Forum Discussion
PSTN calling for UK
I've been after this information for weeks thanks a million! Do you have any insight as to how the communication credits work in relation to this? I'm bewildered as to why you need to purchase a license to use Skype for Business, purchase another for "Cloud PBX or whatever they call LYNC server these days and then purchase another license in the form of a call packager per user.
We started looking at the CCE route which comes with it's own obstacles such as no means to manage numbers via the GUI, only CLI. Horrid! I have read that some recent changes announced at Ignite might have resolved this for us I'll update the post once the 2 Microsoft chaps I'm speaking to have stopped arguing with each other about what these changes mean.
I don't know anything about communications credits I am afraid. My implementation is cloud only so I haven't looked into any of the other issues to do with CCE. Re the licenses, yes it is a bit bewildering. However, it does provide some granularity - particularly if you have users who only receive incoming calls or mainly incoming calls with the odd outgoing. Be aware that if you have a call queue of several users served by one service number - they DO NOT need a PSTN calling package. (I had a big argument with support about that before this was finally admitted to be wrong). So, you could have an arrangement where some people simply don't connect to the PSTN at all. They don't need PABX. Others connect to the PSTN but only or mainly deal with incoming calls. They need the SfB license + PABX and maybe consumption billing. What you are paying for in the cloud PABX license is really incoming service line capacity - essentially its is line rental, with auto attendant and call queue functionality. This way you could have 80 users, but the majority may only need SfB + cloud PABX - which makes it a reasonable cost for an incoming call orientated call centre.
Nicholas,
Just wanted to say thanks for all your help. We did end up using CCE for a short period which we then decided to terminate and go with the pure online offering. The domestic calling package was enough for our needs and we've decided to use consumption billing for international calls as most of the countries we operate in weren't supported in the international package.
I came across something quite interesting, MSFT offer a small and medium sized calling package to EA customers which have reduced minutes and pricing in comparison to the domestic/&international calling package. We're definitely going to use these when they come available as we really do not need 120k domestic minutes in a pool.
I'm hoping with the Ignite updates they look at offering this on the O365 purchase services portal like they did with Microsoft 365 (Win 10 Enterprise, Office E3 and Security/Mobility). Fingers crossed! The only other service I'm after is the reduced call queue waiting time as we're still stuck in minutes rather than seconds. The SkypePreview team seem to be hiding!