Microsoft Teams can replace your traditional University telephone desk phone service if your institution is part of the University Microsoft tenancy.
What are the benefits?
- You can keep your University extension number and migrate it to Teams.
- You no longer need to use the Jabber soft-client to make and receive phone calls.
What are the limitations?
- Teams can't support multiple lines.
- Hunt and pickup groups cannot include a combination of users on the University's traditional Cisco-based desk phone service (known as 'CallManager') and the Teams phone service. All members of a hunt or pickup group need to be on a single system.
- Hunt groups on Teams only support a single level of agent (CallManager supports 3).
- Your phone number cannot be on both a CallManager handset and in Teams.
- You cannot make international or premium-rate calls, although you can receive international calls.
- We currently can't offer delegated administration of phone services on Teams to local institutions' phone representatives or IT staff. This is on the roadmap for the Blue Toolkit.
- You must not rely on Teams phone service for emergency or '999' calls. The geolocation associated with your University phone number may not match your physical location, which could delay the emergency services' response to your call. For 999 calls, you should always seek out a landline or a use a mobile phone.
How much does it cost?
Your institution will be charged the same £5 per month line rental fee for your number via the insitutional telecoms bill from UIS. Calls to UK landlines and mobiles are free.
Audio conferencing
If you have a Teams Telephony licence, any Teams meetings you create will have the ability for participants to join via PSTN phone calls. We do not support toll-free dial-in numbers.
How do I access it?
You can migrate your phone number to Teams if you have an extension number on the University's Cisco telephone system and your institution is part of the University's Microsoft tenancy (which includes most departments and some colleges).
To request migration of your phone number to Teams, contact your TLO (Telecoms Liaison Officer) to authorise the change. They can then contact the UIS Telecoms team, providing the CRSid and extension number of the people to move. For a group of people, please provide a spreadsheet with the CRSid and extension number details for each person.
The transfer typically takes a day. We'll let you know if we think it will take longer.
Physical handsets
Teams does support hardware handsets and we'll be announcing the supported solution for users needing physical phones in the near future.
If you switch to Teams Telephony, please send your old Cisco desk phone handset to UIS so we can recycle it after the transfer. You will not be able to use it with Teams.
How do I get help and training?
Further help and learning articles on using Teams for phone calls are available from Microsoft Teams Help and Learning Center.