Teams and Skype for Business co-existence

[reditguy]

Hi, we are unable to fully move towards Teams due to the lack of functionality on desk phones, which is important to receptionists.  

Is there any co-existence model where we can use Teams on our Windows PCs, mobile devices, iPads, etc. and continue using Skype for Business on the Yealink desk phones? If the receptionists use SFB (skype for business) on their desk phones and get a call and need to transfer it (again all the other users are on Teams), will the Teams users be able to pick up calls on their Teams clients on their PCs and/or mobile Teams apps? and vice versa? How will conferencing work?

Thanks.

[#2]

@Paul Lange 

Thanks, I did but they arent being very helpful.  I just want to ensure that the settings I stated are correct.

[#3]

@Paul Lange @Paul Lange @Linus Cansby 

So I switched everyone to Teams Only on Friday, gave it 2+ days, and it still didn't work (the SFB desk phone could not 'add a user' with someone on a Teams desktop client).

Support is not being much help either.

Thanks.

[#4]

@reditguy You don't have the option to add a third user to the call or it doesn't work?

I'm away on Ignite this week (and Paul too) so I will not be able to test this again this week, but can test it next week when I'm back from Ignite.

[#5]

@Linus Cansby 

It doesn't work...again, someone calls our main# and the receptionist picks up the call on the SFB desk phone...and hits the + button on the top right to add someone to the call, but that call rings on the person's SFB and not Teams (transfer works as expected).  See if you can ask someone there!

Thanks.

[#6]

@reditguy 

So receptionist is trying to conference another person and that rings to SfB?  So the other (non-receptionist) user is still running both clients, SfB and Teams?

Have you tried having those users exit SfB and just have Teams available to take a call?

[#7]

@Paul Husted 

Hi, yes...I made sure the SFB client was completely shut down and only Teams was open.  I am beginning to think that this is NOT supposed to work as expected.

[#8]

@reditguy 

I suspect you're running into what we did. We had SfB phones installed at some of our customers and, in most cases, we've given up assuming they will work for some call use cases. Simple calls - direct to that user - no problem. But more complex scenarios with other users in TeamsOnly mode - call queues, conferencing, and so on - all seem to rely on the phone running SfB firmware to be able to seamlessly cross over the interoperability gateway between SfB online and Teams and not lose context or features. There were just too  many things we tried that didn't really work.

Some of our users simply migrated to using the Teams client and the need for phones disappeared. Some converted to Teams phones (Yealink T5x devices) - those work pretty well because they're running a simplified Teams app.

If someone is this thread had a different experience, I'd love to hear about it.

[#9]

@Paul Husted 

Correct, majority of our users are using the Teams desktop clients and no physical desk phones, but the issue is our receptionists who need a desk phone with an expension module.  And the Teams desk phone UI is pretty terrible as you cannot do shortcuts or favorites to at least make it easy to transfer without needing to search for someone.

[#10]

@Paul Husted @Linus Cansby @Paul Lange @Paul Lange 

So Microsoft support was really of no help....what I ended up doing was getting some AudioCodes C450HD Teams compatible phones, left the admins on Islands Mode and converted everyone else to Teams Only, and this seems to work.  The C450HD's even support the sidecars.

One question I do have - is there a way to 'break into' or join a pre-existing conference calls (the way I described below) without needing someone to conference you in? Like once the conf call is created by the admin (again, but joining others to the call), does it setup a bridge or a link or something for the call that others can see?

Thanks.

[#11]

@Paul Husted @Linus Cansby @Paul Lange @Paul Lange 

Hi, we moved the receptionist to Teams only mode and things improved considerably.  I have 2 additional questions:

1) what is the different between the call group settings in the Teams admin portal and user's desktop client call group settings? Is there a way to make it so that the first option is no one, and then ring call group after 10 seconds, and then to voicemail? Like it did in SFB? Can I use some other call plan feature for this?

2) Is there a way I can set it so that calls after 6pm do NOT ring the call group and go directly to VM or something after a few seconds from the main receptionist line?

[#12]

@reditguy 

re: #2. Call queues do not have after-hours options. Auto-attendants do. In our setup, we have an auto-attendant that fronts our support call queue, giving a caller options - do they know who they're trying to call back? do they just want to leave a voicemail and get a call back? and so on...

It's easy to set up business hours on an auto-attendant and use a different menu and routing outside of normal hours.

As to #1, can you clarify what you're trying to accomplish?

[#13]

@Paul Husted @Linus Cansby @Paul Lange @Paul Lange 

Thanks

#1 - In SFB, there was an option to ring call group after 5 seconds (or longer) and if no one picks up it goes to VM.  In Teams there seems to be no such option.  If we have it to initially set to ring to no-one and then call group 10 seconds later, and no one still picks up the call just dies.  We can have it so that the first option is to ring call group (at the same time) and then VM after 10 seconds, but that annoys the call group users and rightfully so, as it should only forward to them when the receptionist doesn't pick up.  I noticed some call group settings under Teams Admin - Users - User - Voice section, so wasn't sure if this was different than the client settings.

reg #2 - Just want to mention again that we are using Call groups and not really call queues, we can't have auto-attendant during business hours because someone HAS to pickup the phone live, its just the way our business functions.  Any suggestions?

[#14]

@Paul Husted @Linus Cansby @Paul Lange 

Hi guys, any update?

[#15]

@reditguy 

You've accurately summarized the personal settings for a user. There are two levels - what to do first and then what to do next if the call doesn't get answered at step 1.

If you immediately invoke the call group, then everyone else is eventually trained to ignore the calls, assuming the receptionist is going to answer.

If you use the call group at step 2, then there's no third option to send it on to voicemail if no one answers.

Frankly, this is the behavior that auto-attendants and call queues were designed to handle. They give you more choices, allowing you to tailor the call flow to what the business needs. But that IS different than what the business has done before.

An auto-attendant hardly says that someone won't answer the call - it just gives callers options on what to do (if you know who you need, say their name, for example) - or hit zero for operator and talk to the receptionist like they do now. If you don't provide options that send someone to voicemail too soon, then your caller is more likely to get a human.

And call queues have a huge advantage - they can orbit a caller in queue, continuing to notify agents until someone accepts the call. A queue also notifies agents on screen that this is a call from the queue - which tends to encourage them to accept it.

I would encourage you to consider options - yeah, it's change - but it's probably change for the better in the long run.

[#16]

@Paul Husted 

Thanks, the problerm is at our firm and industry people except a live person to answer right off the bat...not hit 0 to talk to someone...is that possible with an auto attendant or call queues?

Also, say I keep it the way it is today without auto attendants or call queues...is there a way for it to forward directly to voicemail after 7pm or something?

[#17]

@reditguy 

There are no time-based controls on a specific user's call behavior, so no way to route differently after hours at the user level.

A call queue would do the following to an inbound caller

1 - play an initial greeting which you configure (welcome to XYZ, an agent will be with you shortly)

2 - plays music on hold while it notifies agents (so caller hears something, not just dead air)

3 - wait for an agent to accept, then connect the caller with the agent

You can configure call routing sequence for agents

But even with a call queue, there isn't an option to do something differently after hours. That's the function of an auto-attendant.

private message me and we can take this conversation to a phone call and discuss if you wish.