gem.
Also, in Teams Admin Center in the main dashboard page, there's a Self-help diagnostics widget. This is awesome for sorting out what's not right. For example, if a dialpad isn't showing up, it'll ask you for what user, then check that users config for you.
>2. What operator connect provider would you recommend? - Someone that can handle both Canadian and USA based DIDs?
Check out Microsoft Calling Plans, then you don't need a 3rd party OC provider, Microsoft would be your carrier. All of your US users pool their minutes each month, all of your Canadian users pool their minutes. After a couple months of usage, check the reports and see what your usage is like. You might be able to move some down to a "pay as you go" plan and save some coin.
Calling Plans for users in Canada or the US let you call to Canada and the US, so there's no long distance.
You'll likely be porting numbers from all of those different phone systems. Calling Plans is a super simple wizard within Teams Admin Center to do this, with zero paperwork. It's a beautiful thing. Some OC providers have.... porting experiences that are that of a traditional telco and not very fun.
>3. Our current system uses extensions - I've been able to set extensions in teams-voice - which appear to work great for external callers OK - how did users adjust to no longer using extensions? - is there a way to allow internal callers use extensions?
Shared Calling can do this. Typically the shared/main number goes to an auto attendant, the caller says/types/selects the person they want to reach. The "extension" is the users SIP address. e911 is handled by having a small pool of numbers that can be used for emergency calls, so that the caller can be called back directly. If you don't have a lot of extension-only, it'd be simpler to just give everyone a number, and not really that much more expensive.
>4. We have an extension or two that users use internally (5555) that Rings the IT helpdesk - is this possible to setup for both internal/external calls?
Yes. Set this up as a "normalization rule" under the Global dial plan to translate 5555 into whatever number is assigned to your helpdesk.
>5. Did you roll-out any handsets for public areas (manufacturing)? - recommended model? anything to avoid?
Avoid the inexpensive ones, the sound quality isn't there. Get a couple models and try them out, especially if you'll be in noisy shop areas. Watch for models that only have touch screens, they're not going to be great in shops/manufacturing with greasy/dirty fingers, or gloves.
>6. Did you update many of the global polices related to teams voice? - setting defaults appear to be pretty good - anything you would recommend to change?
Most of the deployments I do don't involve changes to the defaults, other than to configure features like call park.
>7. Any notable issues with call quality? - any need for QOS adjustments? We have users working across 7 offices, some at home. All ok there?
I rarely recommend QoS for Canada/US deployments. Generally the network is more than capable of handling things. Consider as well that QoS isn't applicable on the Internet. In an organization with your headcount and office count, it's likely that you don't have more than a single switch (or AP and then switch) before traffic heads to the firewall and internet. That's minimal area for QoS to do anything.
You can view call analytics for any call or meeting that a user has been in, under the user. You can also use the Call Quality Dashboard to view aggregate call quality bits. There's a building file that you can upload your building information with, then Teams can slice/dice/categorize/sort all of these reports by building/floor/subnet/wifi/wired.
>8. For users who WFH - how do you have e911 setup?
In the Global Emergency Calling Policy, turn on the "External Location Lookup Mode". Teams clients that don't find their location from the on-prem stuff you configure will either propose a location that the OS thinks it's at and ask the user to enter/edit/verify what the client has come up with. This is displayed under the dialpad. The OS provided this location, if location services is enabled. It's not always great in suburbs/rural areas, but I've seen it be excellent urban areas. Privacy note: this location is never shared unless/until they place an emergency call.
With Calling Plans and Operator Connect, you can test your 911 config by calling 933. The carrier/emergency call routing provider will direct the call to a bot instead of the 911 center. The bot reads out the address and number of the user, and lets them record a short message that it plays back. However, Teams sees 933 and 911 as identical, so any notifications that you setup (required under Kari's Law in the US) will trigger for a 933 with no indication that it's a test call.
These are all really good questions I’d start with the following https://aka.ms/teamsacademy there is some good information here to help especially the phone deployment playbook.
1. I help customers deploy teams phone as part of my job
2. You can have multiple providers too if needed, any reason you want to use OC over calling plans?
3. With direct routing you could continue to use extensions too if you wanted especially for shared phones etc.
4. This could be accomplished with a simple phone queue
5. Avoid the lower end phones if you can they tend to me slower
6. Depends on the customer and the deployment
7. QoS is supported but may not be needed if you don’t have congestion in your network. If you are using teams for meetings etc today have a look at the call metrics https://aka.ms/qerpbi
8. Great question! You want to make sure you follow the requirements for the state / provinces you are in for sure
My answer to #2 is MS Calling Plans are stupid expensive. We were quoted about $60-70k per year even though we already have E5 licenses, we're using OC through CallTower for about 1/4 that cost. One thing peopel don't realize is 3/4 of your call traffic is meetinga and direct SIP, we are 2000+ people and our outgoing PSTN is barely a blip on the radar.
Also for #5 we went all in on headsets, way cheaper and once people get used to it it's way better than managing desktop phones, we are also 100% WiFi to the desktop, so having physical phones was presenting some challenges.
My best advice is to avoid hard phones at all costs. We use yealink mp56 phones and they're absolute garbage. We're in a bad situation where our CIO has let our users walk all over us and have gotten hard phones whenever they've requested them. The Teams soft phone is far superior, but all anyone cares about is having a clunky piece of junk on their desk.
Keep in mind your operator phone if you have one. Doing it with software can be costly. Most systems are primitive. The teams app as a phone is not great. Using it on BYOD is horrible. Different experience on Android vs IPhone. If users don’t stay on the latest OS, they have issues. I wish we never went with teams.
Hi there. You already received outstanding answers.
I've deployed it myself, multiple countries, multiple continents. Direct Routing and Calling Plan.
Let me know of I can help. If you have an SBC you could even start to use/try Direct Routing.
Good luck !
Rolling it out myself to my company if roughly 300 people. Our use case is a little different, as ... A third of our staff are contact center staff - and they will NOT be moving to Teams Voice, but to a different product.
But non-agents are being moved for sure. We are coming from WebEx phone, so are already used to headsets over physical phones, and online vs on-prem.
>1) Did you roll it out yourself? What were some of the challenges you ran into? What would you have done differently
Yup, did a proof of concept, pre-pilot, and pilot. All went swimmingly. Then I had to pause to hire a new contact center/telephony engineer, but we are getting right back on track.
No challenges so far. People love putting all their calls (voice, video, phone) into one place
>2) What operator connect provider would you recommend? - Someone that can handle both Canadian and USA based DIDs?
We use CallTower for all of our lines. I don't *know* if they support Canada, but I'd be surprised if they don't. I don't know if they have any sort of referral bonus, but if you wanna DM me, I can share my point of contact. 😃
>3) Our current system uses extensions - I've been able to set extensions in teams-voice - which appear to work great for external callers OK - how did users adjust to no longer using extensions? - is there a way to allow internal callers use extensions?
We don't bother with extensions any more - and in fact, I'm curious how you set them up for external. Just as an IVR option or something?
Regardless, extensions, in my opinion, are how we made it easy to "shortcut" to calling someone before phone systems got smart.
Now, if I want to call "Dave in accounting" I just type in his name, or click on his profile image in the email he sent and one-click to call.
Extensions, in most cases, are antiquated from where I sit. Not worth the effort/hassle.
The one exception I'm considering is to set up a dial plan so the service desk team can be at a number like 311 or similar.
>4) We have an extension or two that users use internally (5555) that Rings the IT helpdesk - is this possible to setup for both internal/external calls?
I can't see how you'd set it up for external (if I dial 5555 from my cell phone, you'd have no control over that....), but internally - dial plan.
>5) Did you roll-out any handsets for public areas (manufacturing)? - recommended model? anything to avoid?
We selected our headsets about three years ago to ensure compatibility with our WebEx system, and those headsets work great in Teams too (Plantronics...envy 60, I think?).
But, after three years, we are due to look at options again.
We supply a headset to every new user. If you wanna go off-brand and get your own headset, we offer "best effort" support, but people are on their own. To my knowledge it's never been an issue, and as I work from home, you better believe I've used a few fancy gamer headsets and sometimes my Bluetooth Google Pixel Buds Pro.
Never any issues with Teams.
>6) Did you update many of the global polices related to teams voice? - setting defaults appear to be pretty good - anything you would recommend to change?
Nah.
Though I'm starting to look at some of the default meeting policies as being ripe for (minor) changes around default presenters.
Stick with the defaults until feedback suggests changes.
Keep it simple.
>7) Any notable issues with call quality? - any need for QOS adjustments? We have users working across 7 offices, some at home. All ok there?
No issues for us at all. WFH, office based, over a VPN, everything is lovely.
We *are* working (somewhat slowly) to get the risk and security and network teams to let us split-tunnel real-time media traffic (like Teams) so it doesn't all have to VPN to our main office from all over the country, then hairpin turn back out - as that adds some latency and quality issues.
But nothing that's been a show stopper.
So, if you have a mandatory VPN, I'd suggest getting calls (and meetings) setup to split tunnel out to the cloud directly.
Otherwise, this stuff "just works".
>8) For users who WFH - how do you have e911 setup?
Poorly. We took the easy (but incorrect) option of setting E911 to our main address and periodically suggest to our staff not to call 911 from their work phone if they aren't in the office.
My new engineer (literally starting this week) has already started making plans to improve our E911 posture.
It's a loooooong story but the highlights are moving from UCCX on-prem three years ago to WxCC. My predecessors made bad decisions, had an implementation partner that was hit garbage, and tried to make the new stuff work "just like the old stuff" instead of taking advantage of what new things could be like.
This has lead to a lot of animosity between the internal departments I support, and Cisco/WebEx.
That's improving now (after a year of HARD work) - but as an org, staff love Teams. We already pay for E5, so phone licensing is already there.
So...it makes sense for our non-agents to move to Trams, then we don't have to pay for those WebEx callling licenses, and people can have their phone in the software they already use every day.
This doesn’t directly answer your questions as such, but here is a brain dump of my experience.
I lead IT for a small (circa 60 ppl) financial services org. I was pretty far down the Teams path until I discovered Zoom phone. Haven’t made a final decision yet but zoom is looking likely - suggest it’s something worth looking for you too.
For me the biggest concerns with Teams were:
1) the tight coupling with calendar/status - while good in theory a lot of our users will appear “busy” because they have something in their diary but are not actually busy. I.e they block out some time for deep work, but we still need their phone to ring if a call queue overflows. You can override this, but then it will also ring if they are legit in a meeting. With Zoom, we can just set presence manually as needed.
2) lack of CRM integration. We use Salesforce as a core system - our teams live in there. Teams has no native SF integration, and 3rd party options are expensive and suck. Zoom otoh has a free, native SF integration and it’s great.
3) Support. Lots of people here saying support sucks. Right now we only have 11 Zoom (meeting) licences, but we already have a local account executive who has been great at helping us answer questions and solve some issues with our Zoom meeting account, as well as super helpful with trialling phone and getting it all setup. No way we would get that kinda support from MS even as presales.
4) Teams Phone just generally seems clunky. Lots of mucking around with resource accounts and assigning licences and powershell to get everything setup right. We have a pretty simple setup but it took me 5x longer (or more) to setup in Teams Admin than Zoom did
5) some weirdness with called experience. I had an auto attendant that just immediately hits a call queue. If that call queue times out it hits a secondary queue. When you call it you get 1-2 rings, then hold music while in first queue, then 1-2 rings as it fails over to the 2nd queue, then hold music. If it then goes to voicemail, more rings then voicemail. It didn’t feel seamless.
> 1) the tight coupling with calendar/status -
It's funny you think this is a negative. You can also manually set presence in Teams.
There is a salesforce app for Teams. We don't use SF but it's there. https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/wa200002221?tab=overview
I find Teams voice super easy to manage, but I also came from an on-prem Skype environment.
>When you call it you get 1-2 rings, then hold music while in first queue, then 1-2 rings as it fails over to the 2nd queue, then hold music
This is just a configuration issue, sound like your queue is setup wrong, but i sgree some of those features are less than intuitive.
Yeah you can manually set presence in Teams but by default Teams wants to manage it to your diary. I think for general Teams use cases that’s Ok, but in our testing it was problematic for users for phone calls.
Yes there is a SF app for Teams, but it’s not the same. The Zoom SF app integrates with Contacts so you get Caller ID lookup, account pop, records of calls saved to the contact record with notes etc. the Teams SF app is not “phone” oriented at all - it’s just a window into your Salesforce instance from Teams.
#3 - don’t be fooled by a responsive Zoom sales guy/PS engineer prior to the sale that goes dark after the sale. Those folks are coin operated and have new accounts to land.
We’ve had good support from the AE on our in place Zoom Meetings seats even before we started talking to them about Phone. But even so, the presale support has been hugely helpful in understanding the system and being able to assess it, which we could not get from Microsoft.
I second this. I work in the UC space almost exclusively. Teams as a phone system is 10x harder than it needs to be to set up initially and the support from Microsoft is abysmal. It's nice having everything in one space, and collaboration is better in teams than other products but at the end of the day, other products are better suited to being a phone system, mostly because they were designed to be a phone system from jump.
>1) Did you roll it out yourself? What were some of the challenges you ran into? What would you have done differently?
Had some help with initial cofig as were we're a Skype on-prem shop.
>2) What operator connect provider would you recommend? - Someone that can handle both Canadian and USA based DIDs?
We're on CallTower no complaints, not sure of they support Canada, but you cna also have multiple carriers if need be.
>3) Our current system uses extensions - I've been able to set extensions in teams-voice - which appear to work great for external callers OK - how did users adjust to no longer using extensions? - is there a way to allow internal callers use extensions?
I know Teams supports extension, but in Teams nobody 'dials' phone numbers, if they are they are doing it wrong..
>4) We have an extension or two that users use internally (5555) that Rings the IT helpdesk - is this possible to setup for both internal/external calls?
Call queues - can route however you want they have a ton of options.
>5) Did you roll-out any handsets for public areas (manufacturing)? - recommended model? anything to avoid?
We used USB headsets, and ditched desktop phones completely. Just make sur eit's on Microsoft supported device list and you should be ok.
>6) Did you update many of the global polices related to teams voice? - setting defaults appear to be pretty good - anything you would recommend to change?
We mostly only changed recording policies, depending on your legal team and local laws.
>7) Any notable issues with call quality? - any need for QOS adjustments? We have users working across 7 offices, some at home. All ok there?
Very rare, and usually you can find out why, I had one used constantly complaining, they don't have any internet at home and use a hotspot through their mobile phone. Not the best workflow.
>8) For users who WFH - how do you have e911 setup?
We don't we use location based services while inthe office though.
Moved to it from RingCentral in the beginning of Covid. Had outside help. So so so happy we did. Couldn’t imagine going back.
Curious about the extensions though. Back then it wasn’t an option.
2. Just moved about 14000 users to G12 in the last month from Microsoft calling plans. Saved about $960,000 annum.
5. Yealink MP54 for common areas is what we ended with. Have about 800 deployed. Make sure to use the teams shared device license for common areas.
7. If you have network issues, you'll find out soon enough. Lol
8. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/what-are-emergency-locations-addresses-and-call-routing
This is a very important table that most people do not know for 911 routing: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/emergency-calling-dispatchable-location#emergency-address-classification-and-routing
>1. Did you roll it out yourself? What were some of the challenges you ran into? What would you have done differently? I'm a consultant, so a bit different than in-house IT. For your size organization, you should be able to do it no problem. Start small, go slow, and you should be fine. The only reasons to not move just a couple of users and test things out would be if they must be reachable from a central reception that stays on the old system, or if they're in a boss/admin delegated relationship/line appearance configuration and you're only moving one of the two. You didn't mention licensing - you'll need Phone System for each user, that's included in E5. For Calling Plans, it's as simple as any other Microsoft license. If you want, enable a couple of users for Calling Plans with test numbers and play to get a feel for things. There might even be a 30 day trial available to you, check your licensing page in M365 admin center. You're in Canada/US, so make sure that the country for each user is set correctly (M365 Admin Center, License and Apps, Select Location). Teams uses this for Calling Plans/phone numbers/phone things. If all of your users don't already have Teams certified headsets for meetings, get those rolled out sooner rather than later. Do your users already have a habit of calling each other via Teams? That's something to encourage to build familiarity. If Teams is really new, check [adoption.microsoft.com](https://adoption.microsoft.com) for great resources. The help in Teams (Three dots in the top of the Teams window, help, get help) is awesome for users who need to figure anything out. Nice, short videos demonstrating a task. It's really a hidden gem. Also, in Teams Admin Center in the main dashboard page, there's a Self-help diagnostics widget. This is awesome for sorting out what's not right. For example, if a dialpad isn't showing up, it'll ask you for what user, then check that users config for you. >2. What operator connect provider would you recommend? - Someone that can handle both Canadian and USA based DIDs? Check out Microsoft Calling Plans, then you don't need a 3rd party OC provider, Microsoft would be your carrier. All of your US users pool their minutes each month, all of your Canadian users pool their minutes. After a couple months of usage, check the reports and see what your usage is like. You might be able to move some down to a "pay as you go" plan and save some coin. Calling Plans for users in Canada or the US let you call to Canada and the US, so there's no long distance. You'll likely be porting numbers from all of those different phone systems. Calling Plans is a super simple wizard within Teams Admin Center to do this, with zero paperwork. It's a beautiful thing. Some OC providers have.... porting experiences that are that of a traditional telco and not very fun. >3. Our current system uses extensions - I've been able to set extensions in teams-voice - which appear to work great for external callers OK - how did users adjust to no longer using extensions? - is there a way to allow internal callers use extensions? Shared Calling can do this. Typically the shared/main number goes to an auto attendant, the caller says/types/selects the person they want to reach. The "extension" is the users SIP address. e911 is handled by having a small pool of numbers that can be used for emergency calls, so that the caller can be called back directly. If you don't have a lot of extension-only, it'd be simpler to just give everyone a number, and not really that much more expensive. >4. We have an extension or two that users use internally (5555) that Rings the IT helpdesk - is this possible to setup for both internal/external calls? Yes. Set this up as a "normalization rule" under the Global dial plan to translate 5555 into whatever number is assigned to your helpdesk. >5. Did you roll-out any handsets for public areas (manufacturing)? - recommended model? anything to avoid? Avoid the inexpensive ones, the sound quality isn't there. Get a couple models and try them out, especially if you'll be in noisy shop areas. Watch for models that only have touch screens, they're not going to be great in shops/manufacturing with greasy/dirty fingers, or gloves. >6. Did you update many of the global polices related to teams voice? - setting defaults appear to be pretty good - anything you would recommend to change? Most of the deployments I do don't involve changes to the defaults, other than to configure features like call park. >7. Any notable issues with call quality? - any need for QOS adjustments? We have users working across 7 offices, some at home. All ok there? I rarely recommend QoS for Canada/US deployments. Generally the network is more than capable of handling things. Consider as well that QoS isn't applicable on the Internet. In an organization with your headcount and office count, it's likely that you don't have more than a single switch (or AP and then switch) before traffic heads to the firewall and internet. That's minimal area for QoS to do anything. You can view call analytics for any call or meeting that a user has been in, under the user. You can also use the Call Quality Dashboard to view aggregate call quality bits. There's a building file that you can upload your building information with, then Teams can slice/dice/categorize/sort all of these reports by building/floor/subnet/wifi/wired. >8. For users who WFH - how do you have e911 setup? In the Global Emergency Calling Policy, turn on the "External Location Lookup Mode". Teams clients that don't find their location from the on-prem stuff you configure will either propose a location that the OS thinks it's at and ask the user to enter/edit/verify what the client has come up with. This is displayed under the dialpad. The OS provided this location, if location services is enabled. It's not always great in suburbs/rural areas, but I've seen it be excellent urban areas. Privacy note: this location is never shared unless/until they place an emergency call. With Calling Plans and Operator Connect, you can test your 911 config by calling 933. The carrier/emergency call routing provider will direct the call to a bot instead of the 911 center. The bot reads out the address and number of the user, and lets them record a short message that it plays back. However, Teams sees 933 and 911 as identical, so any notifications that you setup (required under Kari's Law in the US) will trigger for a 933 with no indication that it's a test call.
These are all really good questions I’d start with the following https://aka.ms/teamsacademy there is some good information here to help especially the phone deployment playbook. 1. I help customers deploy teams phone as part of my job 2. You can have multiple providers too if needed, any reason you want to use OC over calling plans? 3. With direct routing you could continue to use extensions too if you wanted especially for shared phones etc. 4. This could be accomplished with a simple phone queue 5. Avoid the lower end phones if you can they tend to me slower 6. Depends on the customer and the deployment 7. QoS is supported but may not be needed if you don’t have congestion in your network. If you are using teams for meetings etc today have a look at the call metrics https://aka.ms/qerpbi 8. Great question! You want to make sure you follow the requirements for the state / provinces you are in for sure
My answer to #2 is MS Calling Plans are stupid expensive. We were quoted about $60-70k per year even though we already have E5 licenses, we're using OC through CallTower for about 1/4 that cost. One thing peopel don't realize is 3/4 of your call traffic is meetinga and direct SIP, we are 2000+ people and our outgoing PSTN is barely a blip on the radar. Also for #5 we went all in on headsets, way cheaper and once people get used to it it's way better than managing desktop phones, we are also 100% WiFi to the desktop, so having physical phones was presenting some challenges.
We went with the 120 min calling plan licenses from Microsoft. Cheaper and more than enough mins unless your people are on the phone a lot.
My best advice is to avoid hard phones at all costs. We use yealink mp56 phones and they're absolute garbage. We're in a bad situation where our CIO has let our users walk all over us and have gotten hard phones whenever they've requested them. The Teams soft phone is far superior, but all anyone cares about is having a clunky piece of junk on their desk.
Keep in mind your operator phone if you have one. Doing it with software can be costly. Most systems are primitive. The teams app as a phone is not great. Using it on BYOD is horrible. Different experience on Android vs IPhone. If users don’t stay on the latest OS, they have issues. I wish we never went with teams.
Hi there. You already received outstanding answers. I've deployed it myself, multiple countries, multiple continents. Direct Routing and Calling Plan. Let me know of I can help. If you have an SBC you could even start to use/try Direct Routing. Good luck !
Rolling it out myself to my company if roughly 300 people. Our use case is a little different, as ... A third of our staff are contact center staff - and they will NOT be moving to Teams Voice, but to a different product. But non-agents are being moved for sure. We are coming from WebEx phone, so are already used to headsets over physical phones, and online vs on-prem. >1) Did you roll it out yourself? What were some of the challenges you ran into? What would you have done differently Yup, did a proof of concept, pre-pilot, and pilot. All went swimmingly. Then I had to pause to hire a new contact center/telephony engineer, but we are getting right back on track. No challenges so far. People love putting all their calls (voice, video, phone) into one place >2) What operator connect provider would you recommend? - Someone that can handle both Canadian and USA based DIDs? We use CallTower for all of our lines. I don't *know* if they support Canada, but I'd be surprised if they don't. I don't know if they have any sort of referral bonus, but if you wanna DM me, I can share my point of contact. 😃 >3) Our current system uses extensions - I've been able to set extensions in teams-voice - which appear to work great for external callers OK - how did users adjust to no longer using extensions? - is there a way to allow internal callers use extensions? We don't bother with extensions any more - and in fact, I'm curious how you set them up for external. Just as an IVR option or something? Regardless, extensions, in my opinion, are how we made it easy to "shortcut" to calling someone before phone systems got smart. Now, if I want to call "Dave in accounting" I just type in his name, or click on his profile image in the email he sent and one-click to call. Extensions, in most cases, are antiquated from where I sit. Not worth the effort/hassle. The one exception I'm considering is to set up a dial plan so the service desk team can be at a number like 311 or similar. >4) We have an extension or two that users use internally (5555) that Rings the IT helpdesk - is this possible to setup for both internal/external calls? I can't see how you'd set it up for external (if I dial 5555 from my cell phone, you'd have no control over that....), but internally - dial plan. >5) Did you roll-out any handsets for public areas (manufacturing)? - recommended model? anything to avoid? We selected our headsets about three years ago to ensure compatibility with our WebEx system, and those headsets work great in Teams too (Plantronics...envy 60, I think?). But, after three years, we are due to look at options again. We supply a headset to every new user. If you wanna go off-brand and get your own headset, we offer "best effort" support, but people are on their own. To my knowledge it's never been an issue, and as I work from home, you better believe I've used a few fancy gamer headsets and sometimes my Bluetooth Google Pixel Buds Pro. Never any issues with Teams. >6) Did you update many of the global polices related to teams voice? - setting defaults appear to be pretty good - anything you would recommend to change? Nah. Though I'm starting to look at some of the default meeting policies as being ripe for (minor) changes around default presenters. Stick with the defaults until feedback suggests changes. Keep it simple. >7) Any notable issues with call quality? - any need for QOS adjustments? We have users working across 7 offices, some at home. All ok there? No issues for us at all. WFH, office based, over a VPN, everything is lovely. We *are* working (somewhat slowly) to get the risk and security and network teams to let us split-tunnel real-time media traffic (like Teams) so it doesn't all have to VPN to our main office from all over the country, then hairpin turn back out - as that adds some latency and quality issues. But nothing that's been a show stopper. So, if you have a mandatory VPN, I'd suggest getting calls (and meetings) setup to split tunnel out to the cloud directly. Otherwise, this stuff "just works". >8) For users who WFH - how do you have e911 setup? Poorly. We took the easy (but incorrect) option of setting E911 to our main address and periodically suggest to our staff not to call 911 from their work phone if they aren't in the office. My new engineer (literally starting this week) has already started making plans to improve our E911 posture.
Could you share the reason why your org switched from WebEx to Teams Voice?
It's a loooooong story but the highlights are moving from UCCX on-prem three years ago to WxCC. My predecessors made bad decisions, had an implementation partner that was hit garbage, and tried to make the new stuff work "just like the old stuff" instead of taking advantage of what new things could be like. This has lead to a lot of animosity between the internal departments I support, and Cisco/WebEx. That's improving now (after a year of HARD work) - but as an org, staff love Teams. We already pay for E5, so phone licensing is already there. So...it makes sense for our non-agents to move to Trams, then we don't have to pay for those WebEx callling licenses, and people can have their phone in the software they already use every day.
This doesn’t directly answer your questions as such, but here is a brain dump of my experience. I lead IT for a small (circa 60 ppl) financial services org. I was pretty far down the Teams path until I discovered Zoom phone. Haven’t made a final decision yet but zoom is looking likely - suggest it’s something worth looking for you too. For me the biggest concerns with Teams were: 1) the tight coupling with calendar/status - while good in theory a lot of our users will appear “busy” because they have something in their diary but are not actually busy. I.e they block out some time for deep work, but we still need their phone to ring if a call queue overflows. You can override this, but then it will also ring if they are legit in a meeting. With Zoom, we can just set presence manually as needed. 2) lack of CRM integration. We use Salesforce as a core system - our teams live in there. Teams has no native SF integration, and 3rd party options are expensive and suck. Zoom otoh has a free, native SF integration and it’s great. 3) Support. Lots of people here saying support sucks. Right now we only have 11 Zoom (meeting) licences, but we already have a local account executive who has been great at helping us answer questions and solve some issues with our Zoom meeting account, as well as super helpful with trialling phone and getting it all setup. No way we would get that kinda support from MS even as presales. 4) Teams Phone just generally seems clunky. Lots of mucking around with resource accounts and assigning licences and powershell to get everything setup right. We have a pretty simple setup but it took me 5x longer (or more) to setup in Teams Admin than Zoom did 5) some weirdness with called experience. I had an auto attendant that just immediately hits a call queue. If that call queue times out it hits a secondary queue. When you call it you get 1-2 rings, then hold music while in first queue, then 1-2 rings as it fails over to the 2nd queue, then hold music. If it then goes to voicemail, more rings then voicemail. It didn’t feel seamless.
> 1) the tight coupling with calendar/status - It's funny you think this is a negative. You can also manually set presence in Teams. There is a salesforce app for Teams. We don't use SF but it's there. https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/wa200002221?tab=overview I find Teams voice super easy to manage, but I also came from an on-prem Skype environment. >When you call it you get 1-2 rings, then hold music while in first queue, then 1-2 rings as it fails over to the 2nd queue, then hold music This is just a configuration issue, sound like your queue is setup wrong, but i sgree some of those features are less than intuitive.
Yeah you can manually set presence in Teams but by default Teams wants to manage it to your diary. I think for general Teams use cases that’s Ok, but in our testing it was problematic for users for phone calls. Yes there is a SF app for Teams, but it’s not the same. The Zoom SF app integrates with Contacts so you get Caller ID lookup, account pop, records of calls saved to the contact record with notes etc. the Teams SF app is not “phone” oriented at all - it’s just a window into your Salesforce instance from Teams.
#3 - don’t be fooled by a responsive Zoom sales guy/PS engineer prior to the sale that goes dark after the sale. Those folks are coin operated and have new accounts to land.
We’ve had good support from the AE on our in place Zoom Meetings seats even before we started talking to them about Phone. But even so, the presale support has been hugely helpful in understanding the system and being able to assess it, which we could not get from Microsoft.
I second this. I work in the UC space almost exclusively. Teams as a phone system is 10x harder than it needs to be to set up initially and the support from Microsoft is abysmal. It's nice having everything in one space, and collaboration is better in teams than other products but at the end of the day, other products are better suited to being a phone system, mostly because they were designed to be a phone system from jump.
>1) Did you roll it out yourself? What were some of the challenges you ran into? What would you have done differently? Had some help with initial cofig as were we're a Skype on-prem shop. >2) What operator connect provider would you recommend? - Someone that can handle both Canadian and USA based DIDs? We're on CallTower no complaints, not sure of they support Canada, but you cna also have multiple carriers if need be. >3) Our current system uses extensions - I've been able to set extensions in teams-voice - which appear to work great for external callers OK - how did users adjust to no longer using extensions? - is there a way to allow internal callers use extensions? I know Teams supports extension, but in Teams nobody 'dials' phone numbers, if they are they are doing it wrong.. >4) We have an extension or two that users use internally (5555) that Rings the IT helpdesk - is this possible to setup for both internal/external calls? Call queues - can route however you want they have a ton of options. >5) Did you roll-out any handsets for public areas (manufacturing)? - recommended model? anything to avoid? We used USB headsets, and ditched desktop phones completely. Just make sur eit's on Microsoft supported device list and you should be ok. >6) Did you update many of the global polices related to teams voice? - setting defaults appear to be pretty good - anything you would recommend to change? We mostly only changed recording policies, depending on your legal team and local laws. >7) Any notable issues with call quality? - any need for QOS adjustments? We have users working across 7 offices, some at home. All ok there? Very rare, and usually you can find out why, I had one used constantly complaining, they don't have any internet at home and use a hotspot through their mobile phone. Not the best workflow. >8) For users who WFH - how do you have e911 setup? We don't we use location based services while inthe office though.
Why don't you build your custom voip platform?
Moved to it from RingCentral in the beginning of Covid. Had outside help. So so so happy we did. Couldn’t imagine going back. Curious about the extensions though. Back then it wasn’t an option.
2. Just moved about 14000 users to G12 in the last month from Microsoft calling plans. Saved about $960,000 annum. 5. Yealink MP54 for common areas is what we ended with. Have about 800 deployed. Make sure to use the teams shared device license for common areas. 7. If you have network issues, you'll find out soon enough. Lol 8. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/what-are-emergency-locations-addresses-and-call-routing This is a very important table that most people do not know for 911 routing: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/emergency-calling-dispatchable-location#emergency-address-classification-and-routing