Tagged: Teams
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.
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 name | column format | example |
| networkip | String | 10.10.1.0 |
| network name | String | HQ-Stuttgart |
| networkrange | Number | 24 |
| buildingname | String | HQ-Stuttgart-Office |
| ownershiptype | String | EriksLab |
| buildingtype | String | IT Operations |
| buildingofficetype | String | Administration |
| city | String | Stuttgart |
| zip code | String | 71178 |
| country | String | DE |
| state | String | Baden-Wuerttemberg |
| region | String | Stuttgart |
| insidecorp | Boolean | 1 |
| expressroute | Boolean | 0 |
| VPN (optional) | Boolean | 0 |
So, depending on your uploaded data you can view the reports either without or with the enriched data input.
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
I assume that the admin experience will be similar to what is already available to manage Microsoft Teams Phones and Collaboration Bars.
Additional resources
Create a Microsoft Teams Meeting with Outlook on the web or mobile
Microsoft soon enables you to schedule a Teams (or Skype for Business Online) Meeting by using Outlook on the web, Outlook for iOS or Outlook for Android. As of now, May 2020, it looks like the feature on Outlook on the web is planned for the second quarter (Q2) 2020 and on mobiles (iOS/Android) for June 2020.
At the bottom of this post you can find the links to the user guide on how to create a Teams meeting in Outlook on the web/for iOS/for Android, to start right away scheduling Team meetings, as soon as it becomes available. So, you should, as usual, keep your mobile device and apps up-to-date.
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…
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
- Contact Center integrations for Microsoft Teams
- Anywhere365 | https://anywhere365.io/direct-routing-contact-center-for-microsoft-teams/
- ComputerTalk | https://www.computer-talk.com/product/enterprise-contact-center/ice-contact-center-for-teams
- Enghouse Interactive | https://enghouseinteractive.co.uk/microsoft/
- Five9 | https://www.five9.com/products/application-integration/uc-integration
- Genesys | https://www.genesys.com/microsoft
- Luware | https://luware.com/en/solutions/
- NICE inContact | https://www.niceincontact.com/microsoft-teams
- Microsoft Teams Call Queues and Auto Attendants for Direct Routing
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
- Microsoft Teams Telephony Licensing Notes [Update April 2020]
- How to connect analog devices to Microsoft Teams?
- Konfigurieren des VoIP-Routings für das direkte Routing
- Skype for Business Online, Windows PowerShell Module
- Download and install the Skype for Business Online Connector module
- Manage Skype for Business Online with Office 365 PowerShell
- Direktes Routing für Telefonsysteme
How to secure your guest access in Teams?
In this post I point out what you can do to secure your Microsoft 365 guest access or guest identities for a secured collaboration experience. Guests in Microsoft 365 are external persons or identities which you can enabled to access defined Microsoft 365 resources, e.g. to work together in a project by using a Microsoft Teams Team. This is very beneficial for a more in-depth collaboration in project teams which include several external stakeholders from other companies like external project managers, subject matter experts, suppliers or others. By enabling guest access for specific scenarios and workloads you can easily work together across companies, if required. So, your employees do not need to find another way or a (#ShadowIT) workaround to do this which does not align with your company’s compliance.
I often have discussions regarding collaboration security on external (guest) access. So, what’s the answer to convince all from guest access? Well, let me put it that way, there is never an “one size fits all” answer, definitely not. Company A is not the same as company B. There might be similar processes, requirements, collaboration strategy goals or else but it’s still different, of course. The people, the services, the products, the vertical etc. are different. To keep it short, B2B collaboration with guest access is an excellent feature but usually requires a different implementation approach depending on the company. Sometimes a basic implementation is sufficient, sometimes you need to establish a new organizational process in varying complexity including B2B collaboration governance and so on.
Please note, that is is just one of many measures to secure your communication and collaboration in Microsoft 365. This is only a single part of a more holistic and required security architecture concept. Moreover, the below description, configuration etc. might change at anytime and is just an example, demo piece.
Limitations for guests
Guest are a “special” member type in Azure AD and M365. So, there are some limitations by design for guests you should know of. For more please read What are the default user permissions in Azure Active Directory? and Guest access in Microsoft Teams [links at the bottom].
- Per licensed user you can add up to five guests (1:5 ratio)
- Guest user permissions in Azure AD are limited by default*
- cannot browse other tenant information
- but can view their own profile
- but can retrieve input on other users if he/she searches for a UPN or object ID
- Guest user permissions in Office 365 groups are limited
- Guest user permissions in Teams are limited
- no One Drive for Business
- no people search outside of Teams
- no calendar
- no meeting scheduling
- no pstn/telephony
- no org chart
- no teams creation/revision
- no teams browsing
- no file upload in P2P chats
*unless you assign any admin role to a guest. So be cautions. Don’t.
What you can do to secure your Microsoft 365 guest identities?
Microsoft added a very good article in the documentation Create a secure guest sharing environment [link at the bottom] which describes the key elements you must take into account for your B2B collaboration and guest access configuration.
- enforce multi-factor authentication for guests
- provide terms which guests musts agree on
- regularly review permission needs are still valid
- restrict access for guest to web-only / browser-only
- set session timeout to enforce regular/daily authentication by guests
- classify content by using sensitivity labels
- auto classify defined sensitive information to highly confidential
- auto remove guests access from files labeled high confidential
Conclusion, opinion and summary
Guest access can be vital for your company and employees to easily work together with external stakeholders. If required. It must be secured.
To provide guest access, I think it is a good idea to establish a organizational process that internal employees must request guest access for an external person via an approval process. The latter could be accomplished by using Power Automate with Forms or Power Apps. Onboarding or adding a new guest should be based on the approach which Microsoft provides in Create a secure guest sharing environment [link at the bottom]. To complete the guest user life cycle the identity should be audited and monitored regarding permission needs and activities, so that either certain permissions can be removed or that an guest account gets disabled or even deleted depending on usage/activity/last logon or other criteria.
Additional resources
- Create a secure guest sharing environment
- Enable B2B external collaboration and manage who can invite guests
- Add Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration users in the Azure portal
- Auditing and reporting a B2B collaboration user
- Manage guest access with Azure AD access reviews
- Microsoft 365 guest sharing settings reference
- Microsoft Teams guest access checklist
- What are the default user permissions in Azure Active Directory?
- Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration licensing guidance
- Guest access in Microsoft Teams
- What the guest experience is like
- How to secure Microsoft Teams? Some thoughts.
- Safe attachments and links to protect your Office 365 collaboration
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
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.
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
- Azure Active Directory Premium P1 is coming to Microsoft 365 Business
- Microsoft Teams PSTN telephony licensing update for SMBs
- Microsoft Teams – end meeting for all participants within a Teams meeting [Featured ID: 63286]
- Microsoft Teams – PSTN participant phone numbers are masked from external users [Featured ID: 63309]
- Microsoft Teams – Share system audio in a Teams meeting [Featured ID: 50692]
- Microsoft Teams – background effects in Teams meetings [Featured ID: 62890]
- Microsoft Teams – share system audio in live events [Featured ID: 63276]
- Microsoft Teams – raise hands in Teams meetings [Featured ID: 62755]
- Microsoft Teams – Multi-Window Chat [Featured ID: 57292]
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]
