Author: Karl Kocar

Video Featured Karl Kocar

Microsoft Business Voice (3 of 3): Auto Attendants and Call Queues

The first and second articles in this series covered the configuration of basic telephony and voice polices for end users. This post provides some guidance on how to get started with Microsoft Teams Auto Attendants (AA) and Call Queues (CQ).

I expect if you’ve taken the trouble to navigate to this page you probably understand the basic concepts but if you are new to the topic you can find the Microsoft documentation by clicking on AA and CQ.

In the video demonstration below I take you through an Auto Attendant configuration that showcases most of the features available at the time of creation. I then configure a couple of call queues, which can be dialed directly or accessed via the AA’s IVR menu.

Note: The Microsoft Teams stack evolves rapidly and new features are added all the time. I believe this video is a great starting point to get a fundamental understanding of how to set up these organisational or department level voice services. Just be sure to still check out the documentation so you are aware of any updates Microsoft Engineering may have introduced. Change is a universal constant!

Video Featured Karl Kocar

Microsoft Business Voice (2 of 3): End User Voice Polices

In the first article of this three part series I went though the basic configuration needed to enable end users with a Microsoft Calling Plan.

In this second video I run through some of the policy settings that can be used to customise the end user experience. I also show how to administer Reporting Labels, which allows the admin to build a logical mapping of the company’s sites to IP subnets in the cloud. This is really handy for troubleshooting and enhances the information presented within the Microsoft Teams Call Analytics tool.

Microsoft Teams policies can be applied at the organisational level via the default Global Policy or at an end user level using Custom Policies. Teams also support an Admin concept know as Policy Packages, which allows you to apply a suite (or a package) of polices to specific users. The idea is to reduce admin overhead. More recently Teams has introduce the ability to apply policies to Groups, which provides yet another administrative approach to deploying policies. Is this a topic worth creating a specific post about? Anyway, my advice is to adopt the KISS approach whenever possible.

In part 3 of this series I’ll cover an example configuration for a Tenant Auto Attendant / IVR and a couple of Call Queues (often referred to as Hunt Groups).

Video Karl Kocar

Microsoft Business Voice (1 of 3): Configuring Subscribers

To support the release of Business Voice for Microsoft Teams in the UK I created this video to help new partners and customers get their heads around how to do a basic subscriber configuration. In this example, the tenant is licensed with Calling Plan to provide PSTN services. Also note that Business Voice is also fully compatible with Direct Routing.

A short 6-minute video showing how to get users set up to use Teams Business Voice

It is also worth stating that even though I am using Business Voice licensing in the above demo video, the basic configurations steps shown are the same when Enterprise Licensing is used. From an admin perspective, underneath the covers you will always be working with Phone System and the Teams Admin Portal regardless of the licensing model deployed.

In part 2 of this series I’ll cover some of the voice policies associated with a end user configuration.

Video Karl Kocar

Using PowerPoint Presenter Mode in a Teams Meeting

This is a handy little tip to make your virtual work life that little bit easier. If you’ve not seen this before you can switch on PowerPoint presenter mode and use it from within a Microsoft Teams meeting. This gives you handy access to your notes and other presentation tools, while still presenting in “full screen” mode to your remote attendees. Check out this short video below for more details: