Shared line appearance in Microsoft Teams

Shared line appearance lets a user choose a delegate to answer or handle calls on their behalf. This feature is helpful if a user has an administrative assistant who regularly handles the user's calls. In the context of shared line appearance, a manager is someone who authorizes a delegate to make or receive calls on their behalf. A delegate can make or receive calls on behalf of the delegator.

Important

This feature is only in Teams Only deployment mode. For more information on Teams deployment modes, see Understand Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business coexistence and interoperability

Dialing Permissions and Routing

When a delegate makes an outbound PSTN call on behalf of a delegator, the delegator's settings control the checks for appropriate licensing, dial-out restrictions, and call routing.

License required

Managers and delegates must have a Teams Phone license. Managers must have a phone number assigned, PSTN connectivity, and a required license for PSTN connectivity: Calling Plan, Operator Connect, or Direct Routing. The shared line experience is part of delegation and is included with Teams Phone. For more information on licensing, see Microsoft Teams service description.

Note

A delegate without a phone number assigned must be EnterpriseVoiceEnabled using the Teams PowerShell cmdlet Set-CsPhoneNumberAssignment -Identity <user> -EnterpriseVoiceEnabled $true, see Set-CsPhoneNumberAssignment.

Shared line appearance feature availability

The following apps and devices currently support shared line appearance:

Capability Teams Desktop Teams Mac App Teams Web App (Edge) Teams mobile iOS/Android App Teams IP phone
Set up delegation Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Receive calls on behalf of another Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Call a phone number on behalf of another Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Call a Teams user on behalf of another Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
See the delegate view of shared lines Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
See the delegate view of manager's call activities Yes Yes Yes No Yes
See the manager view of delegates Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Delegate or manager can hold or resume Yes Yes Yes No Yes

Limitations

Managers can add up to 25 delegates, and delegates can have up to 25 managers. There's no limit to the number of delegation relationships that can be created in a tenant.

If the delegator and delegate aren't in the same geographic location, the PSTN provider must allow caller ID to show up from a different geographic location for a delegated call.

Circular delegation configuration isn't permitted. If the delegated users also have delegations between them, they'll only be able to see their delegation and not the initial delegation.

Enable delegation and shared line appearance

You enable delegation by using the TeamsCallingPolicy AllowDelegation setting. You can use Teams admin center or Teams PowerShell. This setting is turned on by default.

When enabled, the end user can configure their delegation relationships directly in Teams.

Important

When you turn off delegation for a user, you also need to clean up delegation relationships for that user in the Teams admin center to avoid incorrect call routing.

Use Teams admin center

To configure delegation and shared line appearance:

  1. In the navigation menu of the Microsoft Teams admin center, select Voice > Calling policies.

  2. Choose the policy you would like to update or select Add to create a new policy.

  3. Toggle Delegation for inbound and outbound calls on.

  4. Select Save.

Use PowerShell

To configure delegation and shared line appearance by using Teams PowerShell, use the following cmdlets:

Examples

In the following example, user2@contoso.com is added as a delegate of user1@contoso.com with permissions to make and receive call on behalf of user1, and to change settings for other delegates:

New-CsUserCallingDelegate -Identity user1@contoso.com -Delegate user2@contoso.com -MakeCalls $true -ReceiveCalls $true -ManageSettings $true

In the next example, delegate user2@contoso.com isn't allowed to make calls anymore on behalf of user1:

Set-CsUserCallingDelegate -Identity user1@contoso.com -Delegate user2@contoso.com -MakeCalls $false

In the next example, user2@contoso.com is removed as a delegate of user1@contoso.com:

Remove-CsUserCallingDelegate -Identity user1@contoso.com -Delegate user2@contoso.com

More information

Share a phone line with a delegate

Configure Teams calling policy

New-CsTeamsCallingPolicy

Set-CsTeamsCallingPolicy