What’s new for Teams phones | June 2021
Published Jun 08 2021 08:00 AM 34.4K Views

In this round of updates to Teams phones, we are excited to bring you features which translate some of the great features users can experience with Teams on their PC or mobile phone to their desk phones.

 

Add or Transfer Call to Device
One of the coolest features Teams has today is the ability to add or transfer calls and meeting across devices. Today if you are taking a meeting on your PC, you can see a prompt which suggests adding your mobile device to split the audio and video, or transferring completely. This comes in handy if you are in a call and need to move around away from your PC, you can seamlessly stay connected. With the new release, this functionality will come to Teams phones as well. Your phone will recognize you are in a call on another device and prompt you to transfer or add, letting you start your call from elsewhere and transfer to your desk phone.

add or transfer call to device.png

 

Background replacement on video phones
One of our most popular features is now available for video phones, users can easily select from one of our prepopulated backgrounds during their video call to mask their physical settings and show some personality while collaborating.

background replacement on video phones 1.png

 

Contacts in Microsoft Outlook are now available in read-only mode
If a user creates a contact within Microsoft Outlook, their information will now appear under the People app on the phone interface. While only phone numbers will appear today, users can search on the phone for contacts and easily call the people they may email or meet with using Outlook.


Live captions are now available for calls
This feature is super exciting for people who prefer visual queues when engaging with their stakeholders. Teams is now able to detect what is being said during a 1:1 call and present the text on the screen in real time. Please note that this functionality is only available in English at the time and is not available for phones within the government cloud.

live captions 1.png

 

Usability improvements on Teams phones
We’ve updated a few different areas of the Teams phones experience to improve how users interact with their calls and contacts.

 

When a boss or admin is in a call users can press the purple button touch target to see new options with respect to their contacts. Now a boss or admin can easily see their frequent contacts with instant options to see their call status or place an outgoing call to them.

 usability improvements.png

 

If a contact has multiple numbers, the UI has now been updated to select from a drop-down menu for the intended contact method.

multiple phones 1.png

 

Lastly, we have a new screen which easily tells a user if they have no voicemails. A great message to see if you are having a particularly hectic week!

no voicemails 1.png

 

Support for Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) in pre-call screen
To facilitate quick responses for auto attendant scenarios, dial pad will be made available for early media scenarios.

 

14 Comments
Copper Contributor

Love that backgrounds were now available in Teams phones. Hope you could consider as well the Noise Suppression not only in the pc, also in the phone.

Copper Contributor

One feature available in Skype for Business still doesn't work in Teams: Sharing from a different device while staying connected on another device. Every time you start sharing from a different device the audio will be transferred to this device as well and you can't avoid it. Please fix this Microsoft and then you will receive all praises.

 

 

Copper Contributor

Love the idea of the Outlook Contacts being available on the phone but it does not work nor is there a link to any setup instructions.  For sure it does not set it self up even though I have over 800 contacts in my Teams Outlook account and use them everyday.  Ugh, come on MSFT!!

Copper Contributor

Hi When will the virtual background be available for Samsung Tab A 8.0 2019.

Super excited 

 

 

 

 

 

Bronze Contributor

I upgraded one of our Common Area Phones to the new firmware and the option to enable and disable Call Forwarding disappeared. I had to add an M365 E3 subscription to the account to fix it. Is this a known issue?

Copper Contributor

Why does the Better Together for Teams phones keep getting delayed?   

Copper Contributor

@JohnSteckroth,
I just updated a Poly CCX400 to Teams Version 1.0.94.2021052803 for testing the new add/transfer feature mentioned in this article. However, I still don't have either option after the upgrade.

I have a few questions:

1) Will the transfer option be available for the CCX400?
2) Does the Teams Version I mentioned above include the transfer option or will there be another update coming that includes it?

Any insight provided would be appreciated. :smile:

Copper Contributor

I have the new transfer to voicemail on the ip phone after applying the most recent firmware, yea! But I have a client that uses the side cars with their IP phones and that does not give any availability to this new feature. If the admin needs to send directly to voicemail then they still have to search for the person each time on the people screen to get that option. Maybe this could be avoided and they could use the teams client for call control but there is no better together functionality there. Something SFB has had for years. With SFB online going away i am very disappointed that teams has not reached feature parity for enterprise voice.

Iron Contributor

@joacrabt @JohnSteckroth Same here with Yealink T55a, also after the firmware update all my phones now appear to be offline in the Teams admin console but do function and report to Intune as expected. This is Sweeet. /s

Brass Contributor

Yup @Ryan Steele I have the same issue with Common Area Phones following the update.  On updating the "Teams App" on devices we have lost the ability to access Call-Forward options, favourites, voicemail (we needed to add an "Exchange Online Plan 1" license to the account to have voicemail working on CAP phones previously), sign out etc.  These features are now behind an Admin password.  This is great if you want a fully locked-down phone for a truly public untrusted common area, absolutely useless for group-wide phones in trusted corporate environments (labs, warehouses, reception, staff lunch rooms, goods reception areas, breakout areas etc).  This isn't a minor change in CAP phone behaviour Microsoft people!  You're misunderstanding an entire telephony use-case and have screwed corporate-group-use with this change.  Better communication and notice needed please.   

Bronze Contributor

Hi @TheAndy, thanks for verifying.

 

We had a Common Area Phone at the cashier's station in the food service establishment that serves our organization. They often close early when demand is low so an Auto Attendant with Business Hours was not a viable solution. Instead, we set it up so they could manually forward the phone to a "Restaurant closed" Auto Attendant when they closed for the day. 

 

The morning after the firmware upgrade, they couldn't un-forward the phone, so they couldn't take any reservations or take-out orders until I added the E3 license and got the phone un-forwarded.

 

This is just the latest in a string of Microsoft Phone System failures that has impacted this group, so they have opted to move their phone service to a different provider. Can't say I blame them.

Copper Contributor

We have Poly CCX500 phones and we don't have the ability to search for Outlook contacts from them. We are running version 1449/1.0.94.2021052803, calling version 2021.10.01.10. 

 

Does anyone know what the interface is supposed to look like? When I tap People, I have the ability to see different "list" that I have defined in Teams on Widows. The way I get to my Outlook contacts from Teams on Windows is to go to Calls, then tap Contacts along the top of the screen. 

Brass Contributor

@Victor Solis What license did you assign to the account? The license determines what is visible on the interface of the phone. 
For common area phones there is an option in the TeamsIPPhonePolicy called: 

SearchOnCommonAreaPhoneMode

Determines whether a user can search the Global Address List in Common Area Phone Mode. Set this to ENABLED to enable the feature. Set this to DISABLED to disable the feature.

Copper Contributor

@Wilfried van Oosterhout I'm trying to search the Outlook personal contacts from a users' phone. I can search the GAL just fine.

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‎Jun 08 2021 07:11 AM
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