Microsoft 365 Business Voice is changing the game. When the world adopted Microsoft Teams as their go to application, we, in the tech world, got very excited. I was able to setup, amazing experiences for clients and myself. But I still needed to overcome some questions from our customers; “Tom, I love this new Teams software, I also see the benefits using my laptop and iPhone anywhere, but…. I still need to receive and make phone calls?” “I can’t really do that with my PC in the office or on my laptop?” “Does this software limit me to my desktop at the office?” “Has Microsoft Teams fix that issue??”

The answer – Microsoft 365 Business Voice. A simple keypad in Microsoft Teams, but a whole “techie toolbox” in the background.

 

With many telecoms providers trying to understand our daily protocols in the IT industry. SQL, routers, and servers to name a few, we now get to dig into the world of telecoms. Being a Microsoft certified technician really helps you, our customers.

What exactly is Microsoft 365 Business Voice?

Microsoft 365 Business Voice is a phone system that runs over the internet. Because it’s cloud hosted, it allows users to make and receive calls from and to landlines and mobiles wherever they are from any device via Microsoft Teams.

It is managed from an Office 365 admin console, allowing you to add and remove users with ease, set up call diverts, block numbers, use auto attendants and more. It’s just like your traditional phone system and more.

Admin Centre

The Teams Admin centre is intuitive, plus it fits with all the other Microsoft 365 Admin centres. The wording, polices, and tags all work the same way as for emails or SharePoint. So if you’ve used Teams before, you’ll be able to navigate it easily and if not, well it’s straight forward enough for a new user to pick up!  Within the admin centre you can add direct dials, set up auto attendant, manage and view your plans along with viewing usage reports. Within minutes I had ported in 10 unique phone numbers and assigned them to some of our staff. It’s that simple.

Auto Attendant

You can easily create auto attendants who answer and manage your call traffic saving your time and resource. Within no time at all I had got this set up for our team, I created a fully functional auto attendant, which not only answered the incoming call, but gave options to transfer calls to Sales or Technical team.

Reporting

You can also create the same reports I’d use for email activity; seeing inbound, outbound, who called and when. This is useful to manage call plans and staff. Wanting to find out who made the most calls this week? Simple. Wondering what time your call traffic is at its highest? Not a problem.

Call Plans

With Microsoft Business Voice, you get a monthly pool of minutes which is based on the number of licensed users. You can obviously increase this amount if needed. You can easily see this figure within teams and when I used it, I could see the pool of available minutes reducing with each call. Communication credits kicked in for numbers dialled outside of the calling plans. Here I also applied organisational policies, restricting everything from numbers to countries and pretty much any tag I wanted. Forwarding calls to mobile, or voicemail is, surprisingly like setting an “out the office” reply in emails.

Managing Users

Managing phone users was the same as managing computer users, again similar tools, along with features. I easily swapped numbers in and out of users and linked different users to alternate numbers. I was even able to setup, a user which dialled out, as the main office line, not their unique number. There’s so much you can do and it’s all really straight forward.

Microsoft Continues to Disrupt and Raise the Bar

On Reflection, every technical consultant wants one thing, “Simplification”, we crave it! Microsoft clearly understood this, when presenting us with a game-changer like Microsoft 365 Business Voice. It provides just the right amount of functionality for those running small to mid-sized businesses.

It’s simply a very competitive alternative, for companies who want to break away from legacy phone systems; no matter which platform they use, to connect with their colleagues.

More importantly, it answers the killer questions, I get asked at every demo.

Tom
CTO