Teams common area phones are typically placed in an area like a lobby or another area that is available to many people to make a call: a reception area, lobby, or conference phone. Common area phones are signed in with accounts tied to a Microsoft Teams Shared Devices license which costs USD8.00 per month. 

This article provides an overview of how to deploy and configure Teams phone devices as common area phones for shared spaces. Many of the Teams voice deployment steps were already covered in a previous blog post and here we will use the existing tenant dial plan and voice routing policy. Number assignment will be done using a new cmdlet that were introduced recently. Once complete the phone will be able to display a dialpad and make and receive PSTN calls via direct routing

While the Teams Admin Center (TAC) remains as the main administrative portal for managing Teams as well as Teams Devices including Teams Phones, Teams Panels and Teams Rooms, organizations can now make use of the Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro Management portal to manage Teams Room devices that have the Teams Room Pro license. Note that management service is not available with Teams Room Basic licenses as mentioned in a previous blogpost comparing the Basic vs Pro licenses. Recently, Microsoft added Teams Room on Android (MTRA) devices to this service and so now organizations can manage not only Teams Room on Windows (MTRW) systems but also on Android as well. It's time for a walkthrough of the various management capabilities of the Teams Room Pro Management service and highlight some of the useful features using this portal compared with using the Teams Admin Center.

Large organizations that prioritize security want to migrate to cloud services such as Microsoft 365, but they must ensure that their users can only access approved resources. Companies have traditionally restricted access by restricting domain names or IP addresses. This strategy fails in a world where software as a service (SaaS) apps are hosted in the public cloud and use shared domain names such as outlook.office.com and login.microsoftonline.com. Instead of restricting users to approved identities and resources, blocking these addresses would prevent them from accessing Outlook on the web entirely. Tenant restrictions are a feature in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) that addresses this issue . In this blogpost, we look at how MTR devices can potentially implement this capability.

This blog post aims to help readers understand the new Teams Room licenses that was just released by Microsoft this month and how to work with these licenses in actual Teams Room devices. For more information see the Microsoft Docs article.

Whether planning to deploy Microsoft Teams Room on Windows (MTRoW) solution for a Proof-of-Concept (POC) or an actual deployment, there are certain mandatory pre-requisites that have to be met before the solution can be deployed successfully in a corporate network environment. This includes hardware components of the solution, software licenses, network requirements as well as firewall ports and proxy configurations, and last but not least security and AD/AAD requirements. Below is a handy checklist to make sure all the pre-requisites are met before starting to unbox that brand new MTRoW you just received :)

The latest release of firmware version 7.2.1 allows Poly CCX native Teams phones to have a secondary SIP registration with a standards-based VOIP call server. The Teams account signed in on the phone still remains the primary line for incoming/outgoing calls, while the secondary SIP registration will allow PSTN calls in the event that the Teams connection becomes unavailable. This is useful for disaster recovery scenarios where the corp WAN link is down and the device is no longer able to communicate with Teams. In this case with the secondary SIP registration to a local PBX with PSTN Trunks, users can manually switch to the SIP registered line and continue to make PSTN calls. Note that this is manual failover, not automatic . The blog post describes the steps to enable and deploy this feature. Do note that this feature only works with CCX400/500 with HW Rev K or higher and CCX600.

Proximity Join and Teams Casting are 2 excellent features that are available on Teams Rooms devices. They allow easy joining of a Team Room system into a meeting using a personal iOS or Android smartphone without the need to even touch the control panel of the room device. This is certainly welcome for back to office scenarios in the post-pandemic world of hybrid work. However, not many people are familiar with how to get these 2 features working and in this blog post, we explore 5 tips on how to get Proximity Join and Teams Casting working smoothly.

The adoption of Teams certified devices such as Teams Rooms, Teams phones, headsets, speakers etc continus to grow at a rapid pace and as organizations deploy hundreds of these devices across their network, its vital for IT administrators to be able to manage them from a central location as also be alerted when things go down. Fortunately, the Teams Admin Center provides a way for IT admins to be notified whenever a shared or room devices goes down. This blog post walks through the steps

While native Microsoft Teams phone devices provide the richest and most complete Teams experience, there are still many organizations with existing investments in legacy devices. To help these organizations leverage their existing legacy telephony hardware as they move to Teams Calling, Microsoft has launched the Teams SIP Gateway, a free cloud service that enables core Teams calling functionality on compatible SIP phone models from Cisco, Poly, Yealink and AudioCodes. This blog article describes the pre-requisites and steps on how to provision SIP phones for Teams calling using this new SIP Gateway. For detailed info, refer to the official MS Docs site.

This article describes the process to re-purpose Poly CCX 400/500 from Zoom phones to Teams phones. Poly CCX 400/500 phones are flexible and can be used as generic SIP phones, Zoom phones or native Teams phones. For organizations that are using these phones as Zoom devices and are intending to migrate to Teams phones, there is no need to buy new phones. Simply re-purpose the phones following the the steps in this article

Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) on Windows platform solutions are by far the most deployed Microsoft meeting room solutions today and there are many vendors to choose from such as the Poly MTR on Windows kits. The solution comprises key components such as a Windows PC running Windows 10 with the Teams Room application, a Touchscreen control panel as well as a number of Peripheral devices (camera, microphone, speaker). Many organization have policies that require Windows PCs to join the AD Domain and have Group Policy Objects (GPOs) assigned to improve the security of the device. This blogpost aims to assist administrators on what GPOs may safely be applied to an MTRoW device without losing any functionality and what GPOs will render the device unusable. It is a continuation of the previous blog post.

Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) on Windows platform solutions are by far the most deployed Microsoft meeting room solutions today and there are many vendors to choose from such as the Poly MTR on Windows kits. The solution comprises key components such as a Windows PC running Windows 10 with the Teams Room application, a Touchscreen control panel as well as a number of Peripheral devices (camera, microphone, speaker). Many organization have policies that require Windows PCs to join the AD Domain and have Group Policy Objects (GPOs) assigned to improve the security of the device. This blogpost aims to assist administrators on what GPOs may safely be applied to an MTRoW device without losing any functionality and what GPOs will render the device unusable.

Microsoft Teams Room on Android devices have been growing rapidly since its debut by Poly with the Studio X30/X50. While its relatively simple to deploy these devices, there are several considerations to ensure the devices can sign-in to the tenant especially when there are AzureAD and MEM/Intune security restrictions. This blogpost discusses in detail some of these considerations and how to identify and resolve possible issues.

In a previous blogpost, a brief discussion on how to configure a static web proxy on MS Teams Room on Windows (MTRoW) devices was provided, However many organizations require the use of Web Proxy Automatic Configuration (PAC) files to determine which web proxy to use depending on what websites are requested. In this post, we walk through step-by-step on how to configure Web Proxy PAC on an MTRoW device. Note that Microsoft strongly recommends that Teams media traffic should bypass web proxies as stated in this official doc as it may impact the network performance for real-time media. Nonetheless, organizations that require the use of Web Proxy for MTRoW devices may do so for normal web traffic. However, its important to note that MTRoW does not support web proxy authentication.

Microsoft Teams Cloud Video Interop (CVI) service is a Microsoft Qualified third-party solution that allows standards-based third-party meeting rooms (telepresence) and personal video devices (VTCs) to join Microsoft Teams meetings. Many organizations have already invested in legacy video teleconferencing devices which they may want to continue using. Cloud Video Interop provides a cloud-based solution with little or no on-premise infrastructure that allows these existing solutions to participate in Teams meetings. This blogpost walks through step-by-step the configuration of Poly's RealConnect CVI service for Teams. Full details on how to configure CVI can be found in this MSDocs webpage.

Formerly known as "Collaboration Bars", Microsoft Teams Room on Android (MTRoA) devices have become widely adopted in both large and small organizations that want a native Teams room experience in their small to medium sized meeting rooms. These devices are simple to setup and manage, and provide a rich Teams meeting experience thanks to many new features introduced since these devices began shipping last year. this blogpost focuses on some of the best practices deploying and managing MTRoA specifically on the Poly Studio X30/50 devices available today. 

In a previous blogpost the ability to join Webex meetings directly from Microsoft Teams Room for Windows was discussed. Since then, Microsoft has released version 4.6.20 which includes direct guest for Zoom Meetings (Preview) as well. In this post we take a look at the experience of joining Zoom meetings directly from Teams Room for Windows (MTR). While this is currently in preview, the actual release should be coming in the months ahead. With the ability to join both Webex and Zoom meetings directly from an MTR system, the need for USB pass-thru BYOD feature is significantly reduced as Teams, Zoom and Webex form the vast majority of online meetings conducted in the world today.

As many organizations around the world are adopting Microsoft Teams as their enterprise communication and collaboration platform, the demand of IP desktop phones continues to be strong as companies replace their aging PBX phones in place of newer Teams certified IP Phones. Teams calling plans are now available in more countries and Direct Routing can be used virtually anywhere with a certified SBC. To ensure the best possible call quality when deploying Teams Phone system, QoS can be implemented so that the network is optimized for audio and/or video calling. Microsoft provides detailed documentation on how to implement QoS in teams and in this blogpost, we look at how it works with Teams certified IP Phones such as the Poly CCX family shown on the left. Click here for the complete list of devices.

In the July update for Microsoft Teams Room version 4.5.35.0, a new feature known as Direct Guest Join was released that allows MTR devices to join Cisco Webex meetings directly without any gateway or cloud interop service. This feature expands the capabilities of Teams Room Devices and allows interoperability with Cisco Webex meetings with one-click join functionality. In this blog post we explore the required steps to enable Direct Guest Join on MTR and the overall meeting experience and current limitations. In the future, we can expect MTR to support additional meeting ecosystems in the same way as well. Direct Guest Join leverages WebRTC technologies to allow MTR to join meetings hosted in CIsco Webex and other future meeting platforms.

In a previous blog bost various tips on deploying and managing Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) systems was discussed. One of the tips was how to manually update the Teams Room app running on the MTR. In this post, we dive deep and walk through the actual steps involved in updating the MTR system. As of this writing the latest Teams Room App version is 4.4.25.0 and readers may refer to the MTR Release Notes website to get the list of versions available. In this walkthrough we are following the manual update steps as stated in the official MTR Operations documentation for managing MTR systems, along with some potential issues to look out for while performing the process. My MTR system before starting the upgrade was running at version 4.3.42.0

In a previous blog post we walked through the steps to configure our Teams environment with Direct Routing for PSTN calling. In this blog post, we build on the same setup and enable Location Based Routing (LBR). Note that LBR for Teams Direct Routing is a preview or early release feature at the time of this writing as stated in the official Microsoft documentation. For readers unfamiliar with LBR, this capability allows admins to prevent PSTN Toll-Bypass which is against regulatory requirements in certain countries. By configuring LBR, we can restrict toll bypass based on policy and the user's geographic location at the time of an inbound or outbound PSTN call. We can then verify that the LBR policies will also apply to certified Teams IP Phones such as the Poly CCX Family of Teams phones.