In today’s digital world, business owners and IT departments must ensure seamless and secure voice communication, enabling the workforce to continue working uninterrupted. With power outages and load shedding causing havoc to businesses, as well as increased remote working, cloud-based collaborative voice solutions like Microsoft Teams Calling are saving the day.
The past decade has seen unprecedented technological advancements which have fundamentally changed the world, from Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, Blockchain, Augmented Reality, Quantum Computing and Natural Language Processing to name a few.
Advancements in voice technology such as AI-chatbots, voice assistants like Cortana, real-time language translation, Unified Communications as a Service platforms and many more innovations, ushered in a new era of work and collaboration.
In 2017 Microsoft launched their vision of a new collaborative workplace when it introduced Microsoft Teams, providing comprehensive calling and meeting capabilities, merged with other apps that employees use every day.
The Microsoft collaboration solution has emerged as a leading player – Microsoft Teams gained 13 million daily active users within the first three years. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the app gained further notoriety as it gained 31 million new users in just two months, giving Zoom a run for their money.
What is Microsoft 365 Business Voice Calling?
Microsoft Teams Calling for business integrates with Microsoft 365 to combine telephone calls, meetings, and messaging in one central location.
Microsoft Teams is a hosted platform which allows a company’s employees to make and receive calls quickly from a smartphone, tablet or computer connected via a headset – regardless of whether there is power or not (as long as the device is charged). This standard setup however does not allow you to make telephone calls to landlines and cellphones.
By adding Microsoft 365 Business Voice Calling companies get full dialling capabilities including call hold/resume, call history, transfer, forwarding, speed dialling, Caller ID-masking, multi-call handling, extension dialling, voice mail as well as simultaneous ringing and text telephone support.
A company is able to move over from an existing, often outdated PBX system, to Microsoft Teams and still get all the functionality, features and security that is needed from a telephony system.
They also receive enterprise meeting capabilities with join and lobby, presenter controls, app and Powerpoint sharing, dial-in audio conferencing, call recording and transcription.
There is a variety of calling plans for any number of users within a company which makes the solution suitable for any size environment, plus there’s an opportunity to port existing telephone numbers.
Each user gets a primary phone number and is able to make and receive calls from multiple devices.
To round these features off, with Microsoft Teams Calling users can also access AI technology to transcribe voicemail and to translate chat messages.
Microsoft is constantly releasing new and upcoming features for Microsoft Teams such as the recently announced Call Merging and Breakout Rooms.
7 Benefits of Microsoft Teams Calling
- Simplified setup and management of all communications within a single environment through one console, and one billing provider.
- Microsoft Teams can be accessed from anywhere, anytime on any device, all the user needs is an internet connection. As it is supported on Windows, Mac, as well as iOS and Android, there are literally no barriers to access.
- Because Microsoft Teams Business Calling is cloud-hosted, companies need not worry about redundancy and high availability – Microsoft’s cloud comes with load balancing and a guarantee of 99.9% uptime.
- Microsoft Teams is integrated into Microsoft 365 which means that the entire Office suite can be accessed. Chat and calling are unified, and teams can dial into meetings instantly.
- Up to 300 users can make high-quality voice calls at any time, to both internal and external numbers.
- There is no need to purchase handsets as one simply uses the headset or audio speakers on a desktop, laptop or mobile. Customers with SIP phones can expect handset support early next year if they do wish to retain their existing phones.
- The telephony capabilities in Office 365 means that a business can easily digitize their PBX completely in the cloud without investing in complicated and expensive equipment.
Security & Microsoft Teams Business Calling
With the increasing number of employees working remotely it is crucial for companies to ensure their employee’s PC’s and devices are protected.
With the rise of cyber-attacks, a cloud voice solution can guard against threats to the phone service such as hackers getting inside the system to make calls at the company’s expense; stealing company data; or doing malicious damage.
Microsoft Teams was created on the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 platform following all the best practices and procedures of the Microsoft security framework.
The superior security and compliance capabilities of the enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure, including multi-factor authentication, secure guest access, single sign-on through Active Directory, encryption of data in transit and at rest, makes Microsoft Teams secure.
All plans come with a variety of threat protection features to protect against malware, malicious URLs and files, fishing and spam.
Advanced Threat Protection is included with Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5 which uses intelligent systems, machine learning and advanced impersonation detection algorithms to safeguard against threats posed by collaboration tools, emails, links and phasing attacks.
No solution is ever 100% secure, however with the right IT security and risk reduction strategies, and an implementation partner with a strong track record, companies can make these solutions work in their favour.
By selecting the right technology solutions provider for Microsoft Teams, that is able to ensure a secure implementation and bolster the defences of a company’s physical and network security infrastructure, the risk of being a target is significantly lowered.
ENHALO, as a global next-generation technology solutions provider, is able to use their expertise and business focus to implement Microsoft Teams Calling for organisations anywhere in the world through its team of highly certified and experienced employees.
For a tailored Microsoft Teams voice calling plan, connect with us today.
