Forum Discussion
Common Area Phones
Alejandro - To be clear, when you say 'this SKU', do you mean a license specifically for common area phones? If so, that's great news!
We have many phones not dedicated to a specific user, but to a position or department, and may people use those. It seemed silly that to accomplish this with MS Phone System I would have to give each phone an E5+PSTN calling license*, when the ONLY thing it needs is the ability to make and receive phone calls. (And, most of those don't even need to receive external calls, but should at least be capable of dialing out)
*Or (E1 or Skype4b plan 2)+CloudPBX+PSTN Calling
Steve Whitcher wrote:
Alejandro - To be clear, when you say 'this SKU', do you mean a license specifically for common area phones? If so, that's great news!
--> Correct, it's a license what is coming soon (expect it to be available in about a month or so).
The introduction of this SKU is intended to provide Microsoft customers the flexibility needed to license all calling devices in their Enterprise appropriately and compliantly without over licensing.
Alejandro -- Are you able to share any additional information about this new SKU yet?
Steve
Actually, I was able to piece together some information about this from various sources. I put together what I have in a short blog post:
http://www.neighborgeek.net/2018/03/common-area-phone-license-available-for.html
Is there anybody who has tried to provision any phones using this new license and manner of provisioning? We have activated a trial for 25 licenses of "Common Area Phone" in my organization, and have assigned the license and calling plan, as required. However, the actual provisioning seems to fail every time.
Definitely nothing wrong with the account itself, as no errors when checking the account in Skype for Business Online PowerShell. I thought it might be due to hybrid configuration, so tried with a pure "In Cloud" account, which isn't synced from our Active Directory, and that made no difference.
