Microsoft recently announced that it was shutting down Skype, bringing an end to the iconic brand after 21 years. While many will lament the passing of the service that revolutionised VoIP for the masses, Microsoft will migrate its users to Teams.
It’s a testament to Teams and Microsoft’s investment in the platform, that it can now completely replace Skype. Teams has evolved considerably since its release, when it was first launched as a competitor to Slack. It’s now a collaboration solution with features that go toe to toe with many Unified Communications (UC) solutions in the market.
However, despite Microsoft sitting at the top of the leaders section of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for UCaaS, the perception of Teams’ abilities may have lagged behind reality.
Here we take a look at what Teams has to offer organisations.
Different names for powerful features
Out of the box, Teams Phone offers a number of options that are easily configurable so you can tailor them to your organisation’s requirements.
The terminology may differ slightly from what it’s been called in the past, but the core UC functionality is there – and in some cases is improved, thanks to its integration with the broader Microsoft ecosystem.
- Interactive Voice Response (IVR) can be found under “auto attendants”. These offer a range of features including the ability to record a greeting message or do text-to-voice so that messages can easily be updated by a supervisor. Powerful routing options allow you to adjust the responses depending on the time of day, the options selected, and route to specific people, other queues, voicemail or external phone numbers.
- Hunt groups go by “call queues” and move the concept beyond where calls would ‘hunt’ for an operator on a pre-defined list. With the new Microsoft Queues app, users will be able to monitor stats, make calls as if they were calling from the hunt group number and adjust routing on the fly as needed. Plus it’s all self-serve, without needing an administrator.
Indeed, this is a large part of Microsoft’s ethos: putting power in the hands of users.
Even standard Teams Phone users can manage basic routing options for their day-to-day work, like who their calls will go to if they’re not available.
More functionality thanks to Microsoft integration
Microsoft has put in a lot of effort to integrate with other features and apps. As such, they’re able to draw upon existing functionality that’s familiar to users and provide a unified experience.
Calling routing can take advantage of user presence across Microsoft services in order to create more efficient call routing and handling.
Users will have their Outlook contacts readily available in Teams. A user’s voicemail and routing can be set automatically based on their Outlook calendar. File sharing is easy thanks to SharePoint, and you can use Power BI to build reports from your data, showing analytics for various call metrics.
This empowers employees and supervisors to make the most of UC features and their own personal call management, while removing the need for IT involvement.
For many companies, it’s enough for their needs
If your company isn’t too large and doesn’t have complex requirements, there’s a good chance that Microsoft Teams can offer everything you need.
Of course, it’s not perfect for every use case. Very broadly, traditional solutions like those from Avaya and Cisco tend to be call-focused with collaboration extras, whereas Teams has been driven by collaboration and has built out its telephone functions.
Those wanting advanced call centre functionality, integration with their CRM, extensive analogue device support, or real-time visuals on agent status and call activities may need a more advanced solution. Also, Microsoft Teams can’t offer an on-premise solution, so in environments where calling is the main focus and resiliency is needed, you may need to explore an alternative.
But a lot of the complaints about features lacking in Teams have been addressed and for those already investing in the Microsoft ecosystem – and whose users are already familiar with Teams already – it may be enough for a very competent UC solution.
Plus, there are many add-on technologies that can be deployed to fill in capability gaps.
Take advantage of existing licenses
There’s a good chance, if you’re already using Teams for its other features, that some UC functionality is included as standard in your existing licences.
If you have users who have a Premium licence – which they may have for features such as live transcription in Teams meetings – then they already have access to act in a supervisory capacity, managing call routing, IVR responses, hunt groups etc.
So, not only may you not need an alternative UC solution, but for some features, you may not even need new licences.
This is also why our Clevr360 tool is great at times like this. It can show you licence usage across your organisation, identifying where you already have licenses that can be used to a greater degree or redeployed to users where needed.
Teams may already be the solution you need
In short, Teams has grown up. If you need to upgrade your PBX or telephony solution and you are a Teams collaboration tool user, why not start with a Teams Voice capability to see if one application has grown up to deliver the functionality of two?
There are many decisions to make when choosing a UC solution. That’s why we work closely with our customers to understand how they are working and what they want to achieve before even considering the right technology.
However, with its evolution over the years, and particularly if your organisation is already using Microsoft products such as Teams successfully, the right solution might be one that you already have.
