A few weeks ago, we talked about Microsoft Teams reaching the milestone of 12 million Teams Phone PSTN users, nearly the double of users from a year prior. Teams have been positioned on the top list of favorite collaboration platforms due to their capabilities of providing organizations with innovative functionality, enterprise-grade reliability, and simplicity to deploy and use. During Ignite 2022, many new services, features, and partnerships were announced, and we will tell you all about it in this article.
Deeper integration of calling and productivity
- Management of busy-on-busy settings: Coming early 2023, users will be able to manage how incoming calls are routed when they’re on another call.
- Detailed call history: Now generally available, this feature provides a comprehensive view of how calls arrived, how they were routed and forwarded, and how they were controlled once received.
- Federated group calling: Starting November 2022, users can easily start a group Teams call with federated colleagues, including video and screen sharing, all over an internet connection without any PSTN usage charges.
Enterprise-grade quality and reliability
- Teams Phone receives top marks in competitive reliability study: Microsoft Teams earned the highest scores for UCaaS provider uptime and quality in third-party testing. Through a fair, third-party comparison between Microsoft Teams Phone, RingCentral, and Zoom conducted by GigaOmTM, Microsoft Teams performed at the highest level of the providers tested, returning an Apdex score of 1.00 (100% overall satisfied transactions). Read more about it here.
- New survivable branch appliance (SBA) capabilities: Service continuity during a network outage is critical, so Microsoft is continuing to invest in their Survivable Branch Appliance capabilities. In early 2023 users will be able to use chat or call history in addition to using the dial pad to make outbound PSTN calls even when in offline mode. Also, when connected to the same SBA and network, in the event of an outage, VoIP calls will be routed to PSTN if the call recipient has an associated phone number.
Solutions for enhanced customer service
- Azure Communications Services support for Teams users: Microsoft announced Azure Communications Services support for Teams. With this capability developers can build custom applications that integrate audio, video, and telephony for Teams users. New enhanced Teams’ call flow management can be developed to place and receive calls between external and internal users, from attendant consoles to call center scenarios.
- CRM Integration: Launching soon, new CRM integration capabilities, enable Admins to give team members the ability to have customer records pulled up as the incoming call is answered. This ensures that customer records are automatically opened when an incoming call is answered by a call queue agent.
Simple and flexible device options
- Teams phone devices UI updates and performance improvements: Now organizations have a choice in their phones and peripherals. There are currently over 150 IP phones and peripherals from nine Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) certified for Microsoft Teams. The IP phone is generally available which allows you to make a call connection of the UI near-instantaneous. Additionally, the UI has been updated to make the experience more intuitive and accessible, with features such as call transfer, call hold and mute now showing as part of your main in call screen.
- Microsoft Teams Shared Device license: The Common Area Phone license has been updated to include support for hot desking and panels. This follows updates made to enable a more complete calling experience on a shared device, including adding call queue and auto attendant support, call park and retrieve, cloud voicemail, and group pickup.
- New form factors, partners and peripheral enhancements: In order to give organizations flexibility to stay connected, Microsoft announced a partnership with Cisco to certify Cisco peripherals for Teams, delivering a rich calling experience. This will start with the Cisco Desk Camera 4K and Headset 320, with the Headset 720 to follow early next year.
- Legacy devices investments: Additional calling capabilities have been added to SIP Gateway along with continued support for new endpoints.
To learn more about the announcements made for Teams Phone during Ignite 2022 please read this. Or to get started with Microsoft Teams all you need to do is click on the button below. You can count on us for the expertise needed to ensure your organization delivers quality calls and meeting experiences.
