Tagged: Microsoft

Safe transfer with Microsoft Teams Calling

In this post I highlight a Microsoft Teams Calling feature to safely transfer calls. Microsoft seems to add safe transfer for calls by Teams Users soon, according to the Microsoft 365 roadmap.

What’s safe transfer with Microsoft Teams?

As the roadmap item says it enables Team Users to get a call back if the Teams User transferred it to another Teams or Skype for Business user which does not answer.

That this works it is required that the user who transfers the call is a Microsoft Teams user and the target must be a Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business user in the same or federated tenant.

Additional resources

Microsoft Teams Call Quality Dashboard (CQD)

In this post I describe the CQD for Microsoft Teams and provide an high-level overview on its capabilities.

What’s the CQD? The call quality dashboard, short CQD, is a rich dashboard and reporting platform to check and ensure call quality metrics. Furthermore, it helps to analyze and to troubleshoot call quality if you drill down in reports and to figure out where you might have issues. Or you can just see what’s going on in your Microsoft 365 Phone System with Microsoft Teams.

Source: Microsoft Teams CQD (May/June 2020)

In case you need to dig in deep in the depths of the reports you might also want to upload some network details regarding your physical location/s or endpoints. This can help you as well as Microsoft Support to troubleshoot issues, if required. For example, you can upload a CSV including:

column namecolumn formatexample
networkipString10.10.1.0
network nameStringHQ-Stuttgart
networkrangeNumber24
buildingnameStringHQ-Stuttgart-Office
ownershiptypeStringEriksLab
buildingtypeStringIT Operations
buildingofficetypeStringAdministration
cityStringStuttgart
zip codeString71178
countryStringDE
stateStringBaden-Wuerttemberg
regionStringStuttgart
insidecorpBoolean1
expressrouteBoolean0
VPN (optional)Boolean0
CQD Tenant Data Information (CSV) example for buildings
Source: Microsoft Teams CQD (June 2020)

So, depending on your uploaded data you can view the reports either without or with the enriched data input.

Source: Microsoft Teams CQD (June 2020)

Conclusion, opinion and summary

The CQD is a helpful means to support analyzing and troubleshooting call quality-related issues. They reporting data can help to find out what’s not working well and maybe even give you the why to mitigate the issue. E.g. bad connectivity, bad device or else. Additional, depending on your organization’s size and requirements you could also get the data to PowerBI for more customized views and reporting, if needed. The CQD is very powerful and supportive to resolve call quality issue. In case you are utilizing Microsoft Teams especially calling capabilities, I think, it is a very good platform which can support your call quality troubleshooting.

Additional resources

Manage Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR)

Soon, Microsoft Teams Meeting Rooms (MTRs) will be (remotely) managable via the Teams Admin Center, as described on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap [ID 64022].

  • update settings for Team Room Devices
  • monitor and check health status of Teams Room Devices incl. peripherals (camera, mic)
  • troubleshoot a MTR by remotely restart the devices
  • troubleshoot a MTR by remotely download logs
Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=64022

I assume that the admin experience will be similar to what is already available to manage Microsoft Teams Phones and Collaboration Bars.

Source: Microsoft Teams Admin Center (Screenshot)

Additional resources

Microsoft Teams Contact Center Integration

This post is about the Contact Center Integration in Microsoft Teams. If you deploy Microsoft Teams calling capabilities to enable your workforce to use Microsoft Teams you might also be interested in the Contact Center integration. In the past I wrote an article about Microsoft Teams Call Queues and Auto Attendants for Direct Routing which describes Teams calling capabilities in regards of automatic call distribution (ACD) and/or interactive voice response (IVRs). Depending on your needs this was and is maybe not yet sufficient for your agents because you have many agents answering loads of incoming calls, transfer calls to maybe other departments/agents and respond to these incoming requests, complaints, remote advisories, incidents or what have you. Maybe 24/7…

Source: https://pixabay.com/de/illustrations/lernen-hinweis-schule-betreff-3245793/
Source: https://pixabay.com/de/illustrations/lernen-hinweis-schule-betreff-3245793/

So, there was a missing piece to bringt Microsoft Teams and more advanced Contact Center solutions together. Until lately. APIs were enhanced and improved which enabled Contact Center solution and service providers to build and use the available integrations based on

  • Direct Routing Connectivity,
  • Microsoft Graph Cloud Communication APIs,
  • Teams platform and extensibility and/or
  • Teams SDKs.

By this Microsoft enables for three integration “depths”:

  • Connect | based on Direct Routing
  • Connect and Extend | mixture of Direct Routing + Graph APIs + Teams apps platform
  • Extend and Power |embedding Teams SDKs into Contact Center App/Solution/Service for native Teams interactions (which works with Direct Routing as well as calling plans)

Now that you want to start to integrate your existing Contact Center solution in Microsoft Teams, note that this works only for certified Contact Center solutions and services, which are listed in the Connected Contact Center for Microsoft Teams Certification Program. Today, there are already very well-known providers offering Microsoft Teams integration (see additional resources).

Conclusion, opinion and summary

This is another step forward to bring in more voice and calling capabilities into Microsoft Teams as it can become the primary client app for Contact Center agents as well. I assume that more is about to come and enable companies to leverage more and more of Microsoft Teams especially enterprises with large contact centers which might still be on Skype for Business Server with Enterprise Voice for these workloads. In the past this was mostly due to the SFB UCMA integration which was often used in these voice deployments and in Teams this integration option was missing. Now, enterprise still running SFB Server and having dependencies in regards of third-party Contact Center solutions based on UCMA might probably soon get rid of SFB Server onprem, migrate (the until now left behind Contact Center agents) to Microsoft Teams and decommission SFB Server infrastructure.

Additional resources

Microsoft Skype for Business Server Updates

In this post I just like to quickly highlight where you can find the latest Microsoft Skype for Business Server updates. Recently Skype for Business Server 2015 May 2020 Cumulative Update (CU) was released. However, the update was only downloadable from the EN-US download page, not from the DE one. On the DE download page for SFB Server 2015 only the August 2019 CU was available. I guess it will just take some time until it is refreshed and also available on the DE download page.

https://pixabay.com/vectors/update-download-icon-icons-3314287/
Source: https://pixabay.com/vectors/update-download-icon-icons-3314287/

In general you can find the most recent CUs on a Microsoft Docs summary page where you can

  • get an update history incl. release date of the update
  • find the link to the respective knowledge base article which provides an overview on the included changes of the according update (release notes)

On the latter, the KB page you can open further links to each mentioned change or fix which the update delivers. There you can read through a more detailed explanation and update description.

First of all, you should read the update’s KB article. Afterwards you can download the package but please do not just download and install the update. To install the update should be a planned task. It might require some preparation and cause a downtime depending on your actual SFB deployment. And don’t forget the update the backend. I’ve often noticed that the backend is not updated although the description of the CU states how this has to be done depending on the SFB deployment (Standardard Edition vs. Enterprise Edition).

Additional resources

Konfiguration von Microsoft Teams Direct Routing über das Teams Admin Center

In diesem Beitrag möchte ich aufzeigen, wie Microsoft Teams Direct Routing jetzt auch über das Teams Admin Center konfiguriert werden kann. Ich selbst bevorzuge weiterhin die Anlage mit der PowerShell, aber es ist gut zu wissen, dass diese Funktionen jetzt auch im Admin Center verfügbar sind.

Hinweis: Dieser Beitrag beschreibt einen aktuell verfügbaren Ansatz in Form einer beispielhaften Konfiguration. Wie einen Konfiguration vorgenommen werden muss, kann variieren (je nach Anforderungen) und sich auch jederzeit seitens Microsoft 365, Teams etc. verändern.

How to connect a certified SBC via Teams Admin Center?

Zielsetzung

Microsoft 365 Telefonsystem an einen zertifizierten Session Border Controller (SBC) für Microsoft Teams Direct Routing (TDR) anbinden.

Design und Umfang

In diesem exemplarischen Beitrag zeige ich nur wie die Verbindung vom Microsoft 365 Telefonsystem zum SBC eingerichtet werden kann (gelb). Die Konfiguration eines SBCs, mögliche Anpassungen und Feinjustierungen werden hier nicht weiter beschrieben. Am Ende wird noch ein Cloud-only User Account eine Telefonnummer und die Voice Routing Policy zugewiesen.

Auf Details, was TDR ist, Voraussetzungen und wie zu lizenzieren ist gehe ich hier nicht ein.

How to connect a certified SBC via Teams Admin Center?

Zu konfigurieren sind

  • ein Teams PSTN Gateway (SBC),
  • PSTN Usage,
  • Voice Route,
  • Voice Routing Policy
  • und zuletzt muss die Voice Routing Policy dem User zugewiesen werden.

Lösung (Beispiel)

Wir beginnen im Microsoft Teams Admin Center (https://admin.teams.microsoft.com) als globaler Admin, aber auch schon die Teams-Administrator-Rolle (Teams Service Administrator) reicht hier und berechtigt für die Konfiguration.

Nachstehend zeigen die Screenshots den “Konfigurations-Pfad” und in jedem Screenshot werden die Schritte beginnend mit “1” aufgezeigt.

Teams Admin Center
PSTN Gateway bzw. SBC hinzufügen
SBC im Teams Admin Center konfigurieren (FQDN, aktiviert, Port (SBC Listener), Sessions …)
Einstellungen sichten
PSTN Usage erstellen
PSTN Usage erstellen
Voice Route erstellen
Voice Routing erstellen

Bei “Dialed number pattern” kann ein bestimmter regulärer Ausdruck via RegEx definiert werden, um basierend von Teams ausgehende Anrufe auf einem bestimmten “Muster” zu prüfen, um hier eine Routing-Entscheidung für diese oder eine mögliche andere Route zu treffen. Ich lasse dies hier mal absichtlich leer. Wenn User komplett E.164 (also mit +49… ) wählen sollen oder einfach alles akzeptiert werden soll, kann hier z. B. .$ (any) o.ä. verwendet werden. Je nach Bedarf.

Voice Route erstellen
Voice Route und Priorität prüfen
Voice Routing Policy für die Zuweisung an User erstellen
PSTN Usage in Voice Routing Policy hinzufügen
Voice Routing Policy einem User zuweisen
Voice Routing Policy einem User zuweisen

Nach dem die Voice Routing Policy zugewiesen wurde, kann es eine Weile* dauern bis, in diesem Beispiel James, telefonieren kann. Natürlich muss hierfür der SBC bereits konfiguriert und funktionsfähig sein. Auch die richtigen Lizenzen und Policies (Calling Policies) dürfen für die User nicht fehlen. Nicht zu vergessen, dass der oder die Benutzer noch eine Telefonnummer zugewiesen benötigt.

*eine Weile kann von ein paar Minuten bis hin zu mehreren Stunden sein. Ich habe schon unterschiedlich lange Bereitstellungszeiten festgestellt.

Letzteres geht aktuell leider (noch?) nicht via Teams Admin Center. Dazu benötigt es noch die SFB Online PowerShell außer ich habe SFB Server (Hybrid) und meine Rufnummern werden noch vom onpremise Server via AAD Connect übertragen (msRTCSip-LineURI…). Doch hier gibt’s dann noch ein paar weitere Aspekte zu beachten.

Zuweisung der Telefonnummer und Voice Routing Policy via PowerShell

Die Zuweisung der Voice Routing Policy und Telefonnummer kann per PowerShell erfolgen (via SFB Online Connector), nach dem das SFBO PowerShell Modul heruntergeladen, installiert und verbunden wurde. Wenn man das nachstehende etwas umbaut, kann hieraus einfach über ein CSV-Import und eine foreach-Schleife ein Anlage und Zuweisung von Benutzern im größeren Stil erfolgen.

#Verbindung zu SFBO aufbauen (mit MFA)
Import-Module "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Skype for Business Online\Modules\SkypeOnlineConnector\SkypeOnlineConnector.psd1"
#Import-Module SkypeOnlineConnector
$SFBOSESSION = New-CsOnlineSession
Import-PSSession $SFBOSESSION
#Voice Routing Policy zuweisen
Grant-CsOnlineVoiceRoutingPolicy -Identity "James" -PolicyName "VoiceRoutingPolicy-Germany-Stuttgart”
#Telefonnummer zuweisen
Set-CsUser -Identity "james@...domain.de" -OnPremLineURI tel:+497119874563219 -EnterpriseVoiceEnabled $true -HostedVoiceMail $true
#Verbindung trennen
Remove-PSSession $SFBOSESSION

Zusammenfassung

Ich finde es praktisch, dass ich jetzt einen zertifizierten SBC auch über das Teams Admin Center verbinden kann. Wieso ich aber Usern noch keine (TDR) Telefonnummer auch über das Teams Admin Center zuweisen kann, ist mir ein Rätsel. Hierfür muss ich wieder in die PowerShell wechseln. Das finde ich etwas umständlich. Dann mache ich es aktuell doch lieber noch per Shell, da ich mit der PowerShell die Ansichten nicht wechseln brauche.

Ich hoffe, der Beitrag gibt eine grobe Übersicht, wie (aktuell Mai 2020) ein SBC für TDR an das Microsoft 365 Telefonsystem angebunden werden kann.

Zusätzliche Ressourcen

Heller Hintergrund für Mails bei schwarzem Microsoft Outlook Design

In diesem Beitrag gebe ich einen kleinen und praktischen Anwender Tipp für Microsoft Outlook. Ich beschreibe nachstehend wie man seine Ansicht mit einem schwarzen oder dunklen Microsoft Outlook so anpasst, dass die Mails mit weißem Hintergrund geschrieben und gelesen werden können.

Hintergrund

Wenn ich mein Microsoft Office App Design auf schwarz eingestellt habe, dann ist alles schwarz. Das betrifft auch Mails mit normalerweise weißem Hintergrund. Für viele ist das konsequent und auch so gewollt. Ich muss zugeben, dass es mir persönlich besser gefällt, wenn ich trotz schwarzem Office-Design meine Mails auf weißem Hintergrund lesen und auch verfassen kann. Zudem bekomme ich öfters Mails im HTML-Format und diese werden im dunklen/schwarzen Office-Design im Outlook nicht immer ideal angezeigt. Auch umgekehrt, wenn ich im schwarzen Design eine Mail verfasse und farblich etwas hervorhebe, kommt dies beim Empfänger, der wiederum einen weißen Hintergrund hat, visuell anders raus.

Die Ansicht und das Office-Design sind letztlich Geschmackssache, daher gibt’s ja die Möglichkeit je Gusto eine andere Einstellung für sein Office festzulegen.

Microsoft Outlook – Mail Fenster alles schwarz

Lösung

Wer vielleicht, wie ich, seine Mails ebenfalls trotz schwarzem Office-Design gerne mit weißem Hintergrund liest oder schreibt, der oder die kann das in den Outlook-Optionen an folgender Stelle einstellen.

  1. Outlook Optionen öffnen
  2. Bereich Allgemein öffnen und zu “Microsoft Office Kopie personalisieren” scrollen
  3. und beim Office-Design “Schwarz” den dahinter verfügbaren Haken für “Die Hintergrundfarbe der Nachricht nie ändern” setzen
Microsoft Outlook-Optionen
Microsoft Outlook – Mail Fenster schwarz mit weißem Inhalts-Hintergrund

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

What’s new in Microsoft Teams in April 2020?

In this post I like to highlight some new and planned Microsoft Teams features based on the latest roadmap updates by Microsoft. The last few days many updates were made to the Microsoft Teams roadmap. There are several neat feature updates for Microsoft Teams which will be rolled out soon, are rolling out now or which are already available. Let me give you an overview on these.

Source: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/landscape-hill-sky-clouds-hilly-922581/
Source: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/landscape-hill-sky-clouds-hilly-922581/

Meetings and live events

  • end meetings | as an host you can now end meetings. So nobody can remain in the meeting to proceed or use the online meeting space.
  • audioconferening dialin user number masking | PSTN participant phone numbers will be masked from external users [~May 2020]
  • background effects in meetings | use background (pre-selected) images to enable other participants to focus on you and reduce distraction. later also custom background images.
  • raise hands in Teams meetings | attendees can rais their virtual hand to notify the presenter that there is a person who would like to speak
  • share system audio in a meeting
  • share system audio in a live event

Voice / telephony

Microsoft 365 Business Voice | Microsoft 365 phone system capabilities are available for SMB organizations with up to 300 seats as addon license for the smaller licensing bundles (business plan/s).

So, also business plans are enabled to go for calling plans and/or Direct Routing to enable (pstn) telephony to/from Microsoft Teams.

Chat

Multi window chat | Ability to pop out a chat in a separate chat window

Security

Microsoft adds Azure AD Premium Plan 1 to M365 Business plans which provides feature like

  • conditional access,
  • self-service password reset and
  • multi-factor authentication (MFA) to secure your identities.
  • Plus some more features like Cloud App Discovery (to discover used apps which you might were not aware that these are used within your company),
  • application proxy,
  • dynamic groups,
  • passwordless auth (Windows Hello for Business, Microsoft Authenticator app, FIDO 2).

All this helps to make your communication and collaboration for your business more secure. Especially for SMBs (up to 300 seats). This is really compelling due to price and feature set. Until know you had to get enterprise plans for this to get the option to add these features to your Microsoft 365 deployment.

Conclusion, opinion and summary

Microsoft now really pushes out these features and changes to enable small and medium sized business (SMBs) to securely communicate and collaborate at a reasonable price. To me, MFA (for all) was long awaited in this licensing segment because nowadays MFA should be the imperative anyway.

Additional resources

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.

source: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/sound-wave-voice-listen-856770/

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