Microsoft 365 Teams Phone is one of the licencing options you can subscribe to, to make further use of Microsoft 365. You will need to have a Microsoft 365 licence that includes Teams as an app to extend your use of Teams to include telephony services.
Why use Teams Phone from Microsoft?
Teams Phone has emerged as one of the best performing and best value VoIP solutions available. Forrester highlight the most pertinent benefits for SMEs in this report: With an estimated 300,000 UK businesses using Microsoft 365 on subscription, Teams Phone has proven to be a popular choice for many of those businesses with VoIP technology existing in the same ecostructure as email, SharePoint and calendars plus the apps we all rely on daily: Word, Excel, PowerPoint.
Teams Phone administration
In the past, managing telephony required a different skillset from the rest of the IT organisation. Because the Microsoft Teams Phone is part of Microsoft 365, it can be managed centrally via the same portal and by the same team (your CSP for example) as your Microsoft Office 365 licences.
Streamlining supplier administration and being able to access licence plans via your existing Teams dashboard makes life easier, saves you time thus saves you money!
Teams Phone Hardware is readily available
The hardware required for Teams Phone is now readily available. Not only does this make life easier but it demonstrates that telephony hardware manufacturers have complete faith in Teams Phone as a VoIP solution into the future.
Teams Phone offers manageable and timely number porting
Telephony using Microsoft 365 Teams is not a ‘new’ thing and the number porting process has become increasingly slicker. Ultimately, the timeframe for porting your telephone number(s) is dictated by your existing telephony provider but there are industry rules in place, dictated by Ofcom which, as a general rule of thumb, state a maximum period of 30 days.
Microsoft Teams Phone number porting requests are typically completed withing 7 – 14 days via the dedicated Microsoft Teams Phone number porting team.
Shared voicemail with Teams Phone
Teams Phone allows businesses to use a shared voicemail portal so all members in workgroup, can get access to the same voicemail log.
For example – if a colleague is on holiday, or ill or involved in an all-day meeting, responses to voicemails are not delayed as your workgroup colleague can respond. This improves your customer and supplier experience.
Shared voicemail portals still provide full transcriptions in Outlook – which enforces improved visibility and communication across your workgroup.
Dial in conferencing using a telephone included with Teams Phone
Subscribers now get dial in conferencing free of charge, using a mobile phone or landline. You can join the conference using only a phone number rather than joining via the app.
Thought for the Day
Qi uses Teams Phone and now, so do many of our customers. If you are already onboard with Microsoft 365 then Teams Phone is a logical, cost-effective extension to your existing deployment, to provide your business telephony solution. Contact Qi today to set up Teams Phone telephone services
