Microsoft announces new Teams Calling features

Teams Calling is on the rise with businesses making over 650 million calls during October. In order to enhance the calling experience for businesses and their employees, Microsoft have announced new features.

A richer calling experience

With features such as call integration and various modes of communication, you can expect to see increased productivity. Several other features have also been introduced for a more powerful and streamlined calling experience. These include:

Streamlined calling experience

The enhanced Calls app allows for the most essential calling elements (dial pad, call history, voicemail, contacts and settings) to be in a single location, making it easier for employees to stay connected.

Save call recordings in OneDrive and SharePoint

Forgotten or missed to take any notes in your meetings? Call recordings is a great new addition, allowing you to keep track of your conversations. Team admins are now able to make either OneDrive or SharePoint the default location for recording storage. This new feature provides capabilities such as sharing with external guests, access to transcripts, as well as greater storage capacity.

Spam identification

Unfamiliar phone numbers are often the cause of disturbance and likely to make people adverse to answering calls. To reassure employees, Teams will now identify potential spam calls through the use of advanced industry techniques.

Transfer calls between your mobile and desktop

Starting in early 2021, you will be able to shift your calls between your mobile and desktop endpoints with an easy-to-use interface on the Teams app.

Call merging

Call merge is now available for both PSTN calls and VoIP calls. This will allow you to bring together multiple one-to-one calls and combine conversations.

Low-data mode

To assist poor connection, low-data mode will allow users to adjust their settings in Teams to limit the amount of data used during video calls. It will also allow settings to be changed based on network availability, such as mobile data or WIFI.

Provide advanced calling needs for your business

Whether businesses need to keep mission-critical operations running or resolve key customer issues, the new capabilities with Teams will support a comprehensive range of needs.

Voice enabled channels

The new collaborative calling capability will allow teams to integrate call queues into specific channels. For example, HR or IT help desks can be managed from a channel. This enables available team members to answer the call. The new feature will be released for use in early 2021 where Teams users will be able to create new, voice-enabled channels.

Contact centre solutions

The new contact centre solutions can use presence and user API’s to seamlessly integrate with Teams, allowing agents to find the right colleagues for assistance. Contact centre providers can now apply for Microsoft certification of their solutions to manage important customer interactions.

Resilient calling

In the event of an outage, the new Survival Branch Application lets users place and receive PSTN calls. This will be available this month to certified Session Border Controllers (SBC) vendors, allowing SBC’s to link with Teams Client if a client cannot reach the Microsoft Calling network.

Stay connected with high-quality devices

Teams has provided businesses with the options of integrated softphone experience for mobile and desktop, along with a line-up of hardware options. These range from low-cost phones, to traditional desk and video phones, to Teams displays. The new range has options to align with every user and calling need.

Team displays

The new feature works well whether you’re working remotely or in the office. The experience is available on the Lenovo Thinksmart view. Teams displays integrates with Cortana for hands-free productivity and uses AL to stay organised and productive.

Low-cost phones

To enhance the Teams calling experience for users, low-cost phones will be available to integrate with the Teams phone app. This will be available in early 2021.

Device as a service

With device as a service, businesses can enjoy an affordable experience with flexible monthly payments to get users the devices they need. Currently, this is available in the U.S, however this will be available for additional regions in 2021.

If you’re looking to get started on your Microsoft Teams journey, or simply just looking for more information, please get in touch today.