Skype for Business Certified IP Phones with Microsoft Teams
Published Nov 13 2018 09:58 AM 125K Views

For a complete, enriched Teams experience, we recommend customers use certified IP phones running Microsoft Teams natively and available on Teams Marketplace.

 

If customers have IP phones certified for Skype for Business, and are preparing for an upgrade to Microsoft Teams, the Skype for Business phones will continue to sign into the Skype for Business service and support a limited number of core functionalities listed below. There is no additional setup needed on the customer site for this to work. As customers prepare for the upgrade to Teams, they must consider deploying Teams native phones for a complete Teams experience.

 

Authentication

Sign in with user credentials/Web Sign-in

Modern Authentication

Phone lock/unlock

Hot Desking Support

Calling 

Incoming/Outgoing P2P calls from/to Teams users

In-call controls via UI

(Mute/unmute, hold/resume, blind transfer, end call)

PSTN calls

Visual Voicemail

911 support

Calendar and Presence

Calendar Access and Meeting Details

Presence Integration

Exchange Calendar Integration

Contact Picture Integration

Corporate Directory Access

Visual Voicemail

Meetings 

One-click Join for Pre-Scheduled Teams Meeting

Meeting Call controls

(Mute/unmute, hold/resume, hang up,

Add/remove participant)

Meeting Reminders

Add Skype for Business participant to ongoing meeting

Device Update and Management

Device Update

In-band provisioning

QoE & Log Upload

Common Area Phone Support

268 Comments
Brass Contributor

While I recognize that the phasing out of Skype for Business is inevitable, is it safe to assume that 3PIP phones will continue to be supported under Teams for the foreseeable future? I haven't read anything here that indicates they will stop working. I really like the form factor and UI of the Polycom VVX phones and would like to buy some more, and Polycom is still selling them. I can live without the "complete, enriched Teams experience" on my desk phone. Thank you.

Doug

Iron Contributor

Thanks for that John although Microsoft support is giving a different message - I raised a support ticket and they started talking about putting the switch to Teams on hold for a month but that after that, our Yealink phones won't work at all. This is at odds with what's been said here. We're actually using common area phones shared between two people and these only went in four months ago. I tried to get them to shift to softphones on their mobiles, but met with resistance. However, I managed to get a small team in a new office to go softphone only using USB headsets and mobiles - they are quite happy.

 

It is totally unacceptable for SfB hard phones to stop working when the tenant is switched to Teams. Not only is that very recent investment wasted, I'm going to look very foolish for recommending them. Never if my wildest dreams did I expect new hardware to be useless in <6 months. So I really do hope you're right John and that our common area phones will continue to work as plain old phones - you know, receive a call and make a call. My client isn't currently using any of the other features so they won't be missed.

 

I appreciate that the new Teams client is built on Android (we have three CP960s as well) and now understanding that, I accept that the phones can't be upgraded to support Teams but those old SfB hard phones must keep working for at least a couple more years.

 

There is a lot of frustration and pain on this thread - I do hope Microsoft is listening. They are not beyond brave reversal of intention - see how they abandoned the Edge rendering engine.

 

Regards, Rob.

Iron Contributor

PS. The Yealink CP960 is Android based - anyone know whether they can be upgraded to Teams? I see that a Teams flavour is now been sold. I'll try posting on the Yealink forum but I've had mixed results there.

Iron Contributor

@Helios Comms @The 3PIP phones now work with Teams. I have done my own testing. It is easy enough to spin up an E5 trial tenant and try it yourself. I have quite a few customers I need to migrate, so I have been lab Testing it. My trial has also included Direct Routing (to replace CCE). That works as well, but one of the new features, using on prem numbers as service numbers, is giving us difficulty. Honestly, you can answer your own questions in less than an hour by creating an E5 trial tenant.

Iron Contributor

@Doug Lee I have heard, from a presenter at a users group, that they will eventually be deprecated, because Microsoft has to support a gateway architecture just for these phones (Teams does not use SIP). Polycom should have their Teams native Phone out soon. Moving forward, I would not invest in any new 3PIP phones.

Microsoft

@Doug Lee 3PIP phones will continue to work with Teams for "the foreseeable future" but only with the functionality above. They will not support any new Teams capabilities, ever.  This is not an open ended statement, but a multi-year statement.

 

@Helios Comms there is a Teams native update / upgrade for YL CP960

 

 

Microsoft

@Helios Comms  re: "It is totally unacceptable for SfB hard phones to stop working when the tenant is switched to Teams."

You're right, which is why 3PIP SfB phones continue working with Teams. That is literally the whole point of the article above; it describes how SfB 3PIP phones continue working with Teams.

Brass Contributor

@Ilya Bukshteyn  @Kruthika Ponnusamy @Waseem Hashem 

 

Partner here.. just moved a client to O365/teams for voice as part of a office relocation and deployed (15) T56A phones.  On latest FW & teams app, however my client is having the issue with the call queue calls going to hold & needing to be resumed, for every call, inevitably resulting in many dropped calls.  They are also having drops when warm/cold transferring as well, although sporadic.

 

The deployment is about as vanilla & 'white paper' as you can get:

 

- Tenant is pure teams (no SfB)

- Teams voice switched from SfB legacy portal a couple of weeks ago

- No SBC/DR.. all users using calling plans

- 2 AA's and 2 CQ's, only 5-6 agents in queues

- T56a teams edition 'certified' phones from 'certified' partner, UC.com

- FW: 58.15.0.38

- Partner App: 1.15.0.19043022

- Portal: 5.0.4295.0

- Teams Version: 1449/1.0.94.2019043004

 

Calls to DID's are fine, calls thru AA's/CQ's are the issue.  Calls are fine with teams app on PC.

 

I have:

 

- Logged case with yealink & escalated over a week ago, which was flat out ignored

- Logged case with MS earlier this week (14527392).. some back and forth, sent logs, sent video, sent logs again, sent other info requested, no sense of urgency or a solution

- Logged case with UC.com today.. no response back yet

 

On a test phone I have here, after rebooting several times, the phone will now let me pick up a call from a queue, after a very un-natural 4+ second delay establishing session/transferring call.. to myself? But, this is the first time I have ever seen it work at all, so I don't have warm & fuzzies.

 

In short, I currently have a 15 yr client who wants their phones to work, and is coming after me with pitchforks... need some help here please!!

@libby2cm I am really sorry to hear about your experience with our phones. I will reach out to you offline - please share a good contact number for me to reach your. I would like to talk to you tomorrow to get the Microsoft case details/logs. Can you please also have them report an issue from the Teams application? When the users hit the issue, please go to settings->report an issue and send feedback. We do not expect failures with this app version in call queues. I will coordinate internally with Waseem to see if there are any service-side issues we need to investigate. 

 

Copper Contributor

@libby2cm You're not alone and I'm glad I'm not either. As a work around (until a solution is found) you can make a user that is simply setup to fwd all calls to a call group, this is limited to 5 members I believe. This will avoid the issue, but calls will need to be picked up by tapping on the screen as call groups can only be answered in that way.

Brass Contributor

@jcorbs  actually, while the experience is a little finicky, users can at least answer calls now with new fw/app and hard power reset.  The key seems to have been the hard power cycle.  On my test device at home, i installed FW/new app, rebooted, etc., and still had issue.. but i happened to unplug it and plug it back in, and i was able to answer calls from queue.  I then remotely powercycled phones at client site via switch, and fixed it for them too.  Go figure.  There is still a few second delay establishing the session when you pickup the handset, but at least it doesn't flake out and put call on hold.  Headset with teams client on PC still seems to be the most stable option though.

 

The phones are new, and so is the SW, so it will probably just take a bit for bugs to get worked out.  

Brass Contributor

 

3PIP phones will continue to work with Teams for "the foreseeable future" but only with the functionality above.

Thank you @Ilya Bukshteyn for the clarification, but one feature that's missing is Boss-Admin, which might be a deal breaker. I understand that there are ways around this, but it will require retraining. Which leads me to...

 

@Kruthika Ponnusamywrote:

If customers have IP phones certified for Skype for Business, and are preparing for an upgrade to Microsoft Teams

That seems like a carefully worded sentence. What about customers who are not "preparing for an upgrade to Microsoft Teams"? How long can we reasonably expect to put off being required to upgrade to Teams?

Thanks!

Iron Contributor

>How long can we reasonably expect to put off being required to upgrade to Teams?

 

I thought that the switch to Teams, at least for Office 365 online customers, was been forced. I've delayed my main client's upgrade by the allowable month but I believe it's not possible to delay it again?

 

I'm still paranoid that when Org wide setting is changed from SfB only to Teams only, their phones will stop working...

Iron Contributor

Hmm, I guess I could switch one of them over as a test...

Bronze Contributor

Is it intended that it should be possible to manage the "Favorites" contact list using the Teams client? On my Polycom VVX 411, the clients I had set in Skype for Business as Favorites appear on the home screen as speed dial entries. Since migrating my account to Teams-Only mode, I am no longer able to manage these. Existing contacts are still displayed with their online status, but I have no way to add or remove these contacts. (Teams has its own "Favorites" list, but changes to it are not reflected on the phone.)

Steel Contributor

@Ryan Steele 

 

This is a real nuisance isn't it? By becoming a Teams-only org w/the VVX phones, you've effectively shut the door on being able to manage the phone's favorites in a simple way.

 

Thus far, the only workaround I have found for this is via the Teams admin console. By reverting the user in question to Skype Only, waiting a bit, then launching Skype for Business client, you can now make changes to the favorites. Go back to Teams and put the user back onto Teams-Only, and now the Polycom phone will "pick up" the newly edit list of favorites. It works for me because I still have the option to revert to SfB, but I gather not all tenants (newer ones, w/less than 500 users) will have that same ability.

 

Bob

Bronze Contributor

Re: managing favourites displayed on 3PIP phones, I found these UserVoice requests:

 

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/37905043-favorite-pinned-conta...

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/36057904-teams-contacts-and-fa...

 

Please vote them up if this issue is affecting you. 

 

Another thing: recording a voicemail greeting. Is that something we will ever be able to do from a 3PIP phone? It seems like such an easy fix: just add the menu options to the call-in interface for checking voicemail. 

Iron Contributor

@Ryan Steele You should consider 3PIP phones to be deprecated. Don't expect any new development. We used to be able to use the 3PIP phone as a microphone (and speaker) for the soft client (for SfBO), using Better Together over Ethernet (BToE), but Microsoft has already stated that the Teams soft client will not support BToE with 3PIP phones. They are working on a Bluetooth solution for the newer Teams native phones (Android based). Microsoft has provided backwards compatibility for the 3PIP phones to act as basic phones, which works well for stand alone common area phones and also makes it so we can get a little more life out of these phones that have been recently purchased (in the last year or so), even as user desk phones (but they will lose the BToE functionality). It isn't perfect, but at least we aren't throwing all these new(ish) phones away.

Brass Contributor

The loss of BToE functionality with the 3pip phones is unacceptable. Who at Microsoft thought it was a good idea to take away users ability to initiate phone calls with the desktop app but used the desk phone for the audio functions is not seeing the experience from the users point of view. 

It is great to say "these phones will not work as you are used to when we move your to teams, so you should buy phones that do," when phones that will be supported are not out yet. We had an office full of CCX600 phones that needed to be replaced because of 3DES depreciation and the only viable replacements were 3pip phones.

You need to develop a bridge to keep the basic calling function integration. No one cares about the "Teams functionality" on a desk phone, just making and receiving phone calls with the convenience or right clicking on a contact and selecting call. 

Microsoft

@Keith Laudenberger We hear you. No one here thought it was a "good idea" to not have BToE working on 3PIP phones with Teams. It was simply not possible to do; 3PIP phones don't run our SW, they run OEM SW which does protocol interop with Skype for Business. OEMs implemented BToE themselves, in inconsistent/ different ways.  

The above is exactly why everyone should care about actually having native Teams apps on phones; because we write the SW which runs on the phones and we can enhance that SW quickly. You will see BToE / "better together" scenarios coming to Teams Phones "soon" (come see us at Ignite!). 

We did the best we could with getting 3PIP phones to work on truly basic functionality when a user moves to Teams, and that was a significant set of work.  However BToE was not "basic functionality" and we just didn't have the ability to make that work with Teams without having a true Teams phone.

Iron Contributor

@Ilya Bukshteyn To address what @Ryan Steele  was getting at with recording voicemail greetings, it would be a good to have another way to update greetings. We have several clients that primarily use physical handsets (for many/most employees, there is no soft client deployed). There should be a way for these users to update their voicemail greeting or the voicemail greeting for a generic voicemail account, whether that is through a Teams mobile client or possibly a dial in phone number (the old subscriber access functionality). This is a common complaint / difficulty that we face.
Microsoft

@John Joseph appreciate the feedback, we will have this on Teams phones in the future.  @Kruthika Ponnusamy 

Bronze Contributor

@Ilya Bukshteyn @Kruthika Ponnusamy Why can't we have the ability to record a voicemail greeting on a 3PIP phone now? I mean, I understand that adding features is always more complicated than it looks, but in this case we're talking about taking a "menu" that says "To listen to your voice messages, press 1" and adding "For greetings, press 2", and then if the user presses 2, redirecting them to the interface for recording greetings which is a thing that already exists right now except you can only access it from the Skype for Business and Teams desktop clients for some unfathomable reason.

 

Tell you what: let's make a trade. I'm sure there is some other pain-in-the-butt feature you're supporting on 3PIP that we'd be willing to get rid of if it meant we could have the ability to record greetings. "Favorites syncing"? I mean, that's not even working when the user is in Teams Only mode, let's just get rid of it. Then you can toss out Presence Integration too. "Corporate Directory Access"? Who needs it? "Contact Picture Integration"? Is that even a thing?

 

Take a poll, we can all vote and we can replace some feature that hardly anybody uses with one that is fundamental to the whole voicemail experience (and no, I'm sorry, but the stilted text-to-speech greeting doesn't quite cut it as a replacement, especially when many of these phones are being deployed in reception areas where multiple staff members rotate through, none of whom log in with the user account the phone is signed in with so they have no way of accessing its aka.ms/vmsettings page).

Microsoft

@Ryan Steele Because 1) these 3PIP phones do not natively connect to the Teams service at all, but rather go through multiple gateways we built to keep those phones running when users move to Teams and 2)  because we don't built the SW on 3PIP phones, that is built (differently) by each OEM partner. 

This is also why we aren't building / enabling any new features on 3PIP phones at all, so can't make that trade you propose.

We will look to enable this on new native Teams phones later this CY.  @Kruthika Ponnusamy 

Brass Contributor

@Ilya Bukshteyn  How are you going to get "Phone lock/unlock", "Hot Desking Support", and "Presence Integration"  to work? If I quit out of my BTOE program these features do not currently work with my Polycom VVX phone.

How are desktop users or users in locations with RF interference that prevent Blue Tooth from working reliable going to use these new "Teams Phones"?
Microsoft

@Keith Laudenberger BT will be used for local pairing; I've yet to see an environment where RF interference is bad enough to prevent local pairing of a PC and another device (ie. a phone) sitting right next to it. We will use the pairing on native Teams phones (not VVX) to tell us when a user has a PC and a phone, and then we will do BToE equivalent functionality using our own cloud services and clients.

Brass Contributor

@Ilya Bukshteyn We have had numerous users have issues with BT mice in windows 10 laptops.

 

I don't think you addressed the first part of my question. The first post on the thread says those features will be supported on 3pip phones with Teams. I have tried using my VVX phone with teams and they currently do not work without BTOE. Will some shadow version of SfB be running in the background with BTOE to make this work?

 

I am not trying to be difficult but nothing has been clearly stated to explain how all the functionality listed in the first post is going to work.

@Keith Laudenberger the features listed in this article will work once your user account has been updated with a Teams license. We have a gateway service within Microsoft infrastructure that enable VVX and other 3PIP phones work after user has updated to Teams. BTOE is a feature that cannot work after this upgrade.

Can you please describe in more detail what does not work for you? Alternatively, I can reach out on IM to find out what issues you are facing with your VVX phones. 

Bronze Contributor

@Ilya Bukshteyn I'm not talking about making any changes at all to the OEM software running on the phone. I'm requesting what I assume would be a relatively minor change to one of these "gateways" you refer to. When I press the button on my Polycom phone to listen to my voicemail, it's just making a phone call to the Skype for Business Online Voicemail Server, where you can listen to messages but not record a greeting for some reason. All I'm asking for is the ability to "press 2 to record a greeting". This is entirely under your control.

@Kruthika Ponnusamy 

Bronze Contributor

@Keith Laudenberger In order to sign in to Teams with a VVX phone, you need to choose the "Web Sign In" option, visit https://aka.ms/sphone in your web browser on your computer and enter the code displayed on the phone's screen.

Microsoft

@Ryan Steele your assumption is not correct. It doesn’t work that way. Not minor or simple or entirely under our control. 

Bronze Contributor

@Ilya Bukshteyn Thanks for the clarification. Has there been a deep dive published anywhere on the architecture of the back end that powers the 3PIP gateway? If I had a better understanding of the way it works, it would be easier to explain its limitations to my clients.

Brass Contributor

@Ilya Bukshteyn @Kruthika Ponnusamy I understand the explanation why BTOE doesn't work under Teams, but I don't understand why a basic feature like managing favorites doesn't work. I also don't understand why boss-admin can't work. It feels like some of these decisions were not based on technical reasons. The VVX phones are great devices and could continue to be used as phones for years with some basic features carried forward.

 

Regarding voicemail, does https://aka.ms/vmsettings continue to work under Teams? I use it to customize my message in Skype for Business.

 

Thank you.

Microsoft

@Doug Lee I can assure you that all decisions around 3PIP phones like VVX were based on technical limitations / differences. These devices are limited to only the capabilities we had in Skype for Business Online, and can’t take advantage of any new Teams cloud phone capabilities, like boss / admin.

Microsoft

@Ryan Steele no, we have not published architecture for the GW we built to enable 3PIP phones to work with Teams, given this is something we want to be somewhat transparent to customers. The focus should be on what capabilities are, and are not, supported for 3PIP with Teams.  We don’t customers will necessarily care about why, as long as they are clear on the limitations.

Bronze Contributor

@Ilya Bukshteyn Regarding boss-admin/delegation, that is absolutely a capability you have in Skype for Business Online:

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/set-up-skype-for-business-online/set-up-and-troubl...

https://support.polycom.com/content/dam/polycom-support/products/voice/business-media-phones/user/en...

 

Let's talk about Favorites for a bit, because I think that falls within the scope of any reasonable definition of "Presence Integration". On my VVX 411, I can see the status of the contacts I had added to my Favorites before I moved from Islands to Teams Only mode, but I have no way of adding or removing anyone without switching back to Islands mode and managing them in SfB. Is this a bug, or working as designed?

Microsoft

@Ryan Steele this is working as designed. We also can't support OEM implemented features on 3PIP phones, such as Poly's Boss / Admin implementation. Please refer to the table at the top of this article for what is supported on 3PIP phones for users moving to Teams. 

Bronze Contributor

@Ryan Steele this is working as designed

@Ilya Bukshteyn If this is the case, perhaps you might consider putting an asterisk next to "Presence Integration" in the list of supported features, and add something like this at the bottom:

 

* Presence integration is only supported for contacts that were added to the user's Skype for Business favorites list before they were moved into Teams Only mode. Once the user is in Teams Only mode, they will be unable to modify the list of contacts displayed on the phone.

Microsoft

@Ryan Steele good suggestion; @Kruthika Ponnusamy 

Iron Contributor

Just an FYI, we have had the 3PIP problem with not being able to answer call queue calls resurface. It is somewhat of a pocket case issue. We have been troubleshooting a problem with a new feature, Direct Routing service numbers having no audio on call queue calls. This issue was for the Teams soft client. But, the 3PIP phones were behaving differently, The end user continues to hear music on hold and the 3PIP phone just hears silence. When the 3PIP phone hangs up, the call will continue with the flow (transfer to voicemail), but if the 3PIP phone doesn't hang up, the caller will continue to hear music on hold. The issue with the no audio for Teams soft clients was just resolved with a software release for the Ribbon SBC, but the problem with the 3PIP phones still manifests. This is only for calls on a Direct Routing service numbers. Cloud service numbers work as designed.

@John Joseph I will reach out to you over IM. We have not had any recent changes to the service to impact existing 3PIP phones. 

Bronze Contributor

For anyone else wondering whether the Skype for Business Online retirement announcement would have any implications for 3PIP phone support, I found this notice in the Upgrading from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams FAQ:

 

Will current third-party IP (3PIP) phones continue to work with Microsoft Teams?And if so, how long?

After the Skype for Business Online retirement date of July 31, 2021, users with 3PIP devices who have been migrated over to Teams only will be able to continue using their 3PIP devices with a limited set of functionalities until July 31, 2023.

Brass Contributor

Thank you @Ryan Steele for pointing that out.

 

Regarding the VVX/Teams/Favorites issue, I discovered a workaround. On the VVX:

Settings->Features->Line Key Customization

Enable

Then under Phone Line Keys you can search the SFB directory and make assignments.

 

Not elegant, but it works and it provides presence. 

Brass Contributor

When you make a PSTN call on a Polycom VVX certified Skype Compatible ("Teams Ready" :facepalm:) phone it works :hearteyes:, however, why is there no record of the call in the Call history in Teams app? The call appears in the Teams Admin Portal>Users>USER>Call History. We are running the latest Microsoft qualified firmware and in Teams only mode. I feel this should be part of the PSTN calls core functionality listed above. Please confirm if this is an oversight and will be fixed/supported to provide users full call history.

Brass Contributor

@Kruthika Ponnusamy I'm little bit weary of resurrecting this topic but... :grinning_face:

Do Microsoft support 3pip phones with AA and CQ where service number is routed via Direct Routing? I'm only after a Yes or No kind of answer as I'm not sure if it's worth putting much time into troubleshooting.

 

Thanks

Brass Contributor

I can't tell you if they support it or not, but it doesn't work with direct routing.  res account with direct routing number assigned only works with teams native mode as the client.  res account with cloud routing number assigned works with teams and skype4b clients.

 

if you try to answer a direct routed res account with a skype client when homed online, the client will ring and you will be able to answer but it will sound like the caller hung up right as you picked up.  meanwhile, the caller behavior will continue to hear ringing, blissfully unaware that anybody attempted to answer their call.

 

fastest way to confirm behavior is to just create 2 res accounts with 2 available lineURIs and associate them to a test AA/CQ.  of course it might not work because why would anything that appears properly configured be expected to work without first waiting 24 hours.  but apparently we live in crazy land now and when the crazy people are running crazy land you can't expect things to make sense.

Brass Contributor

Hehe thanks for your feedback @Rob Geach 

This is exactly the experience that we have with various clients. So before jumping into SIP capture and spending hours troubleshooting I wonder if there's even any point of doing so. My understanding is the MSFT only supports native teams devices for AA/CQ via DR.

 

Trouble is that we often can't port individual numbers from a range (especially bearer) to O365 so delivering inbound call to CQ vi DR is ideal. That said we still have lots of clients with VVXs...

 

 

 

Iron Contributor

@Damian Kozlowski My ticket with Microsoft is still open. It is not yet resolved. They pushed a hot fix a couple of weeks ago, but it did not resolve it.

Copper Contributor

Made the jump to 3CX and my god is it worlds better. No more headaches, no more random outages, no more excuses. I ended up using Telin.com to implement it. Super easy, great people to work with. Good luck to the MS Teams... Team. They have a hard road ahead.

Brass Contributor

@John Joseph interesting to see that MS is looking into it. I guess if it wasn't support they would've closed the case. Unless it's still finding its way to the correct team :)

 

When it comes to MS support I find Premier Support top notch, regular support can take weeks before the case finds the right person for the job.

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