Get Started with Microsoft Teams Direct Routing

Introduction

Power Teams with the Carrier for the Modern Enterprise.

Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams

Direct Routing allows Microsoft Teams users to integrate third-party telephony providers into the Microsoft Phone System. The global coverage, competitive rates, and feature capabilities available through third-party telephony services has made Direct Routing the most popular option among Teams’ users.

If Microsoft’s Calling Plans don’t support all the countries you need to call into, your company requires PBX features unavailable in Phone System, or if you just want a more cost-effective telephony solution, Direct Routing may be the best solution for your organization.

Features

• Advanced IVR // dial-tone and speech recognition
• AI Enablement // train your AI models using data from your phone lines
• Call Risk Scoring // easily identify spam calls before you answer
• Cloud-based or On-Prem // don’t sacrifice on your requirements
• Dial Globally // the coverage you need, where you need it
• Disaster Recovery // stay up even when Teams is down
• Emergency Calling // solve for E911
• Fraud Controls // only allow calls to the countries you designate and block high priced destinations
• Live Call Streaming // real-time phone audio for advanced analytics
• Record Calls // manage two way call recordings in the Voxology Portal
• Transcribe Calls // easily integrate transcription into your UCaaS

How it Works

Microsoft Phone System

The standard Microsoft Teams license doesn’t come with any telephony service. By default, Teams only offers messaging and video calling options for communication. However, with Microsoft’s add-on license, Phone System, Teams users can place, receive, and transfer phone calls in the Teams application. (NOTE: The Phone System license is also included in some of the 365 Bundles Microsoft offers).

Microsoft Phone System, by itself, only supports calls placed to users within the same organization as the caller. This is because Phone System doesn’t have a default connection to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Calls to users in the same organization don’t need to connect to the PSTN since the call starts and ends within the Microsoft Phone System. However, to place calls to recipients outside of your organization, you’ll need to connect to the PSTN using either Microsoft’s Calling Plan or a carrier like Voxology via Direct Routing.

Choose a Pricing Model

• Usage-based // pay as you go with calling minutes and phone numbers with no upfront commitment
• Per-seat // pay a fixed monthly fee per Teams Direct Routing user. The price for each user includes a bundle with a unique phone number, E911, and a set amount of prepaid calling minutes
• Allocated Capacity // pay a fixed monthly fee for dedicated phone lines allocated to your business with unlimited usage.

Connect a Session Border Controller

A Session Border Controller (SBC) serves as a point of connection between Microsoft Teams and telephony providers such as Voxology who connect Teams to the PSTN. It receives calls, or sessions, from Microsoft Teams and works with the telephony provider to help manage the network connection and resources.

The SBC assists with call quality by ensuring proper allocation of resources, prioritization of concurrent calls, and can also help with fraud prevention by blocking unwanted calls. Because all call traffic passes through the SBC, it’s also common for it to store call tracking and billing data.

Traditionally, SBCs have been on-prem hardware that require installation by an IT team or managed service provider. However, Voxology offers a virtual SBC that requires no installation or maintenance by our customers.

In either case, once the SBC is connected to Microsoft Teams, calls placed in Teams will pass through the SBC, to the telephony provider and ultimately to the PSTN and called party.

Register an FQDN

The connection between Microsoft Teams and the Voxology SBC is made through a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), which is defined during the creation of a Voxology SIP Trunk. SIP is the standard method for connecting calls placed over the Internet to the PSTN. The FQDN assigned to your SIP Trunk on creation tells Teams how to send calls to Voxology’s SBC and tells the SBC how to redirect that traffic to your new SIP Trunk.

Getting Started

Getting started is easy. To schedule a demo, click the button below and pick a time that works for you.

Free trials are available for a limited time. Schedule a call to see if you qualify.