Direct Routing is now Generally Available!
Published Jun 28 2018 09:01 AM 145K Views
Microsoft

Starting today, Microsoft Phone System Direct Routing is now generally available. Direct Routing allows customers to choose their telecom provider to enable their users to make and receive calls in Teams. If your country is supported by Teams and Phone System you can start planning and deploying Direct Routing in your organization today. Direct Routing and Calling Plans are now your 2 choices for dial tone in Microsoft Teams.

 enterprise voice 3 - less white space.png

 

There are two primary approaches to deploying Direct Routing for you to consider.

 

CUSTOMER DEPLOYED SCENARIO. If you read our May blog on Direct Routing, you are already familiar with our initial approach to deployment. This scenario has 3 key elements: (1) Office 365 with Phone System enabled, (2) Session Border Controllers (SBC) from our certified partners such as AudioCodes or Ribbon, and (3) trunks from your voice provider. Customers have been previewing this scenario since May. For customers who want to manage the infrastructure on-premises this will be their optimal choice.

Direct Routing - Customer Deployed.png

 

PARTNER HOSTED SCENARIOS.  Back in May 2018, we also began working with providers around the world on a second scenario to ensure that customers who wanted a hosted architecture would have options. This can mean hosted SBCs, additional management capabilities, and other services. We encourage you to reach out to this first set of providers who tested Direct Routing in their environments – BezeQ International, BT, Cellip, Nuwave Communications, Orange Business Services, Swisscom, TATA, Telekom Deutschland, Telenor, Thinktel, and West to learn more about their offerings. As we go forward, we expect more companies to offer solutions and services with Direct Routing to our joint customers.


DR as managed service.png

 

 

We will continue to enhance Direct Routing including plans to deliver improved support for escalating calls, media bypass, and enhanced trunk support to help our partners scale their solutions.

 

GETTING STARTED. If you are new to Teams, please review our quick start guides.  It helps to be comfortable with Teams before proceeding to Calling. Next - review these articles:  Plan Direct Routing, Configure Direct Routing, and Migrating to Direct Routing. We have also recorded a deeper dive on Direct Routing to further aid in your understanding.

 

Regardless of your requirements for calling in Teams, Microsoft has you covered with options from Direct Routing and Calling Plans.

 

 

38 Comments
Iron Contributor

LOVE #MSTeams and so do our clients! The feedback from everyone we have on boarded so far has been UNANIMOUSLY POSITIVE.  Teams is a game changer. We are seeing the paradigm shift away from email & deskphones to the centralized, collaborative, and intuitive Teams client as one place for everything (file storage, threaded & persistent chat, meeting notes, video calls, PSTN calls, etc!). Most excited I have been about an advanced IT Solution in many years. Great job Microsoft 

Copper Contributor

Great work Microsoft and I am very proud to work for one of the first service providers that can now offer Microsoft Teams Direct Routing to all our global customers. I truly believe Teams are here to stay and we have only begun to explore the possibilities of this excellent Digital Canvas for a modern way of collaborating

Copper Contributor

Great news.  If any partners want to have play with Direct Routing the AudioCodes MSFT certified virtual SBC is free to download and comes with 3 runtime sessions (again free of charge).  Also one our our parters did a great blog as to how to set this up (step by step instructions). view blog here

 

For any UK partners wanting to get hold of the virtual SBC and everything you need to get up and running just ping us on uksales@audiocodes.com

 

Cheers 

 

Ewan (AudioCodes UK).

Iron Contributor

Direct routing looks like an awesome service, for those using the service are you not finding it limiting with the certified Skype for Business USB and phones not working with Teams yet?  

Copper Contributor

It looks great and I can't wait to start implementing it, however the media flows for internally connected users needs some improvement first. It is hard to imagine for larger companies that media flows between client will flow all the way up to the public IP of the SBC, while the SBC is a device with multiple NIC in order to connect it both internet facing an internal. 

Any idea when this will be implemented ? Maybe it is up to the SBC providers to foresee this ?

 

Hi @Koen Van den Broeck we are working on Media Bypass to optimize the media flow.

Brass Contributor

Hi @Nikolay Muravlyannikov, should CLI matching to GAL/user contacts work now this is GA? I assume if it doesn't then it can now be handled by Office 365 support?

Hi @Jonny Marlborough if you are talking about ability to resolve a number of the contact/user in Teams, this is not ready in Teams backend. Owners aware of the feedback and working on it.

Copper Contributor

This is a really great solution to evolve classical existing infrastructure to a harmonized collaboration infrastructure. The feeling is awesome and this will be a Game Changer if Media Bypass is integrated, IP-Phones fully supported and some more classical voice features are available. Great Job Microsoft!

 

Ceers

 

Dominik (Linde AG) 

Microsoft

This is a great solution. But how do I know the bandwidth requirement, which many customers will ask. Is there any calculator?

Iron Contributor

@KK Wong

Take a look at these resources: 

https://myadvisor.fasttrack.microsoft.com/CloudVoice/NetworkPlanner

SfB Network Assessment Tool

garywoods@nuwave.com

Teams PSTN (702) 960-0455

 

Iron Contributor

@itsbrad

We are Seeing significant progress on the certified SfB SIP Phones working with #MSTeams, also testing multiple phones with native Teams Software. In my personal opinion, both will break loose very soon.

However, many of our clients prefer the Teams softphone (laptop or mobile phone client) with Bluetooth USB HID. While deskphones are going nowhere anytime soon, the adoption rate of a Teams client paired with a bluetooth device is going to continue to rapidly accelerate. Works great and lets the experience be inclusive of all Teams features. IMHO.

My Teams DialpadMy Teams Dialpad

Copper Contributor

Are there any plans to support higher capacity Audiocodes SBCs like the Mediant 4000?

@jshariat Mediant 4000 is supported, please refer to the list of certified SBCs https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/direct-routing-border-controllers 

Deleted
Not applicable

Would any one know the process for joining the list of service providers that are supported under the "partner hosted scenario"?

Iron Contributor

@Deleted We have a wholesale offering using our Hosted Solution. Geo Redundant Tier 4 data centers, SBC 7000's, etc.  Call or email to discuss 

Teams PSTN (702) 960-0455

garywoods@nuwave.com

Respectfully,

Gary

Deleted
Not applicable

If we are running hybrid Skype for business, Skype for business online account enable teams direct routing.

No calls tab for Teams online account?

Grant voice policy for this online account.

Any suggestion?

 

Deleted
Not applicable

@Deleted. Have enabled enterprise voice for the online accounts. I'm not sure if this is relevant to you, but you might want to check out the "Configure the phone number and enable enterprise voice" section of the following document.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/direct-routing-configure

I hope that it will be possible to use Queue calls and auto-attendant, from telephone numbers (caller id's) from Direct Routing..., any ETA ?

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/35022145-allow-service-numbers...

@Hrvoje Kusulja work in progress, I don't have ETA now but the plan is this year. 

@Nikolay Muravlyannikov ok, can you update this information on following uservoice link then. Thank you

Iron Contributor

a very small number of the customers we have already onboarded using our Direct Routing Partner Hosted Architecture / Zero Hardware  Solution are reporting some odd call delay issues. While the overwhelming majority of clients report a voice/pstn experience that is exceeding their expectation this random issue is showing up for <2% of users.  We are seeing the below, is anyone else???

 

scenario #1: If Teams user is signed OUT of ALL Teams clients (PC, Mobile, deskphone, etc) inbound PSTN callers hear dead air for approx 20-30 seconds then Teams vmail eventually answers. most users hang up by this time thinking the call did not go thru. Expected behavior would be for call to go straight to vmail (similar to what a cell phone does when turned off).

 

scenario #2: Teams user is signed in to at least one Teams client inbound PSTN callers hear 1 ring then 10-15 seconds of silence before voicemail answers. Teams client receiving the call hears consistent inbound ringtone and can answer the call, if they don't then call goes to vmail as described above. 

 

Respectfully,

Gary 

teams@nuwave.com 

Copper Contributor

As of November 2018 support for Direct Media is still "pending". How did Ribbon presentation of direct media feature went at the Ignite? I expected Ribbon SBCs getting official approvals after the live demo. Anyone knows what calling scenarios passed and which failed?

We see Direct Media as a necessary feature when using geo-redundant SBCs for better uptime or when servicing clients in remote countries.

 

Copper Contributor

There is progress, Direct Media/Media Bypass is currently in TAP and has been for a few days. Can't say too much but it seems to be going reasonably well at the moment, some issues have been seen and resolved.

Some scenarios are still being looked at, eg when a user has multiple devices it causes challenges so there is still work to do for complete functionality under all circumstances so there is likely to be a phased delivery, eg DM might be disabled for certain call flows until all the wrinkles can be ironed out.

But it is on the way, though I can't predict any GA dates at this stage.

 

There are lots of interesting topologies coming down the line with work we are doing with Teams that will help with distributed deployments, geo-redundancy, etc 

As this is future stuff it can't be discussed publicly but keep in touch with your AudioCodes technical contacts to learn more :) 

Hi @Ilya Belov adding to the John comment. the Media Bypass in TAP. With such complex feature we need some time to bake it. It is not officially supported yet, but we are making a good progress

Iron Contributor

Back in 2017 at Ignite in Orlando I was watching lots of news regarding to this. When I got back in Norway I started to work an product where customers can bring their own telco to Teams. This we call Telephony in Teams.

The solutions is up and running i Azure West Europe zone 1, 2, 3 with SBC from AudioCodes. The solutions is 100% Cloud and we have also done integration with Genesys PureCloud and Telia switchboard. For the PureCloud who use WebRTC we can answer the call using the toaster from Teams.

We have delivered Sip trunks from, Telia, Telenor, Broadnet, IPCO, Voxbone and many more. The customer can bring their own telco agreement to our solutions. This is 100% telco independent (globally). We had the first customer live in October 2018 on this service. We does also recording who is required from the bank and financial industri and host the recording files in Norway. 

You can read more about it here: https://blinq.no/summetone-i-teams/ 

This post is in norwegian but translate with if you are not good in norwegian. :) This is all deliveried by a MicroSoft Gold Partner blinQ AS.

Copper Contributor

Hi @Nikolay Muravlyannikov 

 

We see some newly added parameters under OnlinePSTNGateway configuration. Could you please clarify on the newly added parameters (highlighted with Bold below)?

 

Identity : sbc.domain.com
Fqdn : sbc.domain.com
SipSignallingPort : 5061
FailoverTimeSeconds : 10
ForwardCallHistory : True
ForwardPai : True
SendSipOptions : True
MaxConcurrentSessions : 100
Enabled : True
MediaBypass : False
GatewaySiteId :
GatewaySiteLbrEnabled : False
FailoverResponseCodes : 408,503,504
GenerateRingingWhileLocatingUser : True
PidfLoSupported : False
MediaRelayRoutingLocationOverride :
ProxySbc :
BypassMode : None

 

Regards,

Joshua Alphin

Copper Contributor

Hi guys,

 

Can you point me in the right direction where I can see Call Statistics for users other than user call history? Most of what I can see in basic reports in the Teams admin center are user activity, device usage or in the call quality dashboard reports -- more for troubleshooting good / poor call reports. 

 

I'm only after a report wherein I can show how incoming / outgoing PSTN / direct routing calls the user has made / received.

 

Sincerely,

 

Floyd

@Floyd Reyes  we are working on getting the Call Detail Records in Office 365 portal the upcoming month.

Copper Contributor

Great work Microsoft and I am very proud to work for one of the first service providers that can now offer Microsoft Teams Direct Routing to all our global customers. 

Copper Contributor

Thank you @Nikolay Muravlyannikov ! Just so glad to get a response :) 

 

So we should be expecting it this September you think or more likely October 2019 ?

 

 

Regards,

 

Floyd

Steel Contributor

Is there a Teams phone that dual registers with Teams and on-prem CUCM?  We would like to give users the option to join Teams meetings while maintaining our on prem telephony infrastructure.  Not talking about direct routing, I'm looking for actual dual registration.  Thanks!

Iron Contributor

Last week I published a Direct Routing Overview on LinkedIn, the engagement has been amazing. The folks on this thread are presumably DR users, SME's, or those considering it. That being said , lets hear your feedback or let me know if you find it useful. Respectfully, Gary

Microsoft Teams is your future Phone System. Convince me otherwise…

 

Copper Contributor

For the ones interested in Teams Calling. Have a look at a comparison of the different options.

http://www.djeek.com/2019/10/microsoft-teams-calling-options-compared/

 

Best regards
Jako

Brass Contributor
How to mitigate DDoS attacks on public IP of the SBC? Imagine you have several small offices around the world, each of them with local internet breakouts and SBCs connected with direct routing. The local internet providers don't offer a scrubing solution to handle DDoS attacks. In case of a DDoS attack you can send the users back home and they will be able to do their work but phone calls will stop. What are the options? ExpressRoute?
Copper Contributor

With MS Teams becoming more and more popular. Fuse 2 Communications have deployed many MS Teams direct routing solutions across the UK and Internationally. Using Microsoft accredited SBC’s (Sonus), our engineers are accredited experts in deploying medium to large solutions of this nature. We host and manage the solution in our independent carrier grade voice network in multiple data centres across the UK and Europe. Below is the link to our MS Teams Direct Routing landing page.

 

Lets have a conference call to discuss further email:andrew.quilliam@fuse2.net to arrange. https://lnkd.in/evxZvMX hashtag#collaborationsolutions

Copper Contributor

Can we use Direct Routing without certified SBC, like the following link ?

https://www.epygi.com/2020/05/06/april-2020-newsletter/

Microsoft

Hi @ipecs ,

 

Microsoft provides Direct Routing support for customers who use a certified SBC. Furthermore, I would be cautious about any solution where call control does not reside with Microsoft Phone System. 

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