Microsoft Teams Phone is a modern, cloud-based telephony solution designed to replace traditional phone systems.
Teams Phone leverages the widely used Microsoft Teams platform to integrate voice calling capabilities directly into your Microsoft Teams apps.
Image credit: Microsoft
Microsoft Teams Phone allows users to make and receive calls directly through the Teams interface, creating a unified communication hub.
It replaces the need for traditional PBX systems, which often require separate infrastructure, or virtualised phone systems running on servers, both of which require extensive maintenance.
Teams Phone is essentially a cloud phone solution, similar to other products on the market such as Horizon by Gamma, 8×8, RingCentral and many more.
Each user’s softphone, or physical handset, is registered as a VoIP client, so each user can have their own phone number.
This solution is particularly attractive to businesses looking to streamline their communication infrastructure and support remote or hybrid work environments.
The evolution of the Microsoft Teams phone system began with Microsoft’s earlier products, such as Lync and Skype for Business. Initially, these were on-premises solutions that eventually transitioned to cloud services as part of Microsoft’s Office 365 suite.
Teams Phone represents the latest iteration, offering a more integrated and seamless user experience.
Before Teams Phone was officially branded, many people referred to the solution as “Business Voice”.
A Microsoft Teams Phone system offers several key features that make it an attractive telephony solution, particularly for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs):
Teams Phone brings phone calls into Teams, giving users a single communication platform and a great user experience. Since many users are already familiar with Teams, integrating phone capabilities requires minimal additional training. By consolidating multiple systems into one, it also reduces the complexity of managing multiple systems for administrators.
Users can interact with the system through a software-based phone interface, enabling calls via laptops, PCs, or mobile devices, etc. It gives users a dial pad on the screen, rather than having to use a physical handset.
Despite Teams Phone usually being used as a softphone by most users, Teams Phone also supports physical handsets for users who prefer traditional devices, such as receptionists. There are many handsets available on the market, which are Teams Phone enabled, making it simple to give some users a more traditional experience and capabilities. You can watch an official video from Microsoft demonstrating the capabilities of Teams Phones.
Each user’s softphone or physical handset is registered as a Voice over IP (VoIP) client, each having their own number. VoIP technology reduces the need for separate cabling and infrastructure. If someone phones your number, the call will come through in Teams for you as the user – but the person making the call won’t notice any difference from a traditional phone call.
You can also VoIP-enable a Teams Room with Teams Phone, so a room can call phone numbers or vice versa. Obviously, this won’t include the option of video, because it’s a phone call, but sometimes this is needed when someone can’t access a Teams Meeting due to some limitations, e.g. only having access to a landline or a device where they aren’t authenticated.
As with any traditional phone experience, if you don’t answer a call, the caller will hear an answerphone message and can leave a voicemail. In Teams, you can easily see your voicemails and play them back, with the option to also read a text transcription which is automatically generated.
The system can handle call routing and queue management, ensuring calls are directed to the right teams or individuals. It could route calls one-by-one to a team of people, or to everyone at once, and you can have a shared voicemail.
It also offers ‘presence-based’ calling, so if a user’s Teams status is marked as busy, in a meeting, or DND etc., then any phone calls to them can be met with a voicemail message or routed to other members of the team.
The analytics for Teams Phone provide detailed analytics and telemetry data for calls, which can help identify issues and troubleshoot them effectively.
While Teams Phone offers many benefits, there are some challenges to consider:
Teams Phone requires third-party integrations for PSTN call recording. This basically adds a bot, like a recorder, hosted in Azure and it integrates with Teams. This is useful for compliance recordings, where call recording is mandatory, but not something users interact with. For example, you can log in and review stats, call recordings, transcriptions, etc. However, it’s not native to Microsoft Teams and requires you to use a third-party provider to get this functionality. You can also enable convenience recordings, but this requires the user to remember to enable recording.
If you’ve already got a phone system on your data network, Teams Phone probably shouldn’t encounter too many added challenges. However, organisations using traditional phone systems should usually ensure network readiness for VoIP, which can require additional planning and testing.
Large enterprise organisations may not find Teams Phone sufficient for their operations. This is simply because we find Teams Phone is not yet suitable for large, complex call routing. For example, if you have a significant number of phone numbers with different call routing for each number, different availability hours etc., Teams Phone is not yet there. But Microsoft is working on improving this.
In terms of Teams Phone routing, you can use numerous options, such as “Calling Plans”, “Operator Connect”, and “Direct Routing”.
With Calling Plans, Microsoft manages everything. Microsoft is the carrier for your phone numbers, and you purchase the minutes within your licences. Depending on usage requirements and location, calling plans can be quite expensive.
If you already pay for a lot of phone numbers with a provider, it’s a big task to migrate them to Microsoft.
Telephony providers generally only perform migrations (known as porting) between 9 am – 5pm, Monday-Friday, which can also pose issues as you’ll face downtime on your phone systems during business hours. For many businesses, this isn’t feasible.
This is where Operator Connect with Teams Phone can help. If your carrier participates in the Microsoft Operator Connector Program, it connects your phone numbers to Microsoft and gives you visibility of all your phone numbers in the Teams Admin Centre. So, you are still able to perform administration on your numbers, and you can set most of the routing yourself, but the billing of the phone numbers is still carried out by the third-party provider that owns the numbers.
This can work out cheaper than calling plans as you can often maintain any cheap rates you had already secured.
This option enables you to use your own PSTN carrier by connecting your Session Border Controllers (SBCs) to Teams Phone. We find this isn’t as commonly used in the SME space.
Lastly, Microsoft does also offer an option called “Teams Phone Mobile”, whereby a user’s SIM-enabled phone number is also their Teams phone number. This does require your carrier to participate in the Teams Phone Mobile Programme, but can be useful if you want to use a primary company-owned SIM-enabled phone number for Teams Phone as a single number solution. Teams Phone Mobile is suitable for sales and field-based members of your organisation, as these individuals often require mobile support.
The calling functionality in Microsoft Teams has been sought after for some time, based on several key business drivers.
Now that remote and hybrid work models are so common, cloud telephony is the logical solution for organisations with distributed workforces. Microsoft Teams has become the preferred collaboration platform for many organisations, and Teams Phone supports seamless phone communications regardless of location, making it a popular choice.
Centralising communications in a single platform can improve the user experience, reducing the need to switch between apps or authenticate with different credentials, etc. Many employees prefer Teams because they already use it extensively and can navigate its intuitive interface, while also appreciating its native integration with other Microsoft 365 apps.
The planned shutdowns of the traditional Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) in the UK by communications providers are helping drive the adoption of IP-based telephony solutions among organisations. Teams Phone is just one example of the cloud telephony solutions available to businesses, but its simplicity is likely to make it a strong option for organisations that want a straightforward cloud telephony solution.
Implementing a Microsoft Teams Phone telephony system should involve several core steps.
An initial consultation or discovery phase is where you should determine the best setup for the organisation, including user needs, network readiness, and current phone usage. A new phone system can be an opportunity to review your current routing and usage and determine if improvements and efficiencies could be made.
It’s important to ensure the appropriate Microsoft licensing for Teams Phone.
Your new Teams Phone system will need to be configured to your existing or new routing requirements, including handling voicemails, holiday schedules, and team queue requirements etc.
Before fully migrating, a Teams Phone telephony system should be tested to ensure functionality and reliability. To help reduce the risk of porting phone numbers, then identifying technical issues, we recommend you leverage Microsoft-provided phone numbers for testing before number porting.
Depending on the connectivity option you choose, you may need to migrate your existing phone numbers to Teams Phone, requiring coordination with current providers and the potential for downtime.
Microsoft Teams Phone can provide an excellent cloud telephony solution for many organisations.
As a leading Microsoft Partner, we can help you implement Teams Phone with our Teams Phone consultancy services, as well as providing Microsoft 365 consultancy services to help you leverage the wider capabilities of Teams and your Microsoft 365 technology.
Get in touch today if you’re interested in moving to cloud telephony or using Teams Phone.