Benefits
Keep your University extension number
- You can keep your University extension number and migrate it to Teams Telephony.
- You no longer need to use the Jabber soft-client to make and receive phone calls.
Access your number wherever you are – ideal for hybrid and mobile working
As long as you have a device that can run the Teams app and can connect to Office 365, you can access your University extension from wherever you are. You can be sitting in a smart office, at any desk, switch on your laptop and be ready to make and receive calls. You can also use your University extension whilst working from home or whilst travelling abroad for business.
More features than your traditional handset
You will have all the functionality of making and receiving phone calls using a traditional handset but with Teams Telephony you will be also able to:
- See if the person you are calling is available, busy, in a meeting or out of office so you can choose how best to contact them
- Easily integrate your University contacts with your Outlook contacts
- Use the new speed-dial list
- Take advantage of the improved function for searching calls made, received and missed
Voicemail with text transcripts
When a message is left for you, Teams Telephony will automatically provide a text transcript of that message so you can easily see the content without having to dial-in to a system or enter an easily forgettable PIN. Furthermore, it is for you to define what happens when a caller goes through to voicemail - which greeting they will hear and whether or not they can leave messages.
Create your own call answering rules
You will have complete control of your own call answering rules. You will be able to:
- Divide your calls between Teams and your mobile phone if, for example, you are away from your desk and don't want to miss a call.
- Divert all your calls to voicemail or to your call-group if, for example, you are trying to focus and don’t want to be disturbed.
Self-service pick-up groups
Teams Telephony lets you:
- Define your own Call Groups – groups made up of nominated colleagues who can take calls on your behalf should you be unavailable
- Add and remove colleagues easily
- Choose when calls are routed to your Call Group
- Decide in which order your colleagues are alerted
Call Queues
Call Queues in Teams are equivalent to Cisco CallManager's 'hunt groups'. Call Queues can:
- have a recorded welcome message on the front end
- allow calls to be distributed to team members in a number of ways
- re-route unanswered calls to a group voicemail account that all team members can access
Call forwarding
With the call forwarding function being built into the Teams app it is now very easy to manage you own settings to divert your calls to your mobile or any other number in just a few clicks.
Things to be aware of
- Teams Telephony 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 pick-up group need to be on a single system.
- Call 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.
- 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.
Not for emergency (999) calls
- For 999 calls, you should ALWAYS find a landline or use a mobile phone.
- NEVER rely on Teams Telephony (or any other telephony soft client) for emergency calls.
You must not rely on Teams Telephony (or any other telephony soft client) 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.