Microsoft Teams

Video Featured Karl Kocar

Managing Direct Routing Voice Quality for Microsoft Teams

For customers that need to manage their own on-net voice quality for Microsoft Teams, Direct Routing offers an option for Local Media Optimisation (LMO). The overarching principle is that by determining an end user’s location, when on the corporate network, the system will allow the voice path to be negotiated between the Teams client and the internal IP address of one of the customer’s (certified) SBCs. Hence, keeping the media within the customer’s domain, which allows QoS to be applied and honoured for PSTN calls.

Users who are roaming outside of the Enterprise network will establish a voice path with the public IP address of one of the corporate SBCs. Or via a Transport Relay Point if the customer’s security policy blocks direct inbound access to the SBCs.

Behind the scenes the Microsoft Teams platform uses a predefined virtual topology and “trusted IP addresses” to identify on a call by call basis whether the end user is either inside or outside of the corporate network. Depending on the location SIP X-MS headers will be used to tell the SBC where the Teams client is located.

This is an advanced configuration so I created the video demonstration below to help me explain the basic concepts. If this is a new area for you. I hope it helps!

For additional information, please check out the Microsoft documentation. After taking some time to review my video it should make for easier reading.

Video Featured Karl Kocar

So what is the Microsoft Teams Meeting Lifecycle?

When the virtual Meeting Lifecycle concept was originally introduced it took me a while to get my head around how this would play out in real life. After going through my own personal learning curve a couple of years ago I’ve become a big fan.

Moving forward to 2020 I think it’s a perfect time to revisit this topic to ensure anyone using Microsoft Teams is taking full advantage of the “pre” and “post” meeting phases of the Lifecycle. Given the current state of the world a high proportion of meetings are now taking place online and I don’t think anyone wants to waste time during a call to handle tasks that could be dealt with offline and asynchronously.

One of the mantras I have is to try and keep remote meetings as short as possible and attempt to limit them to important interactions and decision making. If possible I try not to book back to back meetings. I expect most of us have experienced the machine gun meeting phenomenon and the subsequent stress of arriving late (and under prepared) for the next meeting. As a result I normally schedule 30-45 minute calls, which gives me some time to actually do some “in between” work and be punctual.

However, this is where the before and after sections of the Microsoft Teams Lifecycle come into their own. To be able to keep my meetings as short as possible, when appropriate, I will do some initial collaborative preparation and post real-time wrap up.

Once you get use to this way of working it’s really productive but new users may need help with the “Art of the Possible”. So I decided to create some videos that I use to demo the Lifecycle. In case it helps, I’ve shared one of them below:

Video Featured Karl Kocar

Top Tip – Teams Live Events External Production

If you know about virtual meeting tools then you have probably come across or used Live Events, which is the meeting broadcast solution that’s part of Microsoft Teams. It’s not entirely unexpected but I’ve seen a rapid rise in the use of Live Events over the last 6 months and I am actively working with Microsoft Partners to increase market capacity for this type of meeting in the UK.

When reading up on Live Events you may have come across external encoding? This is the ability to use 3rd party equipment to deliver studio quality production via the Teams Live Events client. I felt the documentation was a bit dry so I created the following demonstration video to provide a quick intro into this topic in under 4 minutes.

Hint – the encoder password shown in the video is a dummy one

As you can see it’s actually not too hard to get started with the technology. However, I believe they key to delivering a professional looking event is actually creativity, preparation and practice, regardless of the encoding/production method you are using.

Just to finish off, here are a few tips and tricks that might be useful:

Video Featured Karl Kocar

New AI for Good in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft is a leader in AI, which has definitely benefited Teams from an Accessibility standpoint. If you are familiar with Microsoft Teams you are probably already aware of the native in-meeting captions, translation and recording transcription services?

I recently created this video for some of my partner engagements so I could quickly and easily demonstrate some of the existing end user experiences.

The good news is that some additional AI driven Accessibility enhancements are in the pipeline. The two that I can talk about publicly are:

  1. Live Captions with speaker attribution. Teams already provides live captions as a way to follow along with what is being said in the meeting, we’re also adding speaker attribution so captions will specify who is speaking.
  2. Live Transcription with speaker attribution. Live transcripts provide another way to follow along with what has been said and who said it. After a meeting, the transcript file is automatically saved in the chat tab for that meeting.

If you are reading this post before these new features reach General Availability you can check their release status here.

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.