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I’ve been recently working with a customer to enable PSTN calling for Skype for Business Online for a group of pilot users and realised that the customer had assumed that Microsoft Teams should be automatically function just like the SfB client but it wasn’t the case.

It raised an important flag of importance to follow Microsoft Official Guidelines for transitioning from SFBO to Microsoft Teams with the controller in the hand.

However, the customers who have adopted Microsoft Teams alongside with SFBO should clearly understand the basis of client preference for fully featured calling experience. Technically, if they have both SFBO and Teams enabled and being used, the default user experience would be;

• SfB client can make and receive PSTN calls
• Teams client can make PSTN calls but not receiving an incoming call toast
• It both clients running on the same device, SfB client receives the incoming PSTN calling toast
• If the SfB client is not signed in but Teams client is running, the incoming call will be forwarded to the Voicemail
• If the user has clients running on multiple devices (multiple point of presence), any SfB client or App will take the precedence of incoming call

How to change this behaviour?….pretty easy…

Microsoft added Microsoft Teams Inter-op policies last year by introducing some new Power-Shell commands to SFBO command list to control this behaviour during the transition. these policies can control both Chat and Calling Default client behaviour but we are focusing on Calling in our scenario.

The default Global policy is always applied to all users and set as below;

Here, CallingDefaultClient : Default is which means SfB client is preferred. (Default always means SfB Client/App)

To override default Global policy, administrator should assign a pre-defined custom policies (Tags) or create a new policy;

we can choose 2 Tags out of 7 in our case as below;

Scenario 1 – if you need to change the Calling Application Preference without user intervention, use below tag which makes the Teams as the preferred client for all Incoming and outgoing PSTN calls.

Command : Grant-CsTeamsInteropPolicy -PolicyName Tag:DisallowOverrideCallingTeamsChatTeams -Identity UserA@fabrikam.com

Scenario 2 – if you need to keep the default configuration but allow users to change the  Calling Application Preference by themselves, use below tag which enables a drop down box listing client options within Teams settings section.

Command : Grant-CsTeamsInteropPolicy -PolicyName Tag:AllowOverrideCallingDefaultChatDefault -Identity UserA@fabrikam.com

Once, this policy is applied users should exit and sign-in to Teams Client to make this effect. (If changes not visible, don’t be panic…its cloud and may take like 10 minutes…try again)

The new options will be displayed as below;

and test a call…you must see the incoming call toast on Teams client now…

This configuration will be added as part of new SfB and Teams Admin console soon…no to Shell then 🙂

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-au/MicrosoftTeams/configuring-teams-calling-quickstartguide

As per the blog post from last September, Microsoft has been tracking according to the plan and currently transitioning admin centre experience in Tenant level. A note has been added to the https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-teams-skypeforbusiness-admin-center

Here is the summary of the features being added to the new Admin centre;

• Microsoft Teams messaging policy: Create policy for user-level management of the Microsoft Teams client experience for Messaging scenarios.
• Microsoft Teams interop policy: Configure the interoperability experience between Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams.
• Microsoft Teams guest messaging settings: Control the messaging capabilities for guest accounts in Microsoft Teams.
• Federation settings: Manage the federation between tenants for Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business.
• User management: Assign policies and configure user accounts.
• Audio conferencing: Configure dial-in numbers and settings for Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams.

It will exciting times when this process is complete and available…fingers crossed…

I was privileged to work with Telstra and Microsoft Australia during last 3 months (under NDA) on formulating a strategy for Australian customers to be able to own a phone number for Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business Online as a part of Office 365.

The official launch event held in Sydney on 19/03/2018 at the Telstra customer experience centre https://www.telstra.com.au/business-enterprise/solutions/collaboration-conferencing/cloud-collaboration/telstra-calling-365

Current service enabled countries;

The new service is named as “Telstra Calling for O365 (TCO)” and now in preview with first 35 customers chosen by 7 Australian partners.  Australia is the 11th country being added to the service but quite different from the other 10 countries’ model.

Microsoft solely acts as the PSTN provider in all other cases except the very first partnership model developed for Australia. Telstra, Australia’s premier communications provider will provide the PSTN capabilities directly via Microsoft datacentres in Sydney and Melbourne leaving Microsoft to provide the Office 365 front-end for customers.

The purchasing experience will be slightly different from the global model but the service enabling process is quite similar via same O365 control panel.

There will be 3 calling plans instead of 2 plans elsewhere, below is a glimpse of the new calling plans;

and here are the special conditions to be considered;

I’m helping few preview customers as I write this article and hope to provide further updates during the preview period. Stay tuned…

As per the last Microsoft Ignite announcement, we will see a new single pane of glass Admin centre for both Skype for Business online and Microsoft Teams.

The current O365 Admin Centre has no Microsoft Teams dedicated admin space other than the settings section.

The new admin centre is one more step closer to the overall Teams “look & feel” re-confirming the future of SFBO.

Image captured from official blog https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/What-s-new-in-Office-365-Administration-Ignite-Edition/ba-p/110337