Intuitive and reliable emergency calling is fundamental to the health and safety of any organization. For Microsoft, meeting e911 calling requirements for 172 buildings spread across the United States posed technical and geographic challenges. But thoughtful planning and inclusive participation was critical to enabling this functionality, on time and under budget.
As communications have expanded beyond fixed lines to modern calling solutions such as Microsoft Teams Phone that include VoIP, shared devices, and mobile capabilities, companies are required to support direct dialing of emergency services. It is also a company’s responsibility for ensuring “dispatchable location” information is conveyed with 911 calls. RAY BAUM’s Act and Kari’s Law represent legislation designed to ensure people have the ability to connect with emergency services through multi-line telephone systems that support many users across a single campus, building, or facility.
The obvious statements are worth saying. Microsoft has many employees. In many locations. All across the United States (not to mention, globally). Enabling compliance with these important safety policies required the planning and effort of many, but it was made possible through a thoughtful well-implemented plan.
In alignment with regulatory requirements, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience began by defining it’s per-building compliance approach. The approach was implemented by a team leveraging the current Teams emergency calling technical capabilities. The plan which faciliatated this effort was focused on ensuring e911 compliance across Microsoft’s footprint of 172 United States buildings. The goal included mapping roughly 140,000 network jack/wireless access points with physical locations so that a 911 call from Teams would be dynamically routed to the most appropriate emergency response center. Success would mean that any e911 call details include the civic address of the building as well as an accurate location of the user requiring emergency assistance.
Best practices of identifying stakeholders, defining roles and responsibilities, establishing milestones and metrics, and assigning budgets were also key to making sure everyone worked in sync. Microsoft’s approach included the following efforts:
Teams provides the framework to implement emergency calling. However, there are many actions each customer must complete to make e911 fully functional. The customer-driven technical configurations are the pieces that define specifics about your environment and users. Here’s how Microsoft addressed a few of the most critical components:
Few things are constant. That especially applies to employees, office locations, technology, and legislation. With this in mind, project leads developed a change readiness framework that included a cadence of ongoing compliance audits and built-in flexibility to accommodate future needs.
Enabling Teams Phone e911 capabilities in your organization can play a critical role in ensuring the safety of your staff and patrons. Regardless of whether you use Microsoft Calling Plans, Operator Connect, or Direct Routing, be sure to reference the guidance for managing emergency calling policies in Microsoft Teams.
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