Using Skype for Business certified IP Phones with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams continues its strong momentum of market adoption not just among enterprise customers but also with hardware vendors as evident from the many announcements made at Microsoft Ignite that just ended 2 days ago. There are now various personal and shared audio and video devices that customers can use natively with Microsoft Teams and the list can be found at this website http://office.com/teamsdevices. At the same time, many organizations that are moving from Skype for Business Enterprise voice and who have deployed 3PIP certified Skype for Business IP phones may be asking if these devices can still be used after moving to Teams. Thankfully, the answer is yes because of a SFB-Teams interop service that Microsoft provides which allows these 3PIP devices to interop with Teams; thereby protecting customer's investment while migrating from Skype for Business. This blog post explains how this interop works and what configurations are necessary to leverage this interop service

For starters, its important to understand the concept of 'coexistence modes' that Microsoft has defined in the journey from Skype for Business to Teams. These coexistence modes are set using the TeamsUpgradePolicy powershell cmdlets and govern the routing of incoming calls and chats and whether user can schedule meetings in Teams or Skype for Business. Soon, in conjunction with the upcoming TeamsAppPermissionsPolicy, modes will also govern in which client the user can initiate chats and calls. The full details of these can be found at the official Microsoft website https://docs.microsoft.com/en-sg/MicrosoftTeams/migration-interop-guidance-for-teams-with-skype. In this blog post we only cover the important highlights. There are 5 coexistence modes available today and these and be assigned by the administrator to users depending on their specific requirements. These modes are shown in the diagram below along with the journey from Skype for Business to Teams:

Its worthwhile noting that these coexistence modes are pre-defined by Microsoft and cannot be modified nor can new ones be created at this time. Since these modes govern the routing of incoming calls and chats, there's a useful interop matrix that administrators can use to determine on which client a user's incoming call or chat will land depending on what mode has been assigned to the sender and recipient:

The above matrix is built on the principle that except for Islands mode, a given modality (Chat, Calling or Meetings) will only available in either Skype for Business or Teams, but not both. For Islands mode, a user has both SFB and Teams running at the same time, and therefore has access to all modalities in both clients, but there will be no interop between the two. So chats, calls and meetings between these users will stay within either SFB or Teams. Take for example a sender 'Helen' who is Islands mode and a recipient 'Susan' in TeamsOnly mode. In this scenario, Helen can initiate the call from either the PC running Teams or from her 3PIP Polycom VVX phone registered to her SFBO account, but Susan will only receive the call in the PC running Teams, even though Susan has a VVX device that is registered with the associated SFBOnline account. This is shown in the diagram below:

From this example, we can see that Islands mode is not ideal for 3PIP devices to work with Teams. To leverage fully the interop capabilities offered by the Microsoft SFB-Teams interop service, both users should be in TeamsOnly mode. With this mode, the sender can initiate calls from either the PC running Teams or the 3PIP device, and the recipient can receive and answer the call from either as well. This is shown in the diagram below:

Its also important to note that while most basic call functions will work on the 3PIP device, there are some limitations at this time. Based on my tests, the capabilities that will work on the 3PIP device include:

• Presence of Teams User
• P2P Call to/from Teams User
• P2P Hold/Resume & Transfer call with Teams User
• Display/Join Teams meeting in Calendar
• Conference call Hold/Resume and Mute all
• Conference call Invite additional SFB participants

However, the following are not working on the 3PIP device:

• BTOE with Teams Client
• Conference call Invite additional Teams participants
• Conference call remove participants
• P2P call escalate to conference

Now that we've got the concepts covered, lets move on to the powershell cmdlets that need to be run to get this working as discussed. To see the coexistence mode available, we can just login to SFBOnline remote powershell and run the get-CsTeamsUpgradePolicy as shown below:

We want to grant the TeamsOnly coexistence mode to our users and we can do so using the grant-csteamsupgrade cmdlet with the "UpgradeToTeams" policy as shown below:

Finally, in order for the 3PIP devices to work properly, remember to ensure that the users are enbled for enterprise voice:

In conclusion, the Microsoft SFB-Teams interop service allows customers to move to Teams and still use existing SFB 3PIP certified phones such as the Polycom VVX family of devices thereby protecting customer's investment in these solutions. TeamsOnly is the coexistence mode that will allow these devices to work properly with most basic call functions. On the 3PIP devices, users will just login using their regular SFB online account on these phones using either their username/password or via Web Sign-in feature.