Native Teams DeskPhones GA ETA

[gary woods]

Are there any updates on when NATIVE Teams Desk Phones will be available for purchase? Per this MSFT Page, Everything is either COMING SOON or shipping with SfB Client using Teams Gateway & will be upgradable via free software update "soon". Users of the "fastest growing MSFT BIZ app of all time" are hungry for NATIVE Teams experience deskphones - do we have a firm date when the YEALINKs will GA? YeaLink seems to be the closest to going to market (not to mention the Crestrons are built on YeaLink hardware).

Still surprised that Polycom says they won't have anything until Q2 2019, thats a huge miss.

[#2]

i am also holding off on moving to Microsoft PBX and Teams conf and desk phones, possibly with video as everything is COMING SOON! come on Microsoft!

[#3]

Benjamin, We have many customers using both the Teams client Softphone (PC and/or Mobile) with a bluetooth earpiece or headset -AND- SfB endpoints (legacy or new pre-Teams) via the gateway successfully. However, the appetite for the Native Teams Experience on deskphones is huge especially for org's like yours who are replacing a on-prem PBX or inferior Hosted Voice solution. Hopefully something will GA very soon.

Look us up when you are ready to move - we provide a unique Teams PSTN calling plans solution (shared trunks instead of per user plans). Thx, garywoods@nuwave.com 

[#4]

Also, the deskphones on the below page say "Power Supply Optional" but does not give you an option to add it when ordering. So can I assume that these endpoints (which appear to be sourced via "UnifiedCommunications.com official partner of the Microsoft Teams devices marketplace") are PoE only and if so how does one add the optional Power Supply? 

Respectfully,Gary 

Ilya Bukshteyan perhaps you can answer? 

[#5]

Hi Gary, Two of our Yealink phones just became available last week. You can check them out at: https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/across-devices/devices/category?categoryid=c6536b3... 

[#6]

Thanks for the reply.

Are you referring to the T56A, T58A Teams devices that have been shipping for a couple months now? Per my thread, Yes those are Teams devices but to the best of my knowledge are still shipping with SfB software and using the Teams gateway. According to my contacts at YeaLink those phones should GA with the NATIVE TEAMS software before end of this month. Do you have different information? Thank You

[#7]

@gary woods Native Teams phones from Yealink (desk phones and conference room phones) and Crestron Mercury are currently under certification. We expect certification to be complete before EOY. As you mentioned, the firmware on the marketplace is Skype for Business but it can be updated to Teams when we complete certification. 
We expect Crestron desk phones to GA early next year (Q1CY19).

[#8]

We got 2 Yealink phones (T56 and T58) for testing. 2 Weeks later and multiple microsoft calls, remote sessions, tickets, etc later they still won't enroll.

Really regretting buying the phones and also regretting using intune.

We used intune when it was silverlight managed sadly (i wish we didnt), and an old policy we can't see or delete in old intune panel is still forcing android devices to encrypt. Microsofts only solution to date is to "just delete the groups that policy was applied to"....

[#9]

@Timothy Meredith I am very sorry to hear about your experience with the phones. I would like to help unblock you and understand the issues that you are seeing. I will reach out to you via DM and schedule some time for troubleshooting.

[#10]

A few more thoughts on Native Teams endpoints for this thread. Please share any feedback if you have similar experiences. Lots of activity on Social Media from YeaLink & Crestron saying they are ready to go but here are a few of the challenges our customers are bringing up;

1- None of the distributors/VAR's/etc seem to have the phones ready to sell. MSFT's own sales channel (via UnifiedCommunicaitons.com) is still showing SfB devices upgradable to Teams, NOT native Teams. Two very large distributors that we use both said they are 30 days out (that is 6 weeks after the Native Teams phones GA'd). 

2- Customers with upgraded endpoints are still lacking the ability to make a 3 way PSTN call from the phone (although it works from their Teams softphone - calling plan and audio conf lic required). 

3- CP960 not showing meetings and occasionally "spinning circle" locks up the phone for a few mins at a time.

[#11]

@gary woods

#1: Checking on that.

#2: This is not supported today. It does not work on mobile too as far as I know. On desktop, it is basically a conference call. 

#3: We should get logs from you. I will reach out to you via email.

[#12]

I have successfully setup the YealinkT58 and CP960 with the Teams Edition Firmware, and they are working well. I still am not sure how to setup the Teams supported Common Area Phone option that was announced to be available on the 25th?

[#13]

@Timothy Meredith - Did you ever have any luck with the encryption issue? I have a client with the same prompt and have seen at least one other mention of someone having the problem.

[#14]

@steve_ci Intune has a feature in TAP that enables customers to apply one set of policies for Android smartphones and another set of policies for Teams IP phones. This should allow tenant admins to not require encryption for Teams phones. Please DM me your customer name, and if they are interested, they could get onto the TAP program to test this feature out.