Blog posts about Fax and Voice

I have a client looking to integrate their overhead pager within teams. We reviewed the current paging technology in teams with the Walkie Talkie but it did not provide enough functionality that the client was looking for. In doing research, we ran across a company called Algo. They have an integration with overhead paging but it requires direct routing within Teams. I obviously support this, but they also mentioned reviewing the following microsoft page. I thought that this was odd as I’ve read this page a few times but noticed the following section after they mentioned it:

SIP Gateway overhead paging devices support
SIP Gateway will support overhead paging devices by early 2023, allowing you to use Teams calling functionality on pagers, ringers, and speakers while in noisy environments such as manufacturing plants. We will soon share more details about compatible device models from Algo. Learn more about planning for and configuring SIP Gateway in your organization.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/what-s-new-in-microsoft-teams-microsoft-ignite-2022/ba-p/3614158

This is exactly what we are looking for but the only problem is that Q1 of 2023 is almost over and the integration is still not out. I will share how the direct routing experiance goes, or if we wait until the direct integration is setup. Time will tell.

This is an exciting time for overhead pagers, said virtually no one ever! 🙂

I am not sure when it happened, but as I go to renew the licensing within Microsoft 365, we have noticed that several of the teams phone system licenses have changed names and other are being depreciated. My company uses Synnex to process our licensing, and they published this nice nifty little guide.

Most of the licensing that I had ordered was Business Voice w/o calling plan. This was used for Teams Direct Routing. This is now being replaced with Teams Phone Standard license and apparently another license that is a 0 cost item to allow for Audio Conferencing.

Microsoft also changed the resource account licensing to an easier name as well. This is called Teams Resource Account as opposed to Virtual Teams user. This is also a 0 cost line item. You need this license for your autoattendants and Call queues.

I now have the excitement of changing about 1000 licenses from Business Voice to Teams Phone Standard. I am assuming nothing will break by swapping the license, but time will tell. Remember, it takes Teams up to 24 hours to acknowledge a change, and when people lose their licensing, they lose their phone number. I’m fairly sure that programming won’t get wiped away by changing licensing…but time will tell! No update means everything went just fine….I promise!

I was having a mental block on today’s blog post, so I thought I would ask Chat GPT what it thought on the Teams Phone System. I asked it what were the 5 main features that stand out over the competition. It provided the following:

1. Call Routing and Transfer: With the Teams Phone System, users can easily route incoming calls to specific individuals or departments within their organization. They can also transfer calls to other team members or external contacts, making it easy to manage call traffic and ensure that customers and partners are connected with the right people.
2. Voicemail: Teams Phone System includes a voicemail feature, which allows users to leave messages for others who are unavailable to take their calls. Users can receive voicemail messages as an email attachment, making it easy to keep track of missed calls and respond to important messages in a timely manner.
3. Call Analytics: Teams Phone System offers powerful analytics tools that allow administrators to track call volumes, monitor call quality, and gain insights into how their teams are using the system. This information can help organizations make data-driven decisions to optimize their communication processes and improve customer service.
4. Auto Attendant: The Auto Attendant feature of Teams Phone System allows organizations to create custom call menus and greetings to route incoming calls to the appropriate departments or individuals. This feature can help to improve customer satisfaction by ensuring that callers are directed to the right people and given the information they need quickly and efficiently.
5. Emergency Calling: Teams Phone System includes an emergency calling feature, which allows users to dial emergency services directly from their Teams client. The system automatically sends the caller’s location to emergency services, ensuring that help can be dispatched quickly and accurately.

Now, I am not very impressed with this list. Any VoIP system can do points 1, 4, and 5. I would even argue that other platforms do these features BETTER than teams. Voicemail within teams is very nice and is a good selling point. The voicemail gets transcribed instantly and you can view the transcription through teams or outlook. As far as advanced call analytics go, I know that Teams logs all that information, but I don’t find clients appetitite to mine that information all too much. So now, lets highlight my list.

1. Voicemail. We agree with the statements above.
2. Integration with other 365 platforms. Seemless integration with Outlook is darn right amazing.
3. Cost. In my experience, Teams Phone System tends to be cheaper if you already have a 365 subscription.
4. Remove the requirement of having physical phones. Granted, you can still have your physical phone, but Teams has moved away from the reliance of a physical handset
5. Mobility. The ability to seamlessly transfer a call from device to device depending on where I am is very powerful.

So, to drill this home, sometimes, the AI is a cool tool, but it is not always right 🙂