Mon Sep 19

How to Plan & Deploy a Microsoft Teams Enterprise Voice Solution

Microsoft Teams is a powerful communications tool that offers many features for voice communications, such as calling, conferencing, and team messaging. In order to get the most out of Teams for your business, it's important to plan your deployment carefully.

This article will guide you through the process of planning and deploying Microsoft Teams Enterprise Voice solutions. We'll start by discussing what Microsoft Teams is and its key features for voice communications, before walking you through how to assess your current telephony infrastructure and identify user requirements.

Next, we'll show you how to deploy a Teams Enterprise Voice solution, including setting up phone numbers and routing. Finally, we'll give you some tips for managing and monitoring a Teams Enterprise Voice deployment. Let's get started!

What is Microsoft Teams and what are its key features for voice communications?

Microsoft Teams is a cloud-based collaboration tool that offers many features for voice communications, such as calling, conferencing, and team messaging. Key features for voice communications include:

Calling: Microsoft Teams offers PSTN calling capabilities in over 140 countries. Users can make and receive calls from their Teams app or desk phone, and can also transfer calls to other users.
Conferencing: Teams offers audio, video, and web conferencing capabilities, which allows users to join conferences from their Teams app or desk phone, and also schedule conferences in advance.
Team messaging: In addition to voice communications, Teams also offers team messaging capabilities. Users can send and receive messages in real-time, and can also access team chat history.

How to plan your Teams deployment, including assessing your current telephony infrastructure and identifying user requirements

To do this, you'll need to answer the following questions:

- What is your current telephony infrastructure?
- What are your user requirements?
- What are your calling needs?
- What are your conferencing needs?
- What are your team messaging needs?

Once you've answered these questions, you'll be able to identify any gaps in your current infrastructure and user requirements. From there, you can begin planning your Teams deployment.

How to deploy a Teams Enterprise Voice solution, including setting up phone numbers and routing

Phone numbers can be assigned to users manually or automatically. To assign numbers automatically, you'll need to create a number pool in the Azure portal. To assign numbers manually, you can add them to user accounts in the Teams admin centre.

Routing is used to determine how calls are routed within your Teams deployment. There are three types of routing: public switched telephone network (PSTN) routing, private branch exchange (PBX) routing, and Direct Routing.

- PSTN routing is the most common type of routing and is used to route calls to and from the public switched telephone network.
- PBX routing is used to route calls between on-premises PBX systems and Microsoft Teams.
- Direct Routing is used to route calls directly between Microsoft Teams and a supported VoIP gateway or SIP trunk.

Tips for managing and monitoring a Teams Enterprise Voice deployment

First, you'll want to create a backup of your Teams data - you can do this in the Azure portal. Next, you'll want to monitor your Teams deployment for any issues, which you can do in the Teams admin centre or by using monitoring tools like Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS). Finally, you'll want to create a disaster recovery plan. This plan should include steps for recovering your data and restoring service if there is an outage.

Future considerations for expanding or upgrading your Microsoft Teams voice solution

As your company grows, you may need to expand or upgrade your Teams voice solution. To do this, you'll need to consider the following:

- Adding more users: You can do this by adding additional licenses in the Office 365 admin centre.
- You may need to add more capacity if you're adding more users or if you're seeing increased usage. To do this, you can add additional servers or deploy a multi-site solution.
- Upgrading your infrastructure: If you're going to do this, you'll need to consider whether you want to upgrade your on-premises PBX or move to a cloud-based solution.

Microsoft Teams offers a comprehensive voice solution for businesses of all shapes and sizes. By planning your deployment and considering your future needs, you can ensure that your Teams voice solution will meet your business needs now and in the future.