“With Teams and mycloudcalling, we’re 100 percent in the cloud for all collaboration and communication. We’re in an industry where phones don’t stop ringing, even in the lockdown, and with our now-distributed workforce, the telephony just works. In short, exeed is at home, but exeed is still at work,”
– Simon Tabrum, exeed Cloud Business Manager
Understanding Calling in Microsoft Teams
In this training, we introduce calling capabilities in Teams, which are powered by the Phone System feature in Office 365. We’ll explain the technical planning that’s required to implement Phone System, how to configure it, and how to monitor usage and call quality in your implementation.
Microsoft 365 Business Voice Flyers
Customise the flyers with your business branding. Send to your customers as an introduction to Microsoft 365 Business Voice.
mycloudcalling together with Kordia allows you to take advantage of Microsoft’s Modern Workplace to enable your workforce to work remotely.
Using Microsoft Teams Phone System or M365 Business Voice bundled with Kordia’s direct routing allows you to have PBX capabilities with simple call management & audio conferencing features all in one simple license billed monthly via exeed.
mycloudcalling - fast facts
mycloudcalling - Day in the life of SMB Sales Scenario
mycloudcalling - Licensing and Price list
mycloudcalling - reseller setup guide
mycloudcalling - SIP for Teams Technical Guide
mycloudcalling - Jabra Headsets
mycloudcalling – Bringing Voice to Teams
Looking at rolling out Microsoft Teams across your business? Already rolled it out for chat and document collaboration and wondering if it’s the right solution for your telephony and/or AV meeting requirements too?
Right now, and particularly in New Zealand, it can be quite confusing as to exactly what Teams can or can’t do, what you need to buy, and from whom.
The good news is Microsoft Teams for New Zealand-based customers can do pretty much everything if you use a Direct Routing provider or SIP for Teams calling provider (like mycloudconnect) and you have the right licences in place.
What can you get from a mycloudcalling solution?
- DDIs and external calling for your staff: You don’t need “Calling Plans” or “Communication Credits” from Microsoft for this, we’re your telco, but each user does need a “Phone System” license from Microsoft for a flat monthly fee if they don’t have one already. We’ll provide the DDIs, port over your existing numbers if required, and sort you out with monthly bills and all that usual phone system stuff.
- DDIs for your Teams Auto Attendants and/or Call Queues: If you need a simple IVR (think “thanks for calling Acme Corp, press 1 for sales, 2 for support…”) then Teams has you covered, and you can use a Kordia supplied DDI for it. Typically, you’ll then feed one or more of the IVR options into a call queue so no new DDI required, but you can also assign a Kordia provided DDI directly to a call queue if you wish.
What do you need to get directly from Microsoft?
Audio Conferencing Dial-In numbers. Out of the box your staff can run Teams meetings with each other using any Teams client (including for mobile), and indeed any external party can join one of your Teams meeting with even just a plain old web browser. But if you wish to allow staff to create meetings with DDI dial-in numbers so someone can join a meeting (voice only) using a DDI, you’ll need the meeting organiser to have the “Audio Conferencing Dial-In” licence, and then Microsoft will add their own dial in number to that user’s meeting invites. Given how easy it is to join a Teams meeting we would recommend you consider who of your staff would really need this.
What infrastructure do I need?
None, apart from end user devices and some fancy meeting room equipment if you want to take user experience to a new level. Teams will support any Skype certified equipment, and of course there are a range of optimised for Teams devices on the market already.
Microsoft supplies the Teams tenancy, we provide the SIP trunks and our cloud- based SIP Gateways – it’s that simple.
But I’ve got an on-premise solution that feels more “solid” somehow
If it can beat the availability of Microsoft’s 365 cloud and redundant SIP gateways from Kordia in different datacentres then that’s fantastic, most ageing on-premise solutions are a single failed power supply away from disaster though.
So, there you have it. Teams is a great solution for businesses who want to embrace the vision of Microsoft’s Modern Workplace or Unified Communication. If you’re still unsure, talk to the experts – they’re there to help and with many Teams deployments under their belt, chances are they’ve got the answer to your question.
mycloudcalling - is ExpressRoute the 'Best Route'?
If you’re using the Microsoft suite of services, you probably have a good grasp of why direct connections to the Microsoft cloud are beneficial. However, as our team dived into conversations with customers looking to use ExpressRoute, we noticed there’s some misunderstanding around its suitability for accessing Office 365 and Teams.
ExpressRoute lets you extend your on-premises networks into the Microsoft cloud over a private connection. This is facilitated by Kordia, an ExpressRoute Partner with connections in both New Zealand and Australia.
The thing to remember about ExpressRoute is that the connections don’t go over the public internet – these are private connections between Microsoft datacentres and the infrastructure on your premises or in a co-location facility. This means ExpressRoute connections offer more reliability, faster speeds, consistent latencies, and higher security than typical connections over the internet.
When we consider that Office 365 and Teams were developed to be accessed securely and reliably via the internet, we can understand why ExpressRoute isn’t recommended (except for special circumstances). The impact of forcing peer-to-peer and internet traffic down specific routes can have an unpredictable impact on latency, particularly when Microsoft services can be in different global locations.
These subtleties have tripped up a few customers. From my perspective it’s one of the reasons Microsoft launched the Microsoft Azure Peering Service (MAPS), of which Kordia was one of the first global launch partners.
MAPS is a networking service that enhances customer connectivity to Microsoft cloud services accessible via the public internet such as Office 365, Dynamics 365, or Azure. MAPS is engineered specifically to provide the most direct and best performing internet path, optimised for high reliability and minimal latency from Microsoft cloud services to the end-user location. This is why it’s the best choice for Office 365 and Teams traffic.
With the combination of ExpressRoute, MAPS and the standard Microsoft peering offered with Kordia provided internet, all your Microsoft applications are on-net with Kordia. If you are using any services from Azure or any SaaS based application running on Azure to Office 365, Dynamics or Teams, Kordia can ensure you’re best-connected all the way into and across Microsoft cloud.