How to deploy Microsoft Phone system for Microsoft Teams step by step tutorial

[tech_london]

Hey folks, just sharing my tutorial about how to deploy Microsoft Phone system in teams, step by step as Microsoft Business voice is now available in the US and can be a very cost-effective way to spin up a phone system quickly for yourself or your customers

[RobFuller]

Struggling to find any reseller to give me a price on the license other than a uni indicating they pay around £2 a seat.

[Tefters]

Struggling to find any reseller to give me a price on the license other than a uni indicating they pay around £2 a seat.

I'm interested in this too.

What licensing are you trying to get a price on? The A3 license or Business Voice but under an Edu O365 plan?

[bjeffery]

If your already using free faculty licencing you need to buy direct on office 365 via credit card or PO

 

Microsoft 365 Phone System for faculty - £2.25 per user per month

Microsoft 365 Domestic Calling Plan - from £5 120 minutes to £9 for 1200 minutes of calls per user per month

 

Other options is to direct route to PSTN or SIP Trunks for call plan.

[OfficeVision_Matthew]

Struggling to find any reseller to give me a price on the license other than a uni indicating they pay around £2 a seat.

 

Hi Rob,

 

If you want, drop me a DM with what licencing you are looking for and I can see if we are able to help.

[CAWJames]

£2.25 a user per month to add the phone system add-on, you can also add A5, which includes in and other bits and pieces but that's nearer a tenner per user per month.

 

You can then add the domestic calling plan and be done and sorted, but you are looking at just over £5 per user per month for the 120 minute plan

 

You can then do Direct routing, which involves sip trunks and a certified SBC, either virtual or physical, this can either connect to a normal Sip trunk or any SIP PBX, the TE Systems anyNode virtual SBC, either virtual or Azure comes in at I believe at $990 for 10 sessions or $2750 for 30 sessions, and they do bigger versions too. Ongoing support is 20% of initial per year, first year included.

 

By no means is it a cheap undertaking, but if you are paying circa £15 for a commercial cloud phone system per user per month, it can be a cost saving, with just the SBC hit at the beginning.

 

hope that helps anyone

 

Thanks

 

James

[CAWJames]

Also, just a couple of caveats, for the SBC and your certificate for the bind, needs to be from a certified MS public cert provider, don't think LetsEncrypt is on the list unfortunately, the list is in the docs. Also, if you don't licence everyone, you basically get a 2 tier system, as people getting a phone call can only involve/transfer to other people with the phone system license, so you can't, for instance, only licence your admin team, and then think they can just transfer to someone without it, that's a no no

[forkies]

£2.25 per user per month, most secondary schools have over 100 staff so £225 per month, £2700 per year for a phone system? As it seems you have to pay for a whole year either monthly or annually.

 

I have recently been looking at phone systems to replace our NEC and based on quotes to upgrade that and licenses it was £9k without any new handsets.

 

Lots of people suggesting 3CX and that works out dirty cheap, plus all new handsets for half the price of licensing replacement on the NEC.

 

I like MS but wouldn’t pay that much for a phone system.

[Tefters]

We have Skype for business on-prem at the moment with a Sip trunk and 8 sessions.

 

Skype for business licensing per year, if done properly with server Cal, user Cal and then enterprise voice Cal was for the last 3 years £800 all in.

Now bear in mind we a are about to take the full on business price increase then I envisage that to be around £1159/1200.

 

Now we have 60 enterprise voice users (admin people, departments have phones in offices, reception and 2 common areas) so 2.25 X 60 X 12 comes in at £1620.

Yes a little more expensive but not exactly a deal breaker to have it all off site. Granted it would mean some jiggery pokery as phones are allocated to fake named departmental users not individual users but still...

 

The killer is the call costings. So £5 for 250 minutes being smallest and the minutes all pool at the tenant side. I presume these minutes are outgoing and not incoming as well and not sure on phone number restrictions.

5 X 60 X 12 comes in at £3,600 a year whereas our Sip trunk is coming in at £840 per year after calls and rental + a £500 one off setup fee.

 

So the killer is the call plans and that cost for using your own Sip line is extortionate too.

 

Now if hosting an anynode VM in Azure is only £999 a year or less then that's looking better as we could just point our Sip provider at that and away we go. I have been wanting to implement a new SBC due to having our trunk direct to our Front end S4B and can be problematic at times for troubleshooting.

 

So I'm potentially looking at £1400 per year increase if I was to move to Teams over using Skype 4 Business on-prem however that does mean full off-site with fewer concerns on-prem.

 

They are close... Just need to sort out those call plans.

Edited April 18, 2020 by Tefters

[RobFuller]

@Tefters is that anyNode costing just hosting or the software licence as well?

 

If Im looking at 200 users this is adding up very fast lol, had a recent quote from a Teams Direct Routing partner, £1k per month (inc calls) before phone system licence.

[Tefters]

I just googled up AnyNode in Azure abd did a rough finger in the air job along with costing someone mentioned above.

[tech_london]

I've been trying to find a way to develop an open source SBC as so far with all paid options it only makes sense in some specific cases. I've been trying to get some info from Microsoft about releasing cheaper calling plans for non-for-profit but so far it seems it will never happen

[CAWJames]

You can use other SBC's than the list, but they are unsupported, for instance asterisk can be used. there are some guides on the net to do this, which I have tried, but I couldn't get it to register. Cert issues I think, having to have the perfect supported cert!

[tech_london]

I saw that guide last year but also didn't manage to make it work in the end, I was hoping by now some people would have teamed up to work on something.

[DrCheese]

3CX apparently tried to get MS to let them integrate into teams, but Microsoft didn't really go anywhere with it, which is annoying

[Driftingashore]

I spoke to a Microsoft rep about this a while back and didn't really get many answers, but he suggested that everyone with a phone system license also needs a calling plan.. is that true? If so it's stupid, because the best value calling plans are large bundles of minutes but can only be applied to one user. Yes, the minutes pool for all users, but if I buy three big bundles, I can only apply those plans to three users.. so I have to buy small calling plans (terrible value) for everyone just to let them use the minutes from the good value plans..

[CAWJames]

I have used phone system without a calling plan, ok in a testing scenario with a trial of A5 and a trial of AnyNode, but I could make calls using AN as a bridging point between Teams and our internal SIP telephone system(asterisk based PBXact). I was not at any point scuppered by needing a plan as well, terrible value as they are.

[IT_JB]

I spoke to a Microsoft rep about this a while back and didn't really get many answers, but he suggested that everyone with a phone system license also needs a calling plan.. is that true? If so it's stupid, because the best value calling plans are large bundles of minutes but can only be applied to one user. Yes, the minutes pool for all users, but if I buy three big bundles, I can only apply those plans to three users.. so I have to buy small calling plans (terrible value) for everyone just to let them use the minutes from the good value plans..

 

From my understanding each call plan only pools with identical call plans, so your three big bundles won't pool with your 120min plans.

Edited April 21, 2020 by IT_JB

[RobFuller]

Do you have to purchase licences for your command area phones inaddtion to users licences?

[CAWJames]

Do you mean common area phones? I believe there is a standalone licence for them. They do a common area and a meeting room licence, one being basic, one having all the other bells and whistles needed for meetings

[tech_london]

I never used 3CX, but I was always told to stay away from many people that dealt with established brands all the way to asterix and freepbx. Not sure if their reputation affected this decision.

 

I've asked Zoho to integrate their CRM to pick up calls from Teams, but they said Microsoft would need to contact them to get it sorted. Well I guess that will never happen...

[tech_london]

I spoke to a Microsoft rep about this a while back and didn't really get many answers, but he suggested that everyone with a phone system license also needs a calling plan.. is that true? If so it's stupid, because the best value calling plans are large bundles of minutes but can only be applied to one user. Yes, the minutes pool for all users, but if I buy three big bundles, I can only apply those plans to three users.. so I have to buy small calling plans (terrible value) for everyone just to let them use the minutes from the good value plans..

Each user needs a calling plan or you need to use direct route where you still need to source an SBC and connect the SIP trunk there. It just makes sense if you go over 30ish users.

Plans only pool with same plans, so it doesn;t help to buy a few 1200 minutes plans and lots of 120 min, they will not pool different plans

[tech_london]

Do you have to purchase licences for your command area phones inaddtion to users licences?

yes you do need a license, £6 per phone. I could not find it on the pricelist for non-for-profit, so my guess is that there is no discount.

[RobFuller]

yes you do need a license, £6 per phone. I could not find it on the pricelist for non-for-profit, so my guess is that there is no discount.

 

Is that meeting room (full) or common phone (basic)?