Telephone handsets for Teams - a summary

If you're looking at moving to Microsoft Teams, or you're currently using Skype for Business Online for telephony but are thinking about the inevitable move to Teams, you may be wondering about what your options for handsets are. The situation is evolving all the time, but I've tried to summarise the current (August 2019) situation here.

Of course, the question as to why anyone needs a handset - rather than using a headset with their PC - to use Teams or Skype for Business is a question in itself, but personal preference does mean that there is some requirement in most organisations. And of course, not everyone in a business uses a computer, so most environments have at least a few non-personal common-area phones (and sometimes more than a few - I've worked on projects with hundreds of common-area phones).

If you need phones for Teams now

Today, your choices are to buy phones from Audiocodes, Yealink or Crestron (the Crestron phones are actually by Yealink). There's a full list on the Microsoft partner web site. Poly are due to release their Teams phones around the end of this year, but they have a trade-up program which would let you buy a VVX phone now and return it for a Teams phone when they ship.


For me though, there's a huge gap in that there isn't a simple, cheap, really basic phone (like the good old Polycom VVX 201). If you only need a handful of phones, that's not a big issue - but if you need hundreds of phones for your business (think production areas, laboratories, kitchens, retail shop-floors), the current Teams phones are overkill and very expensive indeed. In fact, I can see the potential for Teams to be completely out-priced as a phone replacement solution for this reason alone, for some use cases.

All of the Teams phones run exactly the same Android software from Microsoft - this is Microsoft's approach to working in the new cloud-first world, as it means they can ensure that the phone firmware keeps up with the Teams service. There's a useful overview of the phones' features and user interface here.

There are however some limitations and issues with the current software (the biggest and most surprising limitation being that you can't actually have a list of contacts), Matt Landis has summarised these in a recent blog. No doubt a 'Version 2' will be coming soon (my guess is that it will be launched at Ignite).

If you are using Skype for Business now (and moving to Teams in the future)

There is, as they say, good news and bad news. The good news is that existing phones which work with Skype for Business Online  - your Polycom VVX series, for example - will work with Teams - at least, they will until July 31st, 2023. The bad news is that there are various limitations (the most fundamental one being that they can't answer calls from a Call Queue) - you really just get the basic telephone functionality.

If you have any old Lync Phone Edition handsets somehow connected to your Skype on-premises environment (Polycom CX series) these will not work with Teams.

If you're in the situation of needing to buy phones for use on Skype for Business now, but moving to Teams shortly, your options include buying into the Poly trade-up program noted above, alternatively, Yealink/Crestron or AudioCodes have handsets which will run Skype for Business, but which can be upgraded to run the native Teams software.

If you have Polycom Trio conference room phones...

...the good news is that you can now upgrade them to run the native Teams software if you want to run them as an audio-only conferencing phone, there's a great article on that by Jeff Schertz here. The Trio is now certified for Teams by Microsoft using this new firmware, but only in 'Shared mode' (i.e. the mode you'd want to use it for a meeting room), not for 'Personal mode' (where you have a user account signed in). This is because Personal mode uses more CPU, and the processor in the Trio can't quite keep up. So this could be an issue for some Trio's used on an executive's desk.

If however you have your Trios connected to video cameras, this is not a supported configuration for Teams natively, but it will work via the Polycom RealConnect gateway (also explained in Jeff's article).

What's next?

It'll be interesting to see what gets announced at Microsoft Ignite regarding devices - a 'Version 2' software for the Teams phones is one possibility. One thing is for certain though, there will be no more phones certified for Skype for Business by Microsoft, even for on-premises use: the future is Teams!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Microsoft Whiteboard and Teams

Image
If you've tried to use the preview Whiteboard in Teams , you might have been a bit frustrated by its limitations. Currently, you can 'ink' - but that's about it. If your handwriting (with a mouse, anyway....) is as bad as mine, that's not great if you want to put text on your whiteboard. There also doesn't appear to be a way, from Teams, to export your creation. But there is a (relatively) easy workaround to get more functionality, it is actually documented in the Microsoft article Use Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams . Step 1 - install the Windows 10 Microsoft Whiteboard app from the Microsoft Store. Step 2 - Once it's installed, run the Whiteboard app and sign in with your Office 365 credentials, then close Whiteboard. Step 3 - Start your Teams meeting, click on the Share button and share a whiteboard (sometimes that menu item isn't immediately visible - scroll to the far right). Step 4 - Open the Windows 10 Whiteboard app, and you'll ...
Read more

Skype to Teams - which route?

Image
If you're currently using Skype for Business in your organisation, you have almost certainly started to think about how you might start to implement Microsoft Teams, and indeed, eventually, migrate fully to Teams. The question is, what's the best approach? Inevitably, there is no one answer, as every organisation is different. Microsoft's own guidance is here , and continues to evolve as they work with more and more organisations. Having worked with a customer on this topic recently, I've tried to put down some of the pros and cons of each approach. Straight-to-Teams This is my own name for this approach, and it's not covered in the Microsoft guidance, but I've included it for completeness. Pro No messing about with coexistence - users go straight from Skype for Business one day, to using Teams the next. Cons Large change brings the potential for technical risks. Users have to get used to a lot of change all at once. Realistically, you'...
Read more

Microsoft Licensing for Small Businesses

Image
The other week, I was looking into using Teams as a phone system for a potential small business customer - and spotted a major problem. But it's not a technical one, it's a licensing (or commercial) one: if you're licensed with one of the Small Business Plans (for less than 300 users), you cannot add a Phone System licence. To be able to add a Phone System licence, you need to have at least an 'E3' licence, which really surprised me. I spent a little while trying to tabulate the relevant features of a number of different licence plans, and produced this table to help try to compare and understand the options. Some points: I've not listed every single product and feature, just what I thought the ones which would be most relevant to a small business customer. I've translated the 'features' into actual 'products' to make it easier for techies to understand. All pricing is standard, with no discounts applied, as of July 2019 in GBP...
Read more