Direct Routing enables new enterprise voice options in Microsoft Teams
Published Mar 12 2018 04:34 AM 149K Views
Microsoft

EDIT: on 6.28 we announced GA for Direct Routing - please continue the conversation there.

 

Today we are taking the next step for Enterprise Voice and announcing that Direct Routing will be joining Calling Plans as one of the options customers will have for Calling in Microsoft Teams.

 enterprise voice 3 - less white space.png

 

 We are targeting the end of Q2-2018 for general availability of this capability. To access the Direct Routing capability, customers will need to have Microsoft Teams and Phone System as part of Office 365.

 

What is Direct Routing?

 

Direct Routing is a capability of Phone System in Office 365 to help customers connect their SIP trunks to Microsoft Teams. In the simplest deployment model, customers start with SIP trunks from their telecommunications provider. Next, customers will use and configure a supported Session Border Controller (SBC) from one of our certified partners. Finally, they will connect their SBC to Microsoft Teams and Phone System.

 

direct routing 2.png

 

Besides the primary Direct Routing scenario, we anticipate customers will want to use this capability to integrate with other 3rd party voice applications. There are several additional scenarios:


Easy Transition to Calling in Teams. By integrating with an existing PBX, pilot users can be moved to Calling in Teams while users remain on their legacy PBX. Eventually all users can be easily transitioned to Calling in Teams. The call traffic between these users during the transition stay within the organization.


Telephony System Inter/Op. While users are being transitioned to Calling in Teams, Call Center agents can continue to use their application. Direct Routing enables both use cases to coexist. The call traffic between call center agents and Teams users stay within the organization.

 

Support for Analog Devices. If an organization decides to move to Calling in Teams but has analog devices such as elevator phones or overhead pagers, these devices can be connected to Teams and Phone System via Direct Routing. Call traffic between analog devices and Teams users stay within the organization.

 

Microsoft will certify select SBC vendors to insure they are compatible with our Direct Routing guidelines. We will start with AudioCodes, Ribbon Communications, and ThinkTel. Our plan is to continue to evaluate SBC vendors and certify as needed.


It’s important to note that Direct Routing is designed to work with Microsoft Teams. Customers using Skype for Business Online should continue to use Cloud Connector Edition (CCE) or connect via or a on-premises SFB Pool for their SIP trunk connection needs.


Getting started with Calling in Teams

 

If you are new to Teams, please review our quick start guide.  We also invite you to mark your calendars for March 22 for a Teams on Air episode with guest Nikolay Muravlyannikov, Sr. Program Manager where he will discuss Direct Routing in more detail.

 

UPDATE - Our apologies - the timing for the Teams on Air episode is actually scheduled for March 29 @ 9 AM PT.

62 Comments
Brass Contributor

@Paul Cannon, there's some conflicting information here. In the above blog post, you mention a target of end of Q2 (that would be June) 2018 for GA. However, in the recent Teams on Air episode about Direct Routing, @Nikolay Muravlyannikov said the public preview was targeted for June.

 

I'm inclined to believe Nikolay. Because hey, it's Nikolay, and since we're already in mid-April without the public preview; going from a late-April public preview (optimistic!) to a June GA seems somewhat unrealistic.

 

Can you clarify the timeline?

Hi @Jim Gaynor good to hear you trust Nikolay :) We don't have a locked day for preview, it depends on the engineering process. We have certain release criteria for Preview, like reliability, call quality KPI must meet defined values. We intentionally vague as a lot depends on the engineering process. We hope to deliver as early as possible. 

Copper Contributor
Is the SCB onPremises a must? I'd like to have the opportunity to have a Zero-IT Full Cloud approach available. I could sell a lot more SfB/teams if this was supported. Therefore it would be necessary that even the SBC is virtualized in an IaaS like Azure. Will this be supported? I know AudioCodes very well and they provide their SBC as a Virtual-Appliance as well. From the configuration perspective it doesn't matter if we use Hardware or Software SBC as long as the Sip-Provider delivers G711 or any other supported Codecs which do not force the SBC to do realtime transcoding.
Steel Contributor

@Nikolay Muravlyannikov Any Certified SBC's for Avaya?

Copper Contributor

Once you have direct routing configured and working is there a migration plan to move the calls made via existing Calling plan subscriptions onto the Direct Routing trunks?

@Robert Woods Avaya currently not in the scope

@Graeme Watson are you talking about scenario where you want to migrate users from Microsoft Calling plans? Why?

Copper Contributor

@Nikolay Muravlyannikov there may be scenarios where the MS phone system has been setup using Microsoft calling plans as a PoC or temporary solution while we waited for the Direct Routing functionality to arrive.

 

Once the customers SIP trunk (maybe with an ongoing contract with the Telco) is integrated it would be good to able re configure the Phone System users with existing DDI numbers already provisioned on the customers SIP trunk and then make incoming and outgoing calls via the customers SIP trunk - effectively migrating the users from the Microsoft Calling Plan? 

 

Thanks

Graeme

@graeme Watson it is possible but you will need to port numbers back from Microsoft. This might be a logistical challenge 

Copper Contributor

@Nikolay Muravlyannikov great thanks for confirmation. I have searched for information on porting numbers away from Microsoft online and there are not many details that I can see (other than having to see a PIN for porting away in the US). Is there a list of the UK PSTN carriers Microsoft has porting agreements with?

Copper Contributor

since i got no answer so far i post this again:

 

Is the SBC onPremises a must? I'd like to have the opportunity to have a Zero-IT Full Cloud approach available. I could sell a lot more SfB/teams if this was supported. Therefore it would be necessary that even the SBC is virtualized in an IaaS like Azure. Will this be supported? I know AudioCodes very well and they provide their SBC as a Virtual-Appliance as well. From the configuration perspective it doesn't matter if we use Hardware or Software SBC as long as the Sip-Provider delivers G711 or any other supported Codecs which do not force the SBC to do realtime transcoding.

Copper Contributor

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/SkypeForBusiness/skype-for-business-hybrid-solutions/plan-your-phon...


@Paul Cannon wrote:

Today we are taking the next step for Enterprise Voice and announcing that Direct Routing will be joining Calling Plans as one of the options customers will have for Calling in Microsoft Teams.

 enterprise voice 3 - less white space.png

 

 We are targeting the end of Q2-2018 for general availability of this capability. To access the Direct Routing capability, customers will need to have Microsoft Teams and Phone System as part of Office 365.

 

What is Direct Routing?

 

Direct Routing is a capability of Phone System in Office 365 to help customers connect their SIP trunks to Microsoft Teams. In the simplest deployment model, customers start with SIP trunks from their telecommunications provider. Next, customers will use and configure a supported Session Border Controller (SBC) from one of our certified partners. Finally, they will connect their SBC to Microsoft Teams and Phone System.

 

direct routing 2.png

 

Besides the primary Direct Routing scenario, we anticipate customers will want to use this capability to integrate with other 3rd party voice applications. There are several additional scenarios:


Easy Transition to Calling in Teams. By integrating with an existing PBX, pilot users can be moved to Calling in Teams while users remain on their legacy PBX. Eventually all users can be easily transitioned to Calling in Teams. The call traffic between these users during the transition stay within the organization.


Telephony System Inter/Op. While users are being transitioned to Calling in Teams, Call Center agents can continue to use their application. Direct Routing enables both use cases to coexist. The call traffic between call center agents and Teams users stay within the organization.

 

Support for Analog Devices. If an organization decides to move to Calling in Teams but has analog devices such as elevator phones or overhead pagers, these devices can be connected to Teams and Phone System via Direct Routing. Call traffic between analog devices and Teams users stay within the organization.

 

Microsoft will certify select SBC vendors to insure they are compatible with our Direct Routing guidelines. We will start with AudioCodes, Ribbon Communications, and ThinkTel. Our plan is to continue to evaluate SBC vendors and certify as needed.


It’s important to note that Direct Routing is designed to work with Microsoft Teams. Customers using Skype for Business Online should continue to use Cloud Connector Edition (CCE) or connect via or a on-premises SFB Pool for their SIP trunk connection needs.


Getting started with Calling in Teams

 

If you are new to Teams, please review our quick start guide.  We also invite you to mark your calendars for March 22 for a Teams on Air episode with guest Nikolay Muravlyannikov, Sr. Program Manager where he will discuss Direct Routing in more detail.

 

UPDATE - @Our apologies - the timing for the Teams on Air episode is actually scheduled for March 29 @ 9 AM PT.


 

Version history
Last update:
‎Jan 26 2021 10:33 AM
Updated by: