Teams Phones / Google Voice questions

[paulkerton]

Hi all,

Just a few questions for those of you that have chosen Teams Phones / Google Voice as your telephony systems going forward:

 

1. Can these systems report a centralised number for their outgoing calls? We wouldn't want a parent getting the direct line number for a staff member calling them, for example.

2. How do you handle shared numbers? For example, we have department phones rather than phones per user and would want to keep those.

3. How do schools running GV in particular handle internal calling on handsets? I assume there are no internal extension numbers, so do people have to dial the entire number to call each other?

 

Our telephone contract is a bit of a distance out yet, but with Google announcing that European calls are now included in the Voice License we've got one eye on integrating telephony with our existing services - as long as they do everything we want them to (in particular, reporting the central school number when a staff member makes an external call)

Edited February 14, 2022 by paulkerton

[MartinT]

We're getting our new Mitel system with Teams telephony installed in July so I'm interested in exactly how these issues will work. As we'll be continuing with a mix of traditional handsets and Teams connectivity, our extension numbers will continue as-is, which will re-route when we're working from home.

[p858snake]

MS Teams:

 

1. Caller ID Masking is available from my understanding (It might depend on your local area), or you can hide caller id (either on a per user or wider policies)

2. Call Queues (Response Groups in the old speak - or "hunt groups" in other PABXs) allows multiple people to be able to answer calls to a particular number

Edited February 15, 2022 by p858snake
s/can/call/

[rogerdnixon]

For Google Voice:

 

You can hide you number + calling via one number is on the roadmap.

 

Internal physical handsets we pop peoples numbers into the handsets speed dials so they dont have to put in the full number.

 

Shared phones - use a service account and delegate access to the mailbox for anyone who needs to pick up mail.

[Boredguy]

Hi all,

Just a few questions for those of you that have chosen Teams Phones / Google Voice as your telephony systems going forward:

 

1. Can these systems report a centralised number for their outgoing calls? We wouldn't want a parent getting the direct line number for a staff member calling them, for example.

2. How do you handle shared numbers? For example, we have department phones rather than phones per user and would want to keep those.

3. How do schools running GV in particular handle internal calling on handsets? I assume there are no internal extension numbers, so do people have to dial the entire number to call each other?

 

Our telephone contract is a bit of a distance out yet, but with Google announcing that European calls are now included in the Voice License we've got one eye on integrating telephony with our existing services - as long as they do everything we want them to (in particular, reporting the central school number when a staff member makes an external call)

 

We're looking at going down the Teams route and from what I've read up, and you can have "common area phones" as they are just assigned as a device in Teams and seem to effectively be a user account that you licence. You can then pick that "user" same as calling anyone else.

 

As for the outgoing call number, that can be configured in the Caller ID properties (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/caller-id-policies)