Category: Architecture
Survivable Branch Appliance for Microsoft Teams Direct Routing
This post describes what a SBA for Teams Direct Routing is and how it can increase your telephony reliability and service availability. At the time of writing this post, the SBA is in public preview.
What is a SBA?
A survivable branch appliance (SBA) is an on-premise service component to deal with an outage and keep (basic) telephony going for Microsoft Teams Direct Routing. Maybe you’ve already heard about this in the past in regards of Skype for Business Server and Enterprise Voice. A SBA provides voice resiliency towards the case that the sip trunk connection between Microsoft 365 Phone System and a Session Border Controller (SBC) fails. In anticipation of this worst case scenario the SBA keeps you telephony online as long as this affects only the link between SBC, Teams Clients and Microsoft 365 [Teams] Phone System.
The SBA code is provided by Microsoft to SBC vendors which embed it or provide it separately, e.g. for operation on a virtual machine.
In case the SIP trunk between SBC and PSTN provider fails, too, there is no more telephony possible. Except you have any re-routing and other high availability configurations in place.
Please note, you should have a holistic high availability concept in place if you heavily rely on these services. To do so you’ll have to start from the bottom up (building’s connections, building’s cabling, building power supply, provider connectivity (options), cloud & IT infrastructure …).
Architecture Overview
The following drawing depicts the SBA as a part of a Teams Direct Routing deployment and it’s capabilities in case of a temporary connection outage between SBC and Microsoft 365 [Teams] Phone System
Assumptions, requirements and parameters
- Teams Direct Routing for the (branch) site is configured for media bypass (SBC + Teams Phone System)
- PSTN (SIP) Trunk is still online and fully operational
- All (local) clients are still able to connect to the (local) SBC/SBA
- SBA supports TLS1.2
- Supported Microsoft Teams DR SBA clients: Windows and MacOS
Known issues and limitations
The most important issues or limitations which are listed on the products documentation are as follows:
- No reverse number lookup against Azure AD contacts
- No support for call forwarding settings
- No support for for dynamic emergency calling (E911)
Conclusion, opinion and summary
At the moment the SBA capabilities are rather limited in particular the supported clients, which are Windows and MacOS only. So, no desk phones or lobby phones which to me might be more relevant because these devices are often used as emergency devices. However, in many cases I’ve seen that there are still analog devices deployed which removes the dependency towards the Microsoft 365 Phone System anyway. Or people have mobile devices with sufficient cell coverage for (emergency) calls.
It’s a start to have a SBA and has the potential to increase resiliency at branch sites for people in the office in front of a PC or Mac. My first thoughts on deploying a SBA – It could be placed where your internet link is very shaky and unreliable but on the second thought – asking – is there is a local PSTN connection (is it SIP and going over the same internet link)? Well, if you have a (single) shaky internet link which is used for the SBC to connect to the Microsoft 365 Phone System as well as the your PSTN SIP Trunk – there is no added value for a SBA because your local branch telephony will fail if your internet link fails.
In my humble opinion it might make sense to deploy a SBA in scenarios where your PSTN connection is not dependent on the same local shaky internet breakout, e.g. PSTN via (old) E1/T1 or other local dedicated PSTN connection (other internet breakout for voice-only).
Based on the above three more thoughts and questions came to my mind:
- Is there no way to get a more reliable internet connection to that (branch) site or are backup link via LTE, StarLink/Satelite or else?
- What’s the (cumulated) downtime for Microsoft 365 Phone System or Teams over one year impacting your business? … 8, 4, 1 hours/year? [I haven’t found any statistics regarding this.]
- Is there a real need for a SBA at that branch site?
[I mean, if there is no internet, is your branch staff still able that they can work at all?]
Although I haven’t heard or ready anything regarding this, I hope that the SBA will get support for Teams IP phones, too, in the next several months.
Additional resources
Google Workspace
In today’s post I take a look at and provide an overview of Google’s Workspace, formerly known as G Suite, for communication and collaboration.
Please note, the described tools, services and subscriptions might be subject to change at any time.
What’s Google Workspace?
Google Workspace is a set of tools and services for productivity. It includes the following major cloud communication and collaboration capabilities:
- Gmail | Send and receive mails
- Calendar | Calendaring
- Meet | Interactive online meetings
- Chat | Chat and group messaging
- Drive | Store and share documents and files
- Docs | Create documents
- Sheet | Create spreadsheets
- Slides | Create presentations
- Forms | Create forms
- Sites | Create websites
- Keep | Notes and lists
- Apps Scrips | Automate and develop workspace scripts
- Currents | Enterprise social network
- Cloud Search | Workspace integrated search across enterprise files
Subscriptions and packages
Google Workspace is available in four packages on a per user/month price. There are offerings from small to large companies as follows:
- Subscription | main differentiations per user subscription package
- Business Starter | 30 GB cloud storage, video conferences for up to 100 attendees, mail, basic support
- Business Standard | 2 TB cloud storage, video conferences for up to 150 attendees and recording, mail, upgradable basic support
- Business Plus | 5 TB cloud storage, video conferences for up to 250 attendees incl. recording and attendee reports, mail, e-discovery and retention, advanced security and management features, upgradable basic support
- Enterprise | unlimited cloud storage, video conferences for up to 250 attendees (incl. recording, attendee reports, noise suppression, internal live streaming), mail, S/MIME for mails, e-discovery and retention, advanced security, compliance, data loss prevention and management features, premium support
Conclusion, opinion and summary
Google’s Workplace offering obviously delivers a comprehensive cloud productivity suite at the first glance. In my opinion and for what I saw the subscription packages seem to be not as modular as offered by Microsoft 365. I also noticed some features and capabilities which are provided by default in Microsoft 365 with Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive etc., e.g. attendee reports for Microsoft Teams meetings and meeting recordings.
Additional resources
Microsoft 365 Adoption – Modern Collaboration Architecture (MOCA)
In this post I like to describe the Modern Collaboration Architecture (MOCA) and how it can help to embrace adoption of Microsoft 365 services for collaboration.
What’s MOCA?
Can I drink it? No, it’s not mocca, the coffee which you might have heard of. Sorry, it does not mean that coffee boosts user adoption. MOCA is short for Modern Collaboration Architecture and it is intended to support in the question “Which tool when” based on Microsoft 365. MOCA is thought to be one part of a Modern Collaboration Practice in the business transformation to change the culture and mindset towards a digital business and organization. The Modern Collaboration Practice consists of four components:
- Attention | “Helping employees manage their attention”
- MOCA | “Using the right tool for the right job”
- Communications | “How communications flow in an organization”
- Customers | “Customer stories”
MOCA describes the dynamic of how we collaborate as individual, as part of a team, as part of a community and as part of an organization. The whitepaper explains this in more detail. Although MOCA points out what tool you can use when but it also says that this is not enough. On the contrary, it might cause an information overload for users just because there is so much (irrelevant) information and tools available.
To improve productivity the right tool must be available but also the mindset and culture in an organization must be ready for this. All the Microsoft 365 collaboration services and tools will definitely not solve all problems by itself, no, it provides the tool-set for users to be more productive and deliver business outcomes but to achieve this goal a organization must endeavor a cultural change towards a modern and digital organization.
Conclusion, opinion and summary
To sum it up, MOCA is a guiding approach for Microsoft 365 collaboration to learn “what use when” but it is incomplete. It’s supportive but the organizational change process must be triggered and initiated as well. The latter is something which is a long term goal and journey, which you probably heard before many times if not already working on it.
Additional resources
Microsoft Teams Telephony Licensing Notes [Update April 2020]
In this post I like to point out some updated licensing options for Microsoft Teams regarding telephony, common area phones and meeting rooms.
The hereinafter described license options might be subject to change. Moreover not all licenses or subscriptions are available in every country around the globe, especially calling plans and audio conferencing (shortened: Audioconf.).
Teams Licensing Basics
- Microsoft Teams is a single service of the massiv Microsoft 365 services stack which it tightly linked and integrated within this service stack.
- Microsoft Teams is part of a “packaged” Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions by default.
- Microsoft Teams “replaces” Skype for Business Online (SFB Online EOL date July 31, 2021). The Skype for Business Desktop Client within Office 365 ProPlus is also obsolete, meaning that new (full) Office 365 ProPlus installation will get a Teams instead of a Skype for Business Client.
The following slides and drawing are intended to provide you with an overview on licensing options. I also point out what you should take into account in case of Teams Direct Routing (TDR), in this post and following drawings I call a TDR scenario a “hybrid” scenario.
Telephony with Teams (for users)
Call Queues (CQ) and Auto Attendants (AA)
Resource accounts for CQ/AA need a license. Till 01.07.2019 you had to license these users with typical user licenses. Now you can buy and assign a free “Phone System Virtual User license”.
At the bottom I’ll add a link to a well-written how-to post “Add a free licence to Call Queues and Auto Attendants (Microsoft Teams)” from ucgeek.com which describes how to buy and assign the license.
Teams Common Area Phone (CAP)
Teams Meeting Room
Conclusion, opinion and summary
The above drawings quickly depict how you can license users, common area phones, meeting room devices and even call queues or auto attendants for Microsoft Teams.
Additional Resources
- Microsoft Teams PSTN telephony licensing update for SMBs
- Microsoft Teams Licensing Notes [Update July 2019]
- Microsoft Teams Licensing Notes
- Add a free licence to Call Queues and Auto Attendants (Microsoft Teams)
- Office 365 licensing for Microsoft Teams
- Manage resource accounts
- Microsoft Teams Rooms licenses
Microsoft Teams PSTN telephony licensing update for SMBs
This post highlights a new licensing option regarding (PSTN) telephony / calling / dial tone with Microsoft Teams for small and medium businesses (SMBs) or companies with up 300 seats. Now SMBs can benefit also from Microsoft Teams’ integrated telephony capabilities.
The hereinafter described licensing might be subject to change. Moreover not all licenses or subscriptions are available in every country around the globe, especially calling plans and audio conferencing.
Microsoft extended its phone system offering to be a add-on license for Office 365 business premium, too. Until now you needed the following licenses for telephony in Microsoft Teams:
previously
- Office 365 E1/E3 + phone system (+ calling plan) (+ optional audio conferencing)
- Office 365 E5 (incl. phone system) (+ calling plan) (+ optional audio conferencing)
now [March 2020]
- Office 365 Business Essentials / Premium + phone system (+ calling plan) (+ optional audio conferencing)
- Office 365 E1/E3 + phone system (+ calling plan) (+ optional audio conferencing)
- E5 (incl. phone system) (+ calling plan) (+ optional audio conferencing)
Conclusion, opinion and summary
The new licensing option for Microsoft 365 Phone System enables small and medium business (up to 300 seats) with Office 365 Business Premium licenses to consider to use Microsoft 365 Phone System instead of using a PBX or migrate to it to reduce costs, get telephony integrated to Teams and provide a seamless and unified user experience by using Microsoft Teams for communication and collaboration as the hub for teamwork and telephony as well.
Additional resources
- Microsoft Teams add-on licensing [updated section/s – see section “License options based on your plan”]
- Microsoft 365 Business Voice service description
- Use the Getting Started wizard to set up Business Voice
- Microsoft telephony solutions [general overview]
- Office 365 Business Premium [seems not yet to be up to date]
- Microsoft Teams Licensing Notes [Update July 2019]
Modern Meetings with Microsoft Teams
In this post I provide an overview on key capabilities with modern meetings with Microsoft Teams. It enables you and your fellow co-workers for modern meetings [almost] anywhere, anytime and on [almost] any device.
Key capabilities
Microsoft Teams offers you the following key capabilities for meetings but are not limited to these:
- online meetings
- audio conferencing
- video conferencing
- interactiv application and desktop sharing
- dialin phone numbers from 65+ countries around the world
- versatile clients and devices (mobiles, rooms, browsers, Windows, Linux)
- recording
- recording – transcript – for many languages (speech-to-text to transcript)
- calendar integration (Outlook, Exchange, Teams)
Do more with Microsoft Teams Meetings
Microsoft Teams enables for modern meetings so that you can easily communicate and collaborate, either in a planned or scheduled meeting. No matter if you are in transit, in a meeting room, at a desk or any other space. The things you need are the right equipment as well as a sufficient connection, i.e. Internet or in case you are in transit at least cell coverage to dialin by phone.
Microsoft and partners offer many certified devices for Microsoft Teams depending on your needs and requirements to get that modern meeting experience for your users. Therefore you can get a glimpse on the “Microsoft Teams enabled devices” page to explore and discover what kind of devices are available and what devices are suited for which meeting space or scenario.
Basically, there you can find
- Headsets | user devices
- Speakerphones | lightweight and compact user/room equipment
- Desk phones | IP phones for users, lobby or other user cases
- Room systems | for collaboration in meeting rooms and spaces
- Conference phones | for conference rooms
- Cameras | for users, rooms and other spaces
Conclusion, opinion and summary
Modern meetings with Microsoft Teams are easy and offer all the above key capabilities which are important to users today. Users get enabled to do more with Teams meetings and make meetings more productive and more fun, too, because client and device capabilities are available and easy to use and access with no frills and unhandy controls or preparation tasks for a Teams meeting. You can just meet, collaborate and focus on what you need to do.
Additional resources
Microsoft 365 Cloud Voice Study
In this post I highlight a study publication by Forrester regarding Microsoft 365 Cloud Voice. Forrester is a market research and analysis company focused on the information technology sector. Microsoft mandated Forrester to carry out the study on Microsoft 365 Cloud Voice.
What’s the study for?
The so called TEI (short for “Total Econonomic Impact”) study examines Microsoft 365 Cloud Voice in regards of
- benefits
- costs and
- risks.
What does the study say?
To sum it up a little bit the study provides the following key aspects:
- employees save time due to telephony integration in Microsoft Teams
- integration enhances business outcomes
- Microsoft 365 Cloud Voice enables companies to replace legacy telephony systems (PBX/s)
- costs for telephony are reduced
- better security and compliance because of its integration in the Microsoft security and compliance capability stack
- higher availability as (legacy) PBX
- better performance as (legacy) PBX
- better scalability as (legacy) PBX
- higher employee/user satisfaction especially for younger employees
- reduced total cost of ownership (TCO)
Well, for details, I’d recommend to read the study by yourself [see links at the bottom].
Conclusion, summary and opinion
In my view the study can be seen as supporting document for you in case your are about to decide on what’s next for your company’s telephony due to ending support or just because you want to embrace modern workplace at your company. The study gives you some numbers, facts and figures for further consideration, evaluation and decision making.
Additional resources
How to connect analog devices to Microsoft Teams?
In this post I give you an architectural overview on how you can connect analog devices, e.g. fax machines, analog phones, door bells, intercoms etc. to Microsoft Teams.
Preamble
First of all, I’d recommend to please get rid of your analog devices. Let me guess you are probably reading this because you have some of these poor and legacy analogs which you cannot get rid of for some reasons?
- If this is the case:
Well, ok, let’s go ahead to keep your existing investments in analog devices and get it to work. - If not, i.e. you can get rid of them:
Skip this post and read something more interesting. 😉
Goal
The goal is to add analog devices to a Microsoft Teams voice/telephony deployment.
Use Cases – Analog Telephony with Teams user and PSTN
The uses cases are defined as follows:
- call from an analog device to a Teams user
- call from a Teams user to an analog device
- call from an analog device to a PSTN (external) phone (number) [e.g. mobile phone]
- call from a PSTN (external) phone to an analog device
Architecture Overview
In this architectural sketch you can see a high level Microsoft Teams Direct Routing deployment including an analog device which is connected via an anlog [device] gateway.
It includes
- [left] PSTN sip trunk [from your PSTN provider of choice],
- [center] a (certified) session border controller (SBC),
- [center] a analog [device] gateway
- sip trunk between analog gateway and SBC
- analog link (FXS, RJ11) between analog gateway and analog device
- [center-right] analog device [connect to analog gateway]
- [right] a Microsoft Phone System sip trunk
- [right] a Microsoft Teams User
Requirements
What are the requirements for this? To keep it short, you need:
- Teams Direct Routing (TDR) [for details, please see Plan Direct Routing]
- Analog [Device] Gateway
Note: In case you have Microsoft Teams and utilize calling plans for telephony already but need these analog devices added you can add Teams Direct Routing to what you’ve got already.
Conclusion, opinion and summary
To sum this up, to connect analog devices to your Microsoft Teams deployment you need Teams Direct Routing (TDR). Then you can attach an analog device to an analog (device) gateway which is linked to a certified SBC for Direct Routing which handles the voice routing (from/to PSTN/Microsoft Phone System/analog gateway).
Additional resources
Audiocodes White Paper – Software-Defined Voice Networks (SDvN)
This post is about a newly released white paper by Audiocodes on software-defined voice networks to optimize network performance and reduce operational costs for communication, especially voice, solutions.
The white paper points out the challenge on managing complex (voice) networks and versatile workloads in times in which businesses have to master their digital transformation. Audiocodes emphasizes that many carriers abandon their legacy PSTN technology backbone to transition from ISDN to All-IP. This also causes a change at the enterprises. Therefore, software-defined voice networks is described as an approach to cope with the technology change by to keep voice networks manageable and cut operational costs.
The advantages of software-defined (voice) networks [SDvN] as mentioned in the white paper are:
- decoupled voice network infrastructure and voice control layer
- APIs
- overlay network
- agil and dynamic
- vendor agnostic
- centralized network and call routing management
- optimized call routing
Conclusion, opinion and summary
As I wrote in the past network reliability and performance for your communication and collaboration services (incl. voice) are essentials.
SDN can provide options to reduce operational costs and make your network more reliable and perform better. Audiocodes’ white paper outlines what SD(v)N in complex voice networking environments could offer to fulfill today’s and tomorrow’s business requirements in the digital era. SD(v)N, definitely something you should consider in case you have large and multi-national/-site (voice) network.
Additional resources
Microsoft 365 and Teams Architecture Posters
In this post I point you to some valuable Microsoft 365 and Teams architecture posters which support you to learn, understand and plan Microsoft 365 and Teams.
Teams IT architecture and telephony solutions posters
At docs.microsoft.com you can get many great posters which you can download as PDF as well as VSDX (Visio). The latter enable you to modify the architecture posters as you need them, so you can edit the posters if you, for instance, need them for documentation/presentation purposes.
- Poster 1: Teams as part of Microsoft 365
- Poster 2: Groups in Microsoft 365
- Poster 3: Telephony solutions
Microsoft 365 enterprise solution series
The Microsoft 365 enterprise solution series posters depict different Microsoft 365 capabilities and how they are tied together. Helpful to build a better understanding of Microsoft 365 capabilities and facts you must know about if you are an IT/Solution/Technical Architect and deliver concepts for implementing, adopting … Microsoft 365.
- Poster 1: Teams and related productivity services in Microsoft 365 for IT architects
- Poster 2: Groups in Microsoft 365 for IT Architects
- Poster 3: Identity and device protection for Office 365
- Poster 4: File protection solutions in Office 365
- Poster 5: Office 365 Information Protection for GDPR [DSGVO]
- Poster 6: Security Guidance for Political Campaigns, Nonprofits, and Other Agile Organizations
- Poster 7: Telephony Solutions
- Poster 8: Deploy a modern and secure desktop with Microsoft
Conclusion, opinion and summary
The architecture posters are a useful asset to learn, understand and plan Microsoft 365 and Teams. These posters illustrate what and how components and capabilities are linked and related to each other with different views.
