From Skype for Business to Teams – A guide

The global Covid-19 pandemic continues to impact people and countries around the world. Teams everywhere are adapting to work remotely. Modern organizations are accelerating their digital transformation plans and offering employees new tools and ways to communicate. A multitude of new desktop and communication apps leads to a lot of complexity for the user and the lack of interfaces and integration of the respective tools reduces productivity. By far the most integrated communication platform is Microsoft Teams, which brings together conversations, meetings, files, Office apps and even third-party apps to provide a single hub for teamwork in Office 365.

What does Teams offer?

• Single-client access to all cloud services Easily switch from one application to another with a fully integrated front-end experience. All documents related to each team or project are available together in a new Sharepoint folder Meetings can be scheduled for a team. So no one is left out and all notes and recordings are saved together.
• A powerful and fully integrated user interface Allows people to use Teams as the main dashboard for all collaborative activities, including third-party plug-ins. This simplifies folder structures in Sharepoint and ensures that all ongoing tasks and work are together and always in front of you.
• A roadmap with AI Future updates will include features such as inline translation for messages, Cortana voice interactions to make calls, join meetings or other key functions, and facial recognition to match comments to the right people in video calls.

Voice support with teams

There are two options for mapping voice traffic in Microsoft Teams. Direct Routing and Calling Plans

• Direct Routing With Direct Routing, you choose your voice service provider and enable your employees to make and receive calls in teams. This offers flexible pricing plans, language-specific SLAs and a more stable architecture with dedicated access to PSTN from your location.
• Calling Plans This is a cloud-based SIP trunk that is embedded in the Microsoft Office365 platform and allows you to make external calls (PSTN).

Selection of language provider

While internal voice calls are only dependent on the Office 365 platform, the variables that can affect the quality of service increase significantly for external calls. For each call, connections with multiple network operators are required to make a call.

• Choose a reliable partner with a lot of experience Look for proven experience in managing voice services.
• Define language-specific SLAs How quickly can new connections or numbers be delivered? How much time can be allowed for troubleshooting? Are latency and jitter (sensitive parameters for real-time communication) guaranteed? What Mean Opinion Score (MOS) do users experience directly? You need a provider who guarantees this with a legally binding SLA.
• Ensure flexible tariff plans A standardized price is not suitable for most users. Every company has different data traffic. The availability of customized pricing schemes is an important prerequisite for choosing a voice provider.
• Comply with legal requirements Telephony is still highly regulated and legislation varies from country to country. Your provider must ensure that your organization remains legally compliant after deploying Microsoft Teams in the respective country.

Higher end user acceptance

• Selecting communication devices With the added functionality of Teams, it is a good opportunity to check which devices are being used and whether they are still fit for purpose. Existing devices may require a firmware update to work with Teams.
• Microsoft-certified devices for the best user experience Teams-certified devices facilitate access to key features and integrations and improve deployment and management via the Microsoft Device Management Solution with Intune integration. Application updates are deployed and managed through the Microsoft Device Management Solution.
• Ask for adoption support solutions from your chosen provider End devices need to be configured and managed, for example. Make sure you have access to a single management portal that allows your IT team to make updates and corrections quickly and easily, e.g. searching for a phone via a user account instead of an IP address.

Reduce operating costs (TCO)

• Be sure to select a single supplier that is responsible for all components end-to-end Multiple suppliers make it difficult to identify root causes of problems and increase the total cost of ownership. Selecting a single supplier responsible for the end-to-end solution will help reduce costs and improve the overall experience.
• One partner for all international subsidiaries A single provider for the end-to-end solution that can only deliver in one country is not helpful for organizations with multiple countries. Complexity, administration and operating costs increase with multiple providers.

Conclusion

Migrating to Teams is a smart decision for companies. Especially if you want to reduce the cost of your UC infrastructure and improve productivity at the same time. Your technical solution partner for integrating telephony into Teams should be chosen carefully. Savecall will help you choose the right provider and work closely with you to ensure that all your requirements are met and that the migration goes smoothly.