MS Teams Voice - anyone using it?

[Ditto]

I think I could have placed this in one of three forum categories, but let's plump for this one!

 

Does anyone have any experience of implementing MS Teams Voice? I'm looking for guidance on the sort of questions to ask and look out for gotchas.

 

My governance school, driven by the parent trust, has recently tried to implement Teams Voice, and it appears to be a bit of a mess. Some bits seemed to have been done OK, but calls between schools have had significant delay making conversations the equivalent to talking to someone on the moon. Incoming calls at times appear to go to an automated American accented stranger! I believe they are sorting the issues out, but the process appears to have exposed the recently installed Gigabit solution is a shared line in spite of expectations to the contrary! The trust pays a third party support team a significant sum so the implementation should have had the right expertise in place. However it appears finger pointing is being directed at the internal IT technician! When I probe deeper, the ranks tend to close and the 'operational' card gets pulled. When I did a 'strategic' holding to account and asked for a cost analysis and return time on investment, there really wasn't a good answer. At one point, the line "the IT provider said this was latest way to go and we want to be on the latest technology" - Arrgggghhhh - Shiny, shiny!!!

 

Anyway, I have just learnt my charity employer is now looking to implement Teams voice so I want to give any advice and pointers based on others experience. Again, we have a third party support company, but the real challenge is finding a way to see if the self-proclaimed 'experts' are indeed that. Of course, we should start with 'What are we trying to achieve here'. I don't have full details, but I do know they want to enable the reception desk to be able to manage calls remotely rather than going in to the office. I know they want some automation to give a 24x7 call management experience. Anything that helps reduce expenditure (particularly to out-going calls) will be a winner.

 

In anticipation of the suggestion to look at FreePBX, I suspect it will be a non-starter due to lack of knowledge within organisation and the leadership team would need a lot of convincing to consider that route. Their view would be that we pay for M365 and extending to include 'Voice' is a logical extension to that and would come with support from our already paid IT provider. Personally, I'm more open minded, but to consider any Open Source route, I'd need a water tight case to present, fully detailed instructions on how to set it up, with costs and a convincing reply to 'How is this supported in the long run without in-house expertise'.

[FishCustard]

Not used it, but heard much the same as you - namely that it doesn't appear production-ready at the moment. Sounds like the school are trying to defend their investment decision rather than solve the actual problem!