Microsoft Teams

The Teams Admin’s guide to Teams Phone success

Tania Morrill

Jan 2025

The Teams Admin’s guide to Teams Phone success image

Rolling out a new phone system has never been simple. Except maybe the very first phone system you implemented when your business was brand new and only had a few users.

With hundreds and thousands of users, overflowing call queues, and differing requirements across many multiple departments, there are a lot of considerations when it comes to migrating to Teams Phone—or any phone system for that matter.

One major trick you have up your sleeve is that Teams Phone is, for the most part, a SaaS tool. Calls are made over a VoIP connection and call control and admin is done via an internet portal.

There’s also the added benefit that your users are likely using Teams for at least some part of their workday. Unless you’re in the extreme minority of businesses who are considering Teams Phone without already having rolled out Teams for collaboration, users and admins will already be familiar with the look and feel.

In this guide, we’ll walk through when to select Teams Phone, highlight some lesser-known features, and walk through how to best prepare your business for Teams Phone success.


Is Teams Phone a good fit for your organization?

If you’re using Teams for meetings, chat, or internal calling, Teams Phone is (rightly) top of your list for potential voice platforms.

Selecting Teams Phone means you'll benefit from:

  • A familiar feel for users already on-platform.
  • Streamlined administration and management.
  • A unified interface for calling, meetings, and chat.
  • No extended period of learning how to make and receive calls.

Opting for another platform to enable voice calls, even with Teams as the front-end to place those calls, lead to:

  • Multiple platforms for administration.
  • Inconsistent billing from dual suppliers.
  • Complex integrations that need maintaining.

Businesses choose Teams Phone when they’re already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem. As a rule of thumb, the deeper you get into Teams and the wider Microsoft 365 estate, the more suitable Teams Phone becomes.

 

Where to start with Teams Phone?


The very beginning of your Teams Phone journey is enabling internal calling. By default, this is turned on when you implement Teams Phone across your organization.

The next step is external calling over the PSTN network. When you get to this step, there’s much more to consider (calling connectivity, configuring call queues, auto attendants, reviewing call analytics, etc.).

While there’s a lot to choose from when it comes to rolling out, this blog post will focus on success of implementation rather than the technical requirements.

If you’re still at the technical stage, we suggest watching our on-demand webinar below.

 

What is required for Teams Phone?


The prerequisites for Teams Phone are:

  • Internet connectivity that allows VoIP calling.
  • Microsoft Teams license.
  • Teams Phone license (either standalone or as part of a Microsoft 365 license).

When you are ready you enable Teams Phone for external calling, further requirements include:

Before you start to run before you can walk, it pays to highlight some of the lesser spoken about Teams Phone features so you know what’s there to help you.

Uncovering key Teams Phone features


1. Shared Calling

If you have a group of users who need access to make external calls on an infrequent basis, Shared Calling provides a most cost-effective way compared to committing to a monthly spend or even providing a DID number.

Instead, users get access to a shared phone number and a shared calling plan. This means there’s a pooled number of minutes to use up across a number of users.

When users make calls, they use the same outgoing CLI. For any returned calls to this number, calls route back to your choice of auto attendant or receptionist.

 

2. Copilot for Teams Phone


Copilot is the artificial intelligence companion popping up across all your Microsoft 365 apps.

From Dynamics to SharePoint, and particularly prevalent in Teams, Copilot is now available for Teams Phone too.

During calls, your Copilot can take notes on key points and assign tasks with owners. While your call is in progress, your companion can flag things like what questions remain unresolved, follow-up questions, and different perspectives per topic discussed.


After a call, you can use the Ask about this call button for any calls where Copilot was enabled.

Microsoft suggests asking questions like:

  • What questions were asked, answered, and unresolved?
  • What was the mood of the call? 
  • Summarize what people said, in a less technical way. 
  • What was the biggest concern? What were they most excited about?  
  • What ideas did [a call participant] have that I can share with the product team?


3. Shared device licenses for Android Mobile

If you’re a business with a number of frontline workers, it may feel like they’re often disconnected from real-time communications.

The shared device license for Android means you can use durable Android phones for user types like warehouse workers, oil rig technicians, and anybody who’s usually on the move and needs an alternative to a thousand-dollar, prone to breaking, iPhone in environments with hard floors, considerable drop heights, or heavy machinery. 

Using cellular data or wifi, this license removes the need for DECT in areas where signal is poor, acting as a great tool to keep all your users connected.

 

4. Voice isolation

When you’re working from home and your neighbour decides to chop down their tree at 10am, you don’t want the whirring of a chainsaw to ruin your call.

Likewise, when working from a coffee shop and you can’t get a seat away from the barista machine, you still need to make calls and carry on with your day. It could simply be when you’re in the office and you’ve got noisy colleagues.

Voice isolation takes background noise reduction to the next level. Instead of focusing on removing the external noise, it blocks out everything else and hyper focuses on your voice, making for the most crystal clear call possible.


Uncovering key Teams Phone features

Now you’re familiar with Teams Phone, it’s time to plan with success at the forefront of your strategy. Lots of businesses make the mistake of rushing into a Teams Phone deployment without a vision of what the future will be like.

We’ve put together these 10 key steps to highlight before you start rolling out—to make your life (and your users’ lives) easier in 10, 100, and 1,000 days time.

1. Conduct an “as is assessment”

No, we’re not talking about feature parity here. In fact, one of the biggest things to highlight is how Teams can change the way you work. 

You’ll no longer be reliant on dated phone system features like paging and manual call forwarding, as the way we work with collaboration platforms has changed. Features like asynchronous chat, presence, and document collaboration are genuine replacements for legacy and time-consuming communication methods.

Mark Vale, Organizer of Commsverse, says to employ business analysts to engage with different business units to discover what they now use voice for:

“This discovery is essential to understanding the voice of the customer so you can build the “to-be” state successfully. This may have an IT cost benefit too as you may find the majority of the as-is state is no longer used and their needs simplified which will lead to cost savings and easier support in the to-be Teams state.” 

Once you have the current state documented, it’s time to create a gap analysis and list of business (and user) requirements. Here, you can check off Teams Phone features and capabilities you genuinely need, rather than overcompensating by revisiting decades old feature lists.

2. Start internal communications early

It’s time to start thinking like a PR agency. 

No, you don’t need to rent a billboard in Times Square. But you do need to think about raising awareness and communicating why changes are being made and when and how they’re likely to happen.

Consider building a communications matrix to decide who gets informed of which updates. For example, users won’t need to know the exact dates until further down the line. But department heads and other IT teams will need significant notice to ensure they don’t plan any major projects that coincide with migration or implementation.

Use your company intranet, company-wide Teams channel, or include updates in your monthly all-hands meetings to ensure everyone is informed and on-side. This will reduce pushback further down the line.

3. Plan what success looks like and how you'll measure it

Kevin Kieller, Co-Founder and Lead Analyst at enableUC, says that while it’s critically important to properly engineer a Teams Phone System solution (selecting the right components, PSTN connection model, and experienced partners), it’s also critical to look beyond just working this work. He suggests using analytics to optimize costs and the employee experience from day one. 

“We often find organizations, including very large organizations, that only look to analytics after a problem has been reported. Quality issues that could have been prevented are allowed to occur and only dealt with reactively. This also means adoption of the full breadth of Teams Phone System services is lacking, reducing the value of the investment made into Teams as the primary voice platform. Most concerning, without tracking usage and adoption, we find organizations paying for licenses, DIDs, concurrent SIP channels, and other services that aren’t needed. Regularly leveraging built-in or third-party analytics is a best practice that can both improve end-user experience and save money for your company.”

4. Get acquainted with the Teams Admin Center

You’re going to be spending a lot of time here. The Teams Admin Center (TAC) is the home for all provisioning of new users and moves, adds, and changes.

Every time you need to change a call queue, auto attendant, or user policy, you’ll do this in the TAC.

If you’re already using Teams for internal communication, you’ll have access to the TAC. Spend a good amount of time learning the navigation and how to make changes, so you’re up to speed when it’s time to provision users, meeting rooms, and make in-flight changes.

5. Develop user personas

Every department is going to have bespoke needs. For example, Jeffrey in accounts will only need to make a handful of calls per month, so he likely only needs a Shared Calling license. 

However, Jane in sales has a target of contacting 300 new leads per month, meaning she will be making (and receiving) tons of calls. Unlike Jeffrey, her calls need to be recorded so the rest of the sales team can learn from her success. When leads call back, Jane will likely be on the phone, so she needs voicemail configured too.

Create user personas for your main roles across departments. This will help you assign voice policies that grant access to specific features, while reducing the amount of one-by-one selections you need to make. Here, you can use PowerShell to run scripts to assign policies per persona — or use third party automation tools like Orto for Teams.

 

6. Build your own Teams Phone adoption kit

For the sake of your sanity later on in your Teams Phone rollout, and to get users up to speed efficiently, consider creating a Teams Phone resource pack.

This takes the form of a self-service bank of materials that users can access and department heads can inform their teams to reference.

If you spend time up front creating video tutorials and FAQ databases, you’ll reduce the number of support tickets post-implementation. When users can get the information they need to use a new feature or remedy their own problem in seconds, your support queue will be reserved for genuine technical issues.

7. Select your PSTN connectivity

If you’re using Teams Phone for external calling, you’re going to need to select a call carrier. This is separate to the Teams Phone license. 

With only Teams Phone, you can make calls between internal users until you add external PSTN connectivity.

There are four options for Teams Phone PSTN connectivity:

  1. Microsoft Calling Plan: Microsoft’s retail calling product, ideal for small businesses.
  2. Direct Routing: Connecting third-party phone system equipment from any provider.
  3. Operator Connect: Microsoft-approved carriers that can license numbers via the TAC.
  4. Teams Phone Mobile: Microsoft-approved carriers that can license mobile numbers as your Teams Phone number.

 

Microsoft Calling Plans

Operator Connect

Direct Routing

Voice connectivity

Provided by Microsoft

Provided by one of the carriers available on Operator Connect through trusted cross- connects between their network and Microsoft

External carrier services are connected to Teams via a cloud-based or on-premises session border controller (SBC)

Voice service management

Managed in the 365 admin center

Managed through the 365 admin center and the carrier’s portal. Additional complementary
management services can
also be available via the
carrier

(See Pure IP's Number Management Tool)

Number and services management through the carrier’s customer portal

(See Pure IP's Number Connect)

Integrations

Only supports applications designed for Teams using 365 API integrations

Supports the integration
of voice applications and
hybrid environments

Supports the integration
of voice applications and
hybrid environments

Pricing

Bundled calling plans, minutes, and licensing on a per-user, per- month basis

Depends on Carrier. Some
offer bundled pricing, others
work to a transparent ‘pay
for what you use model
where you pay the carrier
for the minutes used +
monthly rental charge

Depends on Carrier. Some
offer bundled pricing, others
work to a transparent ‘pay
for what you use model
where you pay the carrier for
the minutes used + monthly
rental charge

Supporting hybrid environments

Not supported

Supported; different
platforms, contact centers,
legacy systems, and
analog devices can all be
connected using the same
voice network

Supported; different
platforms, contact centers,
legacy systems, and
analog devices can all be
connected using the same
voice network

Voice routing

Standard options only

Standard options only

Completely configurable

Global coverage

Limited to the countries
where Microsoft offers
services

Depends on where
the Carrier has PSTN
replacement services.
Can also be used in
conjunction with Managed
SBC services where
available to extend
geographic coverage

Depends on where
the Carrier has PSTN
replacement services.
Can also be used in
conjunction with Managed
SBC services where
available to extend
geographic coverage

If you’re using Teams Phone for external calling, you’re going to need to select a call carrier. This is separate to the Teams Phone license.

With only Teams Phone, you can make calls between internal users until you add external PSTN connectivity.

For businesses still working out the right connectivity option, download our free whitepaper: Operator Connect vs Direct Routing & Microsoft Calling Plans >>

8. Prep users and stakeholders for go-live


Remember in point two, where we said to start thinking like a PR agency?

Here’s where it pays off.

As you reach your implementation dates(s), users and department heads will already be in the know as to why changes are being made and the benefits they can expect. 

Now, your job is simple. The final communications email/Teams chat/SharePoint bulletin is to confirm the date and time of the rollout. Pushback here will be minimal—if you invest time educating users upfront.

9. Arrange self-service support for go-live and follow-up queries

Like any major technology implementation or change to your business, expect the unexpected. But also expect new users to have simple queries, like how to use a feature like call recording or access a new report.

In a traditional environment, you’d be receiving queries every other ticket asking for help with how to use the tools you’ve implemented. This isn’t a good use of your time and can be avoided.

Instead, use the following:

  • Training and onboarding documents for new users.
  • Power users who have near-admin type training and can help their team.
  • Self-service portals/SharePoint sites where users can learn how to use new features.
  • Microsoft training materials, like videos and documentation.
  • Empowering.Cloud updates and briefings, guiding users through new features as they get released.

When you have a more efficient alternative to raising support tickets, you can dedicate more support personnel for genuine issues that might arise post-implementation.

10. Embrace continuous improvement

As you complete your Teams Phone rollout, it’s tempting to put your feet up and file it under “project complete”.

But it’s better for long-term productivity and management if you adopt a mindset of continuous improvement. By being proactive rather than reactive when it comes to all things Teams Phone, you get ahead of potential problems and ensure users have the most up-to-date technology.

Consider a monthly or quarterly check-in to make sure you’re on top of Teams Phone best practices and are aware of rumblings in the Microsoft community. This might be as simple as joining groups on LinkedIn, subscribing to the Teams Support Community, or following Teams influencers.

Staying in the know, taking relevant accreditations, and generally advocating Teams Phone is one of the simplest things you can do that pays off the most in the long run.

Take your first steps toward Teams Phone

Planning for Teams Phone success is vital for any business rolling out a new phone system in the modern collaboration world. It’s no longer enough to turn on technology, hope users learn how it works, and expect a return on your investment.

With considerable efforts upfront to mitigate future problems, Teams Phone can be a breeze. For businesses of a certain size, it’s a tough ask to prepare on your own. Choosing a suitable partner is always best-advised if you’re not blessed with a Teams-experienced IT resource with time on its hands.

Ready to take your first step towards Teams Phone? Here's how our cloud enablement services can help.