Getting more from your Microsoft Teams

75 million!

That’s how many daily active users Microsoft Teams has. Safe to say it is fast becoming one of the most popular collaboration tools in the world.

If you are fortunate enough to use this sophisticated tool we know of a way you can get more out of it on a daily basis.

As advanced as Microsoft Teams is, unfortunately not every package comes with the ability to make phone calls.

The solution is called Direct Routing and it involves making phone calls (internal and external) within the Microsoft Teams interface.

How this could help you

If you incorporate direct routing, the potential benefits of an enhanced Microsoft Teams could provide you with a simplified, centralised communication system with great flexibility. 

You could have the ability to call any contact, internal or external, from any Teams app. 

You could be messaging colleagues from your mobile and calling leads from your desktop. 

All your communication in the one spot across multiple devices.

The solution provider is us, CityNumbers. We utilised our international telephony expertise and have figured out a way for you to integrate your phone calls into your Microsoft Teams.

Now we aren’t the only provider of such a solution. Microsoft also offer a similar solution and in order to help you understand your options we’ve done a quick comparison of the two.

Microsoft 365 Business Voice

To start with the creator of ‘Teams’, the Microsoft solution is called ‘Microsoft 365 Business Voice’ (a simple way to check if you already have this package is the appearance of a dial pad in the bottom left corner of your Microsoft Teams ‘Calls’ section or the presence/absence of a phone symbol next to external phone numbers).

Price – It has a flat price of $20/user.

Features – Microsoft offers features such as call transfer, voicemail and custom contact groups. You can view a more comprehensive list of the features here.

Availability – As of writing, ‘Microsoft 365 Business Voice’ is only available to businesses in the United Kingdom, Canada and United States. With domestic calling plans only available in Canada and the United States.

If you are interested in learning more about ‘Microsoft 365 Business Voice’ in general you can find more information by following this link.

CityNumbers

Then for comparison, the CityNumbers offering is called ‘Microsoft Teams Connect’.

Price – Microsoft Teams Connect offers up to 50% savings on Microsoft’s price and the option for you to tailor your plan to your specific needs.

Features – Microsoft Teams Connect offers features such as international number porting (ensuring you keep your existing phone numbers), call recording (ensuring that you never miss a detail), and business continuity (ensuring that your company does not lose any valuable momentum) to name a few. You can view a larger comparison of the features between the two products here.

Availability – Microsoft Teams Connect offers bespoke international calling plans to its customers.

You can find out more about the CityNumbers’ Microsoft Teams integration here.

Something to consider

In conclusion Microsoft Teams is a fantastic collaboration tool. One of the best but unfortunately it can be very expensive to call from. Therefore we wanted to bring to your attention this potential optimisation and saving. If you use Microsoft Teams it could be worth considering Microsoft Teams Connect. You can find out more about our offering here.