Plan your Teams voice solution

This article helps you decide which Microsoft voice solution is right for your organization. After you've decided, the article provides a roadmap to content that will enable you to implement your chosen solution.

You might want the simplest solution—Teams Phone with Calling Plan. This is Microsoft's all-in-the-cloud solution that provides Private Branch Exchange (PBX) functionality and calls to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), as shown in the following diagram. With this solution, Microsoft is your PSTN carrier.

If you answer yes to the following, then Teams Phone with Calling Plan is the right solution for you:

• Calling Plan is available in your region.
• You do not need to retain your current PSTN carrier.
• You want to use Microsoft-managed access to the PSTN.

However, your situation might be more complex. For example, you might have offices in locations where Calling Plan isn't available. Or you might need a combination solution that supports a complex, multi-national deployment, with different requirements for different geographic locations. Microsoft supports a combination of solutions:

• Teams Phone with Calling Plan
• Teams Phone with your own PSTN carrier with Operator Connect
• Teams Phone with your own PSTN carrier with Direct Routing
• A combination solution that uses Teams Phone with Calling Plan, Teams Phone with Operator Connect, and/or Teams Phone with Direct Routing

What do you need to read?

Required for all. Some of the sections in this article pertain to all organizations. For example, everyone should read about Teams Phone and understand the options for connecting to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

Depending on your requirements. Some of the sections in this and related articles are pertinent depending on your existing deployment and requirements. For example, Location-Based Routing is only required for Direct Routing customers in geographic locations that do not allow toll bypass.

Consider which of these additional configurations you might need:

Teams Phone

Teams Phone is Microsoft's technology for enabling call control and Private Branch Exchange (PBX) capabilities in the Microsoft 365 cloud with Microsoft Teams.

Teams Phone works with Teams clients and certified devices. Teams Phone allows you to replace your existing PBX system with a set of features directly delivered from Microsoft 365.

Calls between users in your organization are handled internally within Teams Phone, and never go to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). This applies to calls between users in your organization located in different geographical areas, removing long-distance costs on these internal calls.

This article introduces the following Teams Phone key features and functionality, and the deployment decisions you'll need to consider:

• Auto attendants and call queues
• Cloud Voicemail
• Calling identity

For information about all Teams Phone features, and how to set up Teams Phone, see the following articles:

• Here's what you get with Teams Phone
• Set up Teams Phone in your organization
  Describes how to buy and assign Phone System licenses, manage phone numbers, and set up communication credits for toll-free numbers.

For information about managing supported devices, see Manage your devices in Microsoft Teams and Teams Marketplace.

Auto attendants and Call queues

Auto attendants allow you to set up menu options to route calls based on caller input. Call queues are waiting areas for callers. Used together, auto attendants and call queues can easily route callers to the appropriate person or department in your organization.

For information about auto attendants and call queues, see the following articles:

• Plan for Teams auto attendants and call queues
• Set up an auto attendant
• Create a call queue
• Contoso case study: Auto attendants and call queues
  Describes how a fictional multi-national corporation, Contoso, implemented auto attendants and call queues for their voice solution.

Cloud Voicemail

Cloud Voicemail, powered by Azure Voicemail services, supports voicemail deposits to Exchange mailboxes only. It doesn't support third-party email systems.

Cloud Voicemail includes voicemail transcription, which is enabled for all users in your organization by default. Your business needs might require that you disable voicemail transcription for specific users or everyone throughout the organization.

Cloud Voicemail is automatically set up and provisioned for Teams users.

For more information about Cloud Voicemail and its configuration, see the following articles:

• Set up Cloud Voicemail
• Set voicemail policies in your organization

Calling identity

By default, all outbound calls use the assigned phone number as calling identity (caller ID). The recipient of the call can quickly identify the caller and decide whether to accept or reject the call. For information about configuring caller ID or to change or block the caller ID, see Set the caller ID for a user.

Public Switched Telephone Network connectivity options

Teams Phone provides complete PBX capabilities for your organization. However, to enable users to make calls outside your organization, you need to connect Teams Phone to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). To connect Teams Phone to the PSTN, you can choose one of the following options:

• Teams Phone with Calling Plan. An all-in-the-cloud solution with Microsoft as your PSTN carrier.

• Teams Phone with your own PSTN carrier by using Operator Connect. With Operator Connect, if your existing operator is a participant in the Microsoft Operator Connect program, they can manage the service for bringing PSTN calling to Teams. For information on the benefits and requirements of Operator Connect, see Plan Operator Connect.

• Teams Phone with your own PSTN carrier by using Direct Routing to connect your on-premises environment to Teams.

You can also choose a combination of options, which enables you to design a solution for a complex environment, or manage a multi-step migration (more about migration later).

Most Teams Phone features are the same regardless of the PSTN connectivity option you choose. There are some differences in functionality, however, that affect how you configure certain Teams Phone features, such as call routing and emergency calling. For more information about PSTN connectivity options and these configuration considerations, see PSTN connectivity options.

Migrate your existing voice solution to Teams

For an organization that is upgrading to Teams, the ultimate goal is to move all users to TeamsOnly mode. Using Teams Phone is only supported when the user is in TeamsOnly mode. If you need basic information about upgrading to Teams, start here:

• Getting started with your Microsoft Teams upgrade
• About the upgrade framework
• Upgrade strategies for IT administrators

When migrating your voice solution, there are four possible calling scenarios when moving to TeamsOnly mode:

• A user in Skype for Business Online, with a Microsoft Calling Plan. Upon upgrade, this user will continue to have a Microsoft Calling Plan.

• A user in Skype for Business Online, with on-premises voice functionality through Skype for Business on-premises or Cloud Connector Edition. The user’s upgrade to Teams needs to be coordinated with migration of the user to Direct Routing to ensure the TeamsOnly user has PSTN functionality.

• A user in Skype for Business on-premises with Enterprise Voice, who will be moving to online and keeping on-premises PSTN connectivity. Migrating this user to Teams requires moving the user’s on-premises Skype for Business account to the cloud, and coordinating that move with migration of the user to Direct Routing.

• A user in Skype for Business on-premises with Enterprise Voice, who will be moving to online and using a Microsoft Calling plan. Migrating this user to Teams requires moving the user’s on-premises Skype for Business account to the cloud, and coordinating that move with either A) the port of that user’s phone number to a Microsoft Calling Plan or B) assigning a new subscriber number from available regions.

For more information about how to implement your voice migration for each of these scenarios—including information about when you need to set up hybrid connectivity and how to migrate users with on-premises voice functionality to Direct Routing—see the following articles:

• PSTN considerations when upgrading to Teams — for IT administrators

• Contoso voice migration case study
  The case study describes how a fictional multi-national corporation, Contoso, implemented a Teams voice solution for their organization. It contains the following articles:

  • Teams upgrade plan
  • Teams Phone and PSTN connectivity options
  • Location-Based Routing implementation
  • Emergency calling
  • Auto attendants and call queues
  • Audio Conferencing