'Call Waiting' notification

[Stewart_Ross]

There's a few threads discussing 'Busy on Busy' (BoB) but I can't find any discussing the terrible user experience when BoB is disabled.

With a traditional telephony solution where 'Call Waiting' is enabled (i.e. in Teams parlance BoB is disabled), an unobtrusive beep/tone is heard in the background of the active call when a second call is received. The user can choose to hold the first call and answer the second or let Call Forward on No Answer take care of the call (usually divert to Voicemail or another number after a pre-set delay). The point being, the receiver's active call is not adversely impacted by the second call, but the user has the opportunity to answer the second call if they so choose.

My experience with Teams is that loud, obtrusive ring tone blasts over the existing call, making it almost impossible to continue with that call. The 'solution' appears to be BoB as far as Microsoft is concerned, but BoB does not give the user the opportunity to answer the second call if they so choose.

Is anyone aware of plans by Microsoft to introduce an acceptable 'call waiting' audible alert?

[#2]

I’d like to revive this topic to see if any progress is being made on a practical Call Waiting solution in Teams.

[#3]

@Peter_Joseph I suggest upvoting this Feedback if you haven't already: Provide more options for new calls rings while on a call · Community (microsoft.com)

[#4]

@Peter_Joseph Good luck with that Peter.

[#5]

Hi Ryan, I'm not sure the topic you mention is the same issue. What I'm asking for is simply the option to provide busy tone to a caller when a called number is busy. It's a basic telephony feature that Microsoft appears to not understand.

[#6]

@Stewart_Ross You may want to re-read your original post as you are specifically referring to "that loud, obtrusive ring tone [that] blasts over the existing call", which is exactly what the linked Feedback item refers to.

It is possible to have a caller receive a busy signal by assigning a Calling Policy with the "Busy on busy when in a call" option configured.

[#7]

My apologies but my general frustration with Teams telephony got the better of me... 😉

My main concern is that calls to services with Busy on Busy activated that do not have a call forward no answer destination set fail when the service is already active on a call. The caller should get busy tone under those circumstances. Some users don't want a call forward no answer destination set.

[#8]

@Stewart_Ross Haha, no worries 

That's an interesting observation re: the Busy on Busy behavior. I recall seeing that as well when we had a user who requested that setting on their line. Calls from the PSTN got a busy signal as expected, but other Teams users would get a "Call failed" message when calling the "busy" user.

That user got so frustrated with Teams Phone (specifically, the nightmare that is native Teams desk phones) that they complained to upper management and we had to move them back to an analog land line, but that's a story for another time.

[#9]

Yes, we have ongoing issues with lack of features, strange behaviour in general, lack of/weird reporting and Teams desk phones in particuar. I don't think Teams Calling is a high priority for Microsoft.

[#10]

Done! Thanks. I'm frankly surprised this hasn't garnered more than the few complaints here and at the topic you referenced above.

[#11]

Hey, friends, the latest Teams update finally addresses busy on busy with some additional features that we've been waiting for. Now you have options both in the TAC and on the desktop app depending on how you want to control it. And it actually works based on whether the user is on the phone and not also based on busy status in calendars as presence-based routing on call queues does. It's still not a full blown call waiting experience, but this goes a long way to easing end user frustrations and is a major win for Microsoft and us!

[#12]

@Peter_Joseph 

Thank you for the update, is there an announcement or blog post that describes the new features?

[#13]

Look at the April 4, 2023 notes here:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-new-in-microsoft-teams-devices-eabf4d81-acdd-4b23-...