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STEPHEN ROSE: Hey, everybody! Welcome to another episode
of "Inside Microsoft Teams."
I'm your host, Stephen Rose, and thanks for joining us.
We are continuing with our "Double-Click" series.
Again, we heard from so many of you
on, "Can you kind of walk through
some of these difficult topics
and kind of give us a good one-on-one?"
And one of the things
that I heard there was a lot of confusion about
is Operator Connect versus Direct Routing
versus Microsoft Teams calling plans.
"Which one do I use, when," all of that.
And I thought, "Hm, who can I bring on the show?"
And I thought, "Daniela would be perfect."
So, Daniela, thanks for joining us today. How are ya?
DANIELA CHOCRON: Good, good.
Thank you so much for having me.
Hi, everyone. Really excited to be here with you all today.
I'm Daniela Chocron.
I'm a senior product marketing manager.
I focus on Microsoft Teams, too,
and so I'm here to clear up some of the confusion
and some of the questions that you may have
on how to enable PSTN connectivity in Teams.
STEPHEN ROSE: Awesome.
Well, we made a lot of announcements
at Ignite last year.
What were some of the top ones around calling
because then I want to talk about
where are we at now with that
and how do folks sort of navigate through this?
So, why don't we start there?
What were the big announcements at Ignite around calling?
DANIELA CHOCRON: Yeah, absolutely, I would say
one of our biggest announcements related to this topic
was the general availability of Teams Phone Mobile.
We're super excited about that.
It's a fourth way to enable PSTN connectivity in Teams.
So, as I'm walking you through
a little bit of each of the options,
I'll walk you through what Teams Phone Mobile is
and some of the value
that it can provide to your organization.
STEPHEN ROSE: Let's talk about what each one is.
So, what is Operator Connect,
before we talk about what makes them different?
So, very simply, if somebody said,
"Tell me what Operator Connect is,"
what would you say to them?
DANIELA CHOCRON: Yeah, definitely.
So, I would say Operator Connect
is if you're wanting to maintain
your existing operator agreement
and also your existing PSTN service
and you're a fully cloud-based solution,
you have fully cloud-based telephony solution,
that is really the best way
for you to get kind of a managed service
to deploy PSTN in Teams.
STEPHEN ROSE: Okay. Now, Direct Routing.
DANIELA CHOCRON: Direct Routing is then for customers
that have a more highly customizable environment--
for example, you still have on-prem legacy systems
that you still need to make sure that you maintain
and that your telephony solution can integrate with.
That's where Direct Routing
is really a great option for customers.
STEPHEN ROSE: All right. And then, the third one
is Microsoft Teams Calling plan.
DANIELA CHOCRON: Yes. So that's where
Microsoft is your operator.
That is very simple and easy to deploy.
So Microsoft, you're able to provision
and assign phone numbers
directly from the Teams admin center
and very quickly get up and running.
That's currently available in 35 markets today.
STEPHEN ROSE: I was taking a look at the Gartner MQ,
which was great.
UCaaS, we finished up above everybody else.
But one of the things they said
is, Operator Connect can add a little bit of complexity.
So, how do we figure out one over the other?
How do we decide what is the best to use?
Is it Operator Connect, is it Direct Routing,
is it the Microsoft Teams Calling plan?
And at what point might it make sense to bring in a partner?
And I think you brought some slides
and some stuff to walk through, if I'm correct, right?
DANIELA CHOCRON: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely.
I know, when we introduced Operator Connect,
we introduced another third grade.
Previously, we had just Teams Calling plans
and Direct Routing, so it was very straightforward.
First party versus third party.
And then, we added another great way
to enable PSTN connectivity in Teams.
So, going to walk you through what each of these are,
and then also Teams Phone Mobile, our newest addition.
So I can go ahead and share my screen.
As you were mentioning, Stephen, now we have four great ways
to connect PSTN connectivity with Teams Phone.
So, as you all know, with Teams Phone,
you can get core and advanced call control capabilities.
You also have the ability to place voice
and video VoIP calls, and then PSTN, as well,
making and receiving calls.
So, there's each of these options.
And really, customer choice is at the center of our strategy
and why we have all these four options
to meet your business and your IT needs.
These give you, all of these options,
give you flexibility and choice.
And the most important thing to know
is that you don't have to choose one of these options.
You could use a combination of the four
based on your geographical coverage, your users' needs.
As I mentioned, whether you need to support on-prem
or legacy systems, you can really use the combination
that best fits what your organization needs
and where you are, too, in terms of your telephony solution,
the complexity that's needed.
So now let's go through a little bit
about what each of these options are.
As I mentioned, each of these options, starting all the way
from Teams Calling plans to Direct Routing,
offer a range of customization and flexibility,
based on the complexity of your current voice solutions
and how they're set up.
But let's start first kind of here on the left-hand side
with Teams Calling plans and what they are.
So, Teams Calling plans are a really simple and easy way
to add calling to your organization.
As I mentioned, you can do this directly
from the Teams admin center, you can purchase the licenses,
you can assign them to your users very easily
and just get set up in a matter of minutes.
We currently offer our Teams Calling plans in 35 markets,
but we're continuously expanding
our geographical coverage, as well.
Also, if you have existing phone numbers,
you can easily port them through,
bring them over to Microsoft
using the Number Porting Wizard available
in the Teams admin center.
And then, in terms of calling plans
that are available today,
there's three different calling plans
that you can choose from:
domestic calling plans, international calling plans,
and we recently introduced
pay-as-you-go calling plans, as well.
Now, let's talk about our newest offering,
Teams Phone Mobile.
Teams Phone Mobile is a seamless way
to integrate your users' mobile identities
with all the Microsoft Teams collaboration and productivity.
With Teams Phone Mobile, a single SIM-enabled phone number
serves as your desk phone number,
your mobile number, and your Teams number.
It's really easy
for you to move calls across networks and devices
without making sure that there isn't any call interruptions.
You can easily transition calls from your cellular service
on the go to Wi-Fi once you get to the office,
and then bringing in the rich video calling enabled by VoIP.
And then, you can also
get access to call history, voicemail,
transcriptions in Teams and on your mobile device.
And with unified presence,
you can see, let colleagues know whenever you're available
and whenever you're not.
Teams Phone Mobile is now available
with Rogers in Canada, Telia and Sweden, Verizon in the US,
Deutsche Telekom in Germany, and Swisscom in Switzerland.
BT in the UK will launch soon.
So now, we're going to talk about Operator Connect.
Operator Connect allows organizations
to maintain their existing PSTN services in Teams,
and it gives you a lot of the benefits
of simplified deployment, managed hardware,
and shared support in SLAs with operators.
And with Operator Connect,
you can keep your existing contract
with a participating operator that's part of the program.
Or if you're looking for a new operator,
you can see a full list of participating partners
directly from the Teams admin center.
Operator Connect gives you a lot of benefits
that make it really seamless and make it a really seamless
and powerful PSTN option for you.
As I mentioned,
you can keep your existing operator contracts,
you can very quickly deploy in Teams,
just get set up in minutes
by establishing the connection to your operator,
quickly provision and assign phone numbers to users.
It also allows you to reduce the cost
of hardware and management that you might have
with a traditional telephony solution,
and then benefit from the enhanced support and reliability.
Now, we'll talk a little bit about Direct Routing,
which is another alternate option.
And this is for organizations
that have very unique calling needs.
As we talked about in the beginning of the call,
organizations that have more customizable solutions,
they need to support legacy hardware
or on-premises telephony solutions.
This is where Direct Routing really comes in
and is a really powerful option.
It's currently available in over 180 markets.
As I mentioned, it's highly customizable
and allows you to maintain your existing operator agreements
and PSTN service.
With Direct Routing, you can connect an SBC
to almost any telephony trunk
or interconnect with third-party PSTN equipment,
which allows you to virtually use any PSTN trunk
with Teams phone and also configure interoperability
between telephony equipment,
such as third-party PBXs, analog devices, and Teams.
STEPHEN ROSE: So, that's a lot of back and forth,
and I get that,
but how do I figure out which one's right for me?
Is there kind of a simple, hey, you have a chart.
Let's talk about your chart. I like your chart.
I think your chart helps us
to sort of walk through and kind of go,
"Yeah, this makes more sense,"
and cut through the confusion.
So, walk us through this,
and then I want to talk about where folks can find this,
and kind of next steps.
DANIELA CHOCRON: Yeah, absolutely.
So, we've kind of put together a framework.
As we know, as we talked about the beginning of the call,
there's lots of questions
on figuring out what the right option is right for you.
And as I mentioned, you can really use a combination
of these four options, or you can choose one.
It really depends.
And we've kind of thought about,
there's three different categories.
As you're working with your account team,
if you're working with an account team
or kind of trying to decide yourself
what is the right option that's best for your organization,
we encourage you to think about,
do you have a current operator
or existing deployment currently that you want to maintain?
Are you looking to optimize for speed of deployment
and you have internal telephony expertise
in your organization? And also, what are your regional
and workforce characteristics?
So there's kind of three different categories
in this framework that we've developed.
So for example, if you have a current operator
that you're working with and an existing PSTN deployment
and if you're currently running
a fully cloud-based solution,
Operator Connect is a really great way for you.
As we talked about, there's a lot of benefits
of the seamless deployment,
not having to manage a lot of legacy hardware.
But for example,
if you have an existing operator you want to work with
but you still need to make sure
that you integrate with legacy on-prem systems,
that's where Direct Routing
is still a really great option, as well.
So that's kind of if you're thinking
about maintaining the relationship
with your current operator.
Now, for speed to deployment,
if that's really what you want to optimize for,
and you have internal telephony expertise
within your organization, as well,
if you want a really rapid, quick deployment,
calling plans can be a really great option, as well.
As I mentioned, that's really easy to get set up
through the Teams admin center.
If you also want, need to make sure
you are able to support your existing operator,
Operator Connect is still a really great way.
And Teams Phone Mobile comes in, really,
if you're supporting a highly mobile workforce.
If your workers are using a lot of mobile phone numbers
and mobility is increasingly becoming more important,
that's where Teams Phone Mobile continues to be...
STEPHEN ROSE: Sure, sales and frontline, especially,
and we just did a show on frontline workers,
that would be extremely valuable.
So that's perfect.
DANIELA CHOCRON: Awesome. And yeah, and as I mentioned,
in terms of regional and workforce characteristics,
calling plans today are available in 35 markets today.
For example, if you need to expand geographical coverage
beyond where calling plans are available right now,
you can use a combination of calling plans,
and our Operator Connect
or Direct Routing or Teams Phone Mobile.
And that's where it can really kind of help
expand the geographical coverage
to make sure it covers your multinational footprint
of your organization.
Direct Routing, also, too,
in terms of regional characteristics, if you're in a region
that has unique regulatory requirements around telephony,
that's where Direct Routing can be a really good option
for you, as well,
depending on the regulations of that region.
All right. So, now that we've walked you through
kind of how do you choose what option's best for you,
let me just give you a quick demo
of how you can actually get started with these,
each of these options, through the Teams admin center.
So, as you'll see here, it's very easy to take a look
at all the different operators that are participating
in Operator Connect and/or Teams Phone Mobile.
You can directly, for Teams Phone Mobile, Operator Connect,
or Teams Calling plans, you can quickly provision
and assign phone numbers to users
directly from the Teams admin center,
if you're using a combination of these options, as well,
and kind of see all the phone numbers in your organization.
You can also apply corporate and security policies
and compliance controls
across all of your company communications.
And with Direct Routing, admins also have the option
to easily assign phone numbers
directly from the admin center, as well.
Awesome, so there's...I know we just scratched the surface
in terms of each of these different four options
and which option is best for your organization
or which combination of options
is best for your organization.
So, we definitely encourage you
to check out our documentation.
We've shared some links here with you all
that you can check out.
We're also going to be working on a great blog
with one of our MVPs
that will go through each of these options in more detail.
So, please check it out once it's available.
STEPHEN ROSE: Awesome! So, hopefully, we've removed
some of the confusion around Operator Connect
and Direct Routing and Teams Phone Mobile
and all the rest.
This is the first of several shows
that we're going to be doing.
So, we've given you out some great resources.
Take a look at that, and we want to hear from you.
If there's a specific area inside this
that's creating a lot of confusion
as you move from PSTN to the cloud, we want to help you.
So, let us know what what we can dig into.
And Daniela, thanks for giving up some of your time today
to share with us. We appreciate it.
And we will see all of you very soon
on another episode of "Inside Microsoft Teams."
Thanks for joining us today. We'll see ya soon.
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