Text message to MS Voice number in Teams

[jeffburkholder]

In our company we use MS Voice system and love the integration with Teams. But, a vendor tried to Text me a message and of course he grabs my business card and texts the number on the card, which is a MS Voice number.  Text fails..

Sure would be nice to have that text come into Teams (since it's associated to my account/email/Teams) as an outside SMS message and I could reply withing Teams to that message. 

[#2]

Hi,

You are not the only one asking for this, there are a couple of uservoice requests.
https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/34266145-add-sms-capabilities

In theory it would be possible for Microsoft to add this to Calling Plan customers, since they are the carrier there (or at least have a contract with a carrier to provide Calling Plan numbers). But the problem with sending SMS to a landline number is that not all carriers have support for this.

I know some carriers that created apps in Teams to send text messages, but that is not Teams native and not for receiving.

[#3]

Good to see there are others... I did a search for this topic and didn't find anything. I really can't see how this can be that difficult. The Voice# is tied to the Teams user (how Teams can use VOIP) and Teams can send messages (chat) to users. There are other collaboration/voice systems that do it. I can't believe MS can't do this.

[#4]

As some of the reports have titles that say "PSTN and SMS (Preview)", I'd say that Microsoft is likely working on it behind the scenes.

[#5]

You can try Clerk Chat. You can enable SMS & Calling on your teams number or bring in your existing phone/landline number inside teams and use it.
Visit them at https://clerk.chat/

[#6]

@jeffburkholder 

It is unfortunate that the Microsoft Business Voice still does not have Text Messaging available.  This is a huge hinderance for most businesses as you have indicated.  I check every month to see if they finally have added this feature as it had been represented 2-3 years ago.  The problem with many of MS products is that they move on to a new product or project before that finish an existing product.  I was very involved with the early stages of the Power Platform - PowerApps, Flow, etc.  It would take 2-5 years to actually fix something that had a huge impact on the usability of the product.  Really hope they start to take a different approach and become more transparent on these activities.

[#7]

Hey @MarcBailey I think Microsoft is finally around the corner with this. I've been told they are aiming for EOY 2023 although their roadmap still says nothing about it. 

In the meantime, there are a couple of options

- Use a Direct Routing provider that can provide SMS (ex. Screenshot from yakchat:)

- Teams Phone Mobile - allowing employees to use the same cell # in teams and for their mobile/sms

[#8]

We have been using Yakchat for 6 months and it works, however we luckily had 2 extra dormant numbers that we were able to use.
We are definitely looking forward to the day we can use the SMS and calling on the same number.