In order to enhance digital transformation, many businesses continue to evaluate Microsoft Teams as their primary phone system due to the benefits MS VoIP technology offers, such as reducing costs and complexity.
Achieving a successful migration from legacy phone system to Teams voice requires some best practices your VoIP provider must comply with. Consequently, we have prepared this guide to take you through the best practices we have improved and delivered over the 12 years BlueSky UC has been in the Microsoft cloud-telephony industry.
1. Readiness assessment
To achieve your objective key results (OKRs), you previously made key service decisions by choosing Teams as your primary phone system. The next step is to perform environmental discovery to evaluate all aspects relating to your IT and telephony infrastructure, networking, and operations to confirm that your organization is ready to implement the solution.
Through an environmental discovery, we include network readiness assessment to ensure your network can support the implementation of the Audio Conferencing or Phone System with Calling Plan services.
We will help you identify technical risks as part of an adoption readiness evaluation and develop a mitigation plan for each identified risk.
Environmental discovery can also uncover whether you need to transfer phone numbers to Microsoft. Knowing this, we will be able to assist your organization adjust its project plan accordingly and prepare the necessary information for number porting.
2. Design and planning
A healthy technical environment, sustained user adoption, and the realization of your business goals, all begin with proper planning.
During this phase, we will assist you in defining the features your organization needs, such as: licensing requirements, custom call routes, metered dial plans, voice failover, or Parked DIDs. As well as choosing the path to integrate your PBX to Teams through the following options: Microsoft Calling Plans, Direct Routing, or Operator Connect.
3. Teams Voice Migration
For some specific projects, we start the deployment by setting up a Proof-of-Concept (POC) to allow organizations to test user experience, capabilities, and call quality. Nevertheless, a full deployment is required for this pilot, which means that when you are ready to onboard the remaining users, it’s as simple as requesting new phone numbers and enabling the users for voice. This is the best approach, that guarantees a quick and easy deployment.
4. Optimize & Maintain
Keeping call quality and business uptime is the number one priority for any organization. Therefore, once we ensure the migration of users and adoption has been satisfactory, you can extend your team with ours and tackle any type of UC project. From troubleshooting to maintenance.
Is your business facing changing requirements? No problem. Through custom features like call analytics, call recording, and contact center, we will help you leverage a complete UC environment that will properly accommodate your company’s needs.
More and more organizations are looking for ways to streamline their IT, reduce CAPEX/OPEX, and fully leverage their Microsoft investments. We would be honored to speak with you to help determine if Microsoft Teams Voice is the right fit for your organization!
If you have already moved or are considering moving to Office 365 and would like to evaluate Teams as an upgrade to your current PBX or UC system, we are standing by to help!
