Deploying Polycom phones for Cloud PBX with on-premise PSTN Connectivity Part 2

This is the continuation of the post Deploying Polycom phones for Cloud PBX with on-premise PSTN Connectivity. Here we are ready to move on-premise Skype for Business Enterprise Voice enabled accounts to Office365 E5 Cloud PBX. As shown in the previous post, we have already used two on-premise Enterprise Voice accounts to sign in on two different Polycom devices: a VVX600 and a Trio8800. Below is the status of these two devices as seen on from the web admin Lync Status page:

Before beginning to move to Cloud PBX, we first need to assign a Voice Routing policy to these accounts while they are still homed on-premise. We can run the get-csuser cmdlet to check whether the account has any voice routing policy defined, which should be none by default, and then we can proceed to create a new voice routing policy using the new-csvoiceroutingpolicy cmdlet and then assigning it to the account using the grant-csvoiceroutingpolicy cmdlet. All these are shown in the diagram below:

At this stage we want to make sure these accounts are already synchronized with Office365 and that a valid E5 license is assigned. Note that we must used AD sync-ed accounts for CloudPBX to work. While the Polycom devices are still logged in using these on-premise accounts, we can start moving them to Skype for Business Online using the Control Panel as shown below:

When the accounts are being moved, any account that is still logged in on the Skype for Business client or Polycom devices will automatically logout and try to login again. Afte the account has been successfully moved to Office365 Skype for Business Online, the control panel will show the account homed on "LyncOnline". At this stage, the account will be signed in to Office365 and still retain its voice routing policy as well as line URI but the Hosting Provider will show be sipfed.online.lync.com :

At this point, from the on-premise Skype for Business front-end server, we need to connect remote powershell to the Skype for Business Online tenant to enable the user for enterprise voice again even though the user was already enabled for enterprise voice while homed on-premise. This is done using the usual 'import-PSSession' cmdlet in Powershell and then running the 'set-CsUser -identity <UPN> -EnterpriseVoiceEnabled $true -HostedVoiceMail $true' as shown below:

The Polycom VVX600 phone that is logged in using this account can already make calls to/from the PSTN Gateway defined earlier, however it needs to dial the full E.164 number as the normalization rules have not yet been assigned. To assign a dial plan to a CloudPBX user, first create a user-level dial plan and copy all the necessary normalization rules to this dial plan. In this lab, we have already created a user-level dial plan called HybridDialPlan and need to assign this to the CloudPBX user. To do this, run the 'grant-csdialplan' cmdlet in the on-premise Skype for Business server management shell (not in the remote powershell to Office365 tenant):

In order to make the dial plan work for the Polycom VVX phones, we need to configure the phone to download the normalization rules from the online servers using the parameter 'reg.1.applyServerDigitMapLocally = 1'. We can do this either via provisioning server or via the web admin UI of the phones. Note that the phone must be restarted in order for this parameter to take effect.

So now we have the Polycom devices registered to Office365 CloudPBX and can also make calls to the PSTN Gateway (Asterisk) using 4-digit extension dialing via normalization rules. Below are some call status screen captures for reference:

The ongoing call shown here is between a Polycom VVX600 phone that is registered to Office365 E5 Skype for Business CloudPBX online account and an X-Lite phone registered to an Asterisk PBX simulating an on-premise PSTN Gateway configured with a SIP Trunk to an on-premise Skype for Business mediation pool. Normalization rules are also applied on the phone along with its corresponding Voice Routing Policy.






Below is the Lync Status screen on the VVX600 phone showing the connectivity to Office365 Skype for Business Online with the DialPlan downloaded locally on the phone itself.

This concludes our 2-Part series blog post on Deploying Polycom Phones for Office365 E5 CloudPBX with on-premise PSTN Connectivity. The network diagram now looks as shown: