Welcome to this blog series on Microsoft Teams, in this post we discuss how calls can be made to telephone numbers outside the organisation.
Calling within Microsoft Teams is formed of two parts. The first part is Teams Phone which can be thought of as the central phone system, Teams Phone is a licensed feature and is included within select licensing SKUs or as a per-user add-on license. The second part is Dial tone, which is the connectivity to the outside world. This can be provided by one of, or a combination of, three solutions.
These solutions are:
- Microsoft Calling Plans
- Direct Routing
- Operator Connect.
Calling plans from Microsoft provide telephone service to users without requiring any further infrastructure.
As well as providing a telephone number to a user, calling plans provide bundled outbound calling minutes. Calling plans will either be a domestic calling plan allowing users to call out to numbers in their own country, or, an international calling plan that addition to in country calling provides access to 196 countries/regions. Calling plans are available in over 30 countries and provide rapid provisioning of service to users.
With calling plans, minutes are pooled at both the plan and country level, allowing high call volume users to be balanced out by low call volume users. With Domestic and international plans, there are seperate pools for domestic minutes and international minutes, and whichever pool is depleted first depletes the remaining minutes in the other.
So, what happens if the user needs to make calls outside of their calling plan allowance?
They can be assigned access to communication credits which is a pre-paid billing model to allow both dial-out to international destinations if assigned only a domestic plan as well as if their call allowance has been used up. Additionally, communication credits allow dial-in toll-free phone numbers and dial-out from conferences.
With Direct Routing you can connect your own PSTN service via certified session border controllers (or SBC) into Teams.These SBCs can be self-hosted or provided as a managed service and allow the continuation of existing telco contracts. Additionally, they can provide the ability to connect Teams with 3rd party systems and analog devices.
Direct routing can co-exist with calling plans, users can be assigned either or a combination, allowing some calls to be made via Microsoft Calling Plan network and other via direct routing.
Microsoft does not currently have a certification program for carriers or partners that offer Direct Routing, however Microsoft does certify SBCs from certain vendors that can be used for Direct Routing and its capabilities
Operator connect is the latest solution for bringing voice into Microsoft Teams. It is a carrier-provided service allowing you to choose your own carrier to provide telephone service, calls are then routed directly to/from the carrier into the Microsoft network.
All three solutions have their pro’s and con’s, and all three can be used within a tenant at the same time allowing you to pick the best service as required for each specific use case.
