Setup Direct Routing with Microsoft teams

Direct Routing lets you connect a supported, customer-provided Session Border Controller (SBC) to the Microsoft Phone System. With this capability you can configure on-premises PSTN (bring your own sip trunk, BYOT) connectivity with your Microsoft Teams client.

There are a couple of certified SBC vendors you can use to setup Direct Routing.

• Audiocodes
• Ribbon
• AnyNode
• Thinktel

What do you need?

In order to setup Direct routing you will need to have some prerequisites:

No RingBack when using Microsoft Teams Direct Routing

Recently we have decomissioned our Microsoft Cloud Connector Edition and migrated most of our telephony users to Microsoft Teams with Direct Routing. One big issue we faced was that when a external caller called us by PSTN, they only heard one RingBack tone followed by deadly silence till someone picked up or landed in Azure VoiceMail.

Thanks to my friend Goos Stuut, working at our local distri for Audiocodes we found out what was happening and we solved this issue.

Lockdown Microsoft Teams Creation

How do you deal inside your organization with the wild creation of all kind of Teams? Having doubles, separate Teams for guest access, Teams without a owner because the original created user already left the company.

Instead of moving further lockdown Teams creation and decide who will need to create Teams (your stakeholders or key users for example). Train the specific group how to create Teams and how to make use of templates.

Click to Call is not working for my Teams client

When you install Microsoft Teams and start to use it for as your default calling app you want Teams to open when you click on TEL: URLs on homepages.

A TEL: URL is in the E.164 format tel: ie. tel:+31205001500(not my number, its the dutch Microsoft number) and when you click on that Teams should open and you will be able to call that number without copying the number or type it manual in your Teams.

The end of Skype for Business Online

Yesterday (July 30, 2019) Microsoft announced the retirement date of Skype for Business Online. Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021, at which point access to the service will discontinue.

Until this date customers of Skype for Business Online can expect no change in the service up to its retirement date.

With the focus of helping customers transition from Skype for Business Online to Teams, as of September 1, 2019, no new tenants will be on-boarded to Skype for Business Online. Customers actively using Skype for Business Online will still be able to add new users to their tenant.

Jabra PanaCast

Last week Jabra announced their worlds first smart panoramic 4K video solution!

We (my company Detron and I) are lucky to test the PanaCast since there are only 180 (of which 10 in the Netherlands) out in the wild right now.

What is the PanaCast?

Jabra PanaCast is the world’s first intelligent panoramic video collaboration device with three 13 megapixel cameras, working together as one via core technology embedded in the built-in Jabra PanaCast Vision Processor. The multi-camera array solution offers a full 180-degree panoramic field of view, delivering a naturally immersive experience. It even has real-time movement detection including the ability to count the number of people in a room (up to 12 meters away).

Priority Notifications in Microsoft Teams

What are priority notifications?

This feature allows a user to mark a chat message in Teams as “Urgent”. Unlike regular “important” messages, Urgent Messages (also known as “priority notifications”) notify users repeatedly for a period of 20 minutes or until messages are picked up and read by the recipient, maximizing the likelihood that the message is picked up and acted upon in a timely manner.

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How to enable?

IT Admins can manage this feature as part of messaging policies in Teams. This feature is on by default for all tenants.