A Refreshing New Look for Teams Phones!
Published May 01 2020 08:00 AM 33.7K Views

We are excited to announce a new and improved user interface on Microsoft Teams phones. These experiences are now available to all users as a firmware update through the Teams Admin Center today. The new look will help users navigate quickly between features and gain access to favorites, manage a variety of user settings from the Teams phones and enable auto dialing.


User Interface updates

  • Always available dial pad
    With an always available dial pad for devices in landscape mode, customers can make calls even faster. We have also made it easier to access favorite contacts with touch-friendly icons. In the portrait layout, customers can toggle seamlessly between favorites and recent calls view.

Landscape modeLandscape mode

Portrait modePortrait mode

 

  • Add and remove favorites
    By default, all favorite contacts from the Teams desktop client and the Skype for Business client are marked as favorite contacts on Teams phones. Users can also add and remove favorites right from the phone by toggling the favorite icon (star) on the recent calls list or by accessing the more options menu on the contact card.

1.1.png

 

  • Group call pickup
    With call sharing and group call pickup, users can share incoming calls with colleagues who can answer the calls while the user is unavailable. Group call pickup is less disruptive to recipients than other forms of call sharing (such as call forwarding or simultaneous ringing) because users can configure how they want to be notified of an incoming shared call (via audio and visual notification or visual only) and decide whether or not to answer it.

2.2.png

 

New phones settings

  • Delegate management
    Choose someone in Teams to be your delegate so they can receive and make calls on your behalf. When you add a delegate, you can customize what controls they have. This new feature is available via the settings menu on your phone.

3.1.png

 

  • Ringtone customization
    One of the more frequently asked features is ringtone customizations. Enabled users can choose custom ringtones from an available list of ringtone options and set different ringtones for incoming calls, forwarded calls, and delegated calls.

4.4.png

 

  • Autodial for extension dialing
    Tenant admins can add dial plans for their organization with normalization rules to enable extension dialing in Teams. With this new feature release, Teams phones will auto dial in 3 seconds after an approved extension is dialed by the user.

 

To take advantage of all these new features and more, check out our wide range of Teams Phones from industry leading partners including Audiocodes, Crestron, Lenovo, Poly and Yealink. If you already have a phone and do not see updates for your phone models, check with phone your manufacturer for firmware release schedules.

 

 

32 Comments
Silver Contributor

Is it for desktop phones or is it some app for smartphones? I see Android keyboard there, so is it mobile? I'm confused why you call it Teams Phones and talk about firmware if it is just a mobile app. But if it is some physical desktop phone why is there a landscape mode?

@wroot This update is for the Microsoft Teams phones. Our portfolio is here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/across-devices/devices/category?device...

Copper Contributor

I am super jazzed about his update - it's the update that finally puts Teams phone sets mostly on par with non-Teams telephony solutions! There's always room for more but this is a big one. 

 

Any approximate ideas to when Poly CCX500 phone sets will see this update? Chose Poly CCX phones for faster processors and great looking devices but Yealink already has this latest version out. This may play into future purchase decisions. 

Iron Contributor

@LorenBx Updated firmware for the CCX product line is coming which includes the updated Teams client with the features outlined in this article.  The current Yealink phones run on Android 7 while the CCX line uses Android 9 and required some additional development alongside the new Teams client version.

Brass Contributor

The one issue I am having with this is the caller ID.  I have a couple of phone numbers that show up as Wireless caller.  In both favorites and when an incoming call is coming in, it ONLY shows the wireless caller name and no number.  It would be great if both could be displayed.  I have no idea if I want to answer or not if all I see is Wireless Caller.

Copper Contributor

Good job! However I still don't understand why a feature is constantly ignored which in my opinion blocks the adoption of teams phones: the contact management.
If I'm not wrong, so far there's no integration with Exchange contacts and even less Azure AD, how can a user accept such user experience?

I can use Teams phones to call Teams users in my company, but what about external contacts I have in Outlook?

@Matthew Shulman Please report an issue from the phone when this happens. Settings->help & feedback->report an issue. We will look into this.

 

@Roberto Ferazzi We are working on bringing a contacts app to the phones. This will bring us to parity with the Teams desktop client in terms of the contacts/contact groups experience. We are very close - unless something critical happens, we are less than a quarter away. Integrating with Exchange contacts will take a little longer because there is some backend work that we need to do to enable that. This is also in our radar.

Brass Contributor

@Jeff_Schertz and @Kruthika Ponnusamy, thank you for the timely responses and helpful information regarding the forthcoming CCX500 firmware update and the planned contacts app.  I am anxiously awaiting both.

Iron Contributor

Big improvement to the app - much better! One issue we are seeing intermittently with our Yealink T55A and T58A is an additional answer dialog at the top of the screen - when this unexpected dialog appears, lifting the handset has no effect. One must answer the call by tapping the purple answer icon. Strangely it only manifests some of the time. This has been reported via the phones' Settings > Help / Feedback function

 

IMG_0017.jpg

Brass Contributor

This is a great update to the phones.  We have some users that just would not adapt to using a headset and would only use a phone.  We had been trying to steer people away from physical phones as a headset connected to your computer is just a better experience.  Any update to the phones will help a lot.  We are mixed between Audiocodes and Poly phones.  I am really waiting for the Poly update to come out.  There was a update in Jan that came out for the other phones that was "skipped" by Poly as well.  I was beginning to think it might have been a mistake purchasing those.

Copper Contributor

Sorry to be a broken record by asking again - any ETA on the rollout to CCX line?  We have executives that are ready to throw the phones out the window because they want the speed dial contacts.  Do both the Yealink T55A and the T58A have the new UI?

Brass Contributor

I can confirm the Yealink T56A and T58A models have the new UI.  We have several in our office; we received and pushed the update about two weeks ago.  I do not know about the T55A but assume it also received the update.

 

We also have a few CCX 500 devices in our office.  The folks who are using those phones are jealous and a bit frustrated the update hasn't made it to them yet.

The update for CCX devices are scheduled to go out this week. I will post an update when it is out.

Brass Contributor

That would be awesome!  thanks @Kruthika Ponnusamy!

Copper Contributor

The Update for CCX Phones is now available!

MiBlasi_0-1589533740590.png

 

Copper Contributor

I am using a Poly CCX phone and it ran the update but it seemed buggy after the reboot. This phone has been extremely crappy since I purchased it. Hope I can get it going here shortly. 

Copper Contributor

Okay had to manually turn it off and reboot it and it came up!

Iron Contributor

@Travis_Poole The previous 5.9.12 firmware had several known issues as it uses a very old Teams client build (dated Nov 8, 2019) and Microsoft has addressed many issues in the Teams client since last year.  The 5.9.13 firmware includes a Teams client build from April 8th, 2020 (the new Teams features were originally added in the March 19th build).  I've been running this new version on a few CCX phones at home for a month now and it is a huge improvement.

 

Be aware though that the newest Teams client still has a issue (which Microsoft plans to fix) which currently requires you to sign out of the client and sign back in after upgrading it as not all of the new client features will appear post upgrade.  For example you'll see the 'Manage Delegates' menu and also see the new Ringtone options after the phone reboots post-upgrade, but the Calls screen will not display the new Favorites layout until signing out/in.

 

Copper Contributor

Thank you Jeff! The new release is very nice but my CCX 600 still randomly reboots. I might go to try and make a call and it says No Internet and then the phone reboots and it comes back. It may do it 2-3 times per day that I know of. There are just a few odd issues out there still.

Brass Contributor

@Rob Hardman, were you able to come up with a workaround to resolve the issue with the additional answer dialogue?  Several of our users (one of whom is using a CCX 500 phone and the rest of whom are using Yealink T56A phones) are experiencing the same issues - and it is quite frustrating for some of them.  I assume this issue was caused by a glitch in the most recent firmware update and hope that @Kruthika Ponnusamy and @Jeff_Schertz and their respective teams are looking into it.  

@Kennard1969 @Rob Hardman This should ideally happen only when you have 2 incoming calls ringing at the same time. The first call is showing on the main screen and the second incoming call is seen on the top banner. Is that not the case for you?

Brass Contributor

That is not the case for my users, @Kruthika Ponnusamy.

 

It randomly and occasionally happens when the user receives a single incoming call.

Iron Contributor

@Kennard1969 sadly no, the issue persists albeit intermittently. Can't work out what conditions cause it and what conditions result in normal answer chrome to be displayed.

 

@Kruthika Ponnusamy when the additional dialogue occurs, only one incoming call is being attempted. Interesting point though, the implication is that the call attempt is being duplicated. I wonder if it's a bug in the desk phone app when parsing the user's global simultaneous attempts - I am usually signed into Teams from two or three different clients, including the desk phone...?

Brass Contributor

@Kruthika Ponnusamy, I am not sure if this was made clear in our earlier posts, but this glitch surfaced after the 58.15.0.100 update was rolled out in mid May.  I rolled one of our users back to 58.15.0.96 and, as far as we can tell, the additional dialogue box stopped appearing.

 

I bet you're right, @Rob Hardman ~ I just hope the "fix" isn't to log out of other devices when using a desk phone.

Iron Contributor

@Kennard1969 It looks like the Yealink 58.15.0.96 firmware includes the Teams client version 1449/1.0.94.2020020601 (Feb 6, 2020) while the 58.15.0.100 firmware has 1449/1.0.94.2020031901 (March 19, 2020). 

 

The Poly CCX 5.9.12.1122 firmware includes Teams client version 1449/1.0.94.2019110802 (Nov 8, 2019) while the CCX 5.9.13.0306 firmware has 1449/1.0.94.2020040801 (April 8, 2020).

 

It then seems that this bug surfaced in the Teams client somewhere between the February and March version.  I've heard of a few reports of it but have not witnessed it myself so I don't know if it's random or if there's some other configuration or behavior causing it to occur.

Copper Contributor

In the pictures above it shows contacts and favourites with names. I recently updated my yealink t55As to the latest firmware (58.15.0.104) and I do now see favourites and the other features mentioned for this release but the favourites only show phone numbers, not names, pictures or presence as shown in the images above. The favourites in my list have synced from the teams andorid app and or the desktop app where they do shows names, most of them are external phone contacts but 2 of them are external teams users and 1 is another teams user from my organisation but even those just show phone numbers. 

 

If this expected or should be able to see or add names as well?
teams.jpg

 

 

Iron Contributor

@JJGrowcott The design of this new client is a bit confusing, IMO.

  • The April release added the Favorites list to the Calls page in the client and showed the contents of the actual Favorites contact group.
  • Then the June release added the People app to the client
    • This also changed the behavior of the Favorites view in the Calls app as it now lists the contents of the Speed Dial group for the user (and not the actual Favorites group, even though it still says FAVORITES at the top).
    •  The new People app can be used to view any of the contact groups, including Speed Dial or Favorites by selecting the drop-down menu.
Copper Contributor

Hi. I'm trying to update my ccx 400 from 1.01.0054 to 6.2.23.0304 via usb.  I'm following the steps, however, once I place the usb stick into the phone, the update firmware window does not appear.  I have reset the phone to factory defaults, I have rebooted the phone and nothing works.  I opened a case with Poly but I am told that I must resolve through a Certified VOIP Partner, but I do not have one since I purchased direct and deployed myself via Teams.  Any help is appreciated.  Thanks.

Iron Contributor

@ashb_79 You cannot upgrade the phone directly from 1.0 to more recent 6.x versions.  You need to first perform an upgrade from 1.x via USB to version 6.2.22.0185 specifically.

 

Download the "Poly CCX 400 1.0.X to Poly UCS 6.2.22.0185 USB Upgrade (Teams)" firmware package shown on the on the CCX 400 support page:

https://support.polycom.com/content/support/north-america/usa/en/support/voice/ccx-phones/ccx400.htm...

 

Once you complete that upgrade then you can use any supported upgrade method (like the Teams Admin Center) to get to latest supported version.

Copper Contributor

On a Teams phone (ie Poly  CCX 500) Can you add a favorite  for an entity  that is not part of your teams domain. ie My local pizza joint so I can quick dial for some pizza?  Thanks

Copper Contributor

@Moreland_Smith Yes, you can add them as a Speed Dial via the Teams application on Windows or Mac; what is added as a speed dial will show up under the speed dial group on the phone set. Currently I am not aware of a way to do it on the phone set itself. 

 

On the phone set you can add people from the directory (global address book) as a speed dial but not anyone or any phone number.

Copper Contributor

I have a Poly CCX500 that we purchased for testing that a number of customers are interested in buying, however I've been having an issue with the contacts on the device. It's running Teams.

When I click on "People", it brings up my contact list however if I try to search for any name in that list, it shows "Directory Contacts (0)".

The odd thing is, if I search for a contact that is in my organization, but not in this contact list, it shows up. Contact management is very important for my clients as they have hundreds and scrolling through a list is not an option. We are also hoping for a way to have a centralized contact list for these phones, rather than them going by each user's contacts. Is this possible?

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