Change User Number to Service Number

Brass Contributor

In S4B Online, is it possible to convert a user number into a service number?  We are working on moving a client to S4B PSTN Calling and since AA isn't available yet, we are going to use Team Call Groups to handle the primary incoming line to the business.  When AA is GA, we will want to change that number from a user number to a service number.

24 Replies

This feature/capabiliy is not support yet.

If this is a must have, you would need to open a support ticket with this request. I would encourage you to exaplain the reasoning as this request will go to a product owner to assess the viability. It will also serve as feedback for future planning.

We have an identical requirement and my guess is that a lot of other people do too. In lieu of the AA availability, our main company number was assigned to a User. Now that AA is rolling out, we want to continue using that published main phone number for our Auto Attendant - having to create an entirely new number for that purpose is not an option. I guess we could auto-forward the User number to a newly acquired AA service number (is this possible?), but that seems like a hack, and forces up to have to create an extra number.

Thanks Bob for bringing this up. I flagged this to the product owner team and it is been discussed the possibility to support transitioning numbers between the types.

I'll make sure that your report is also surfaced and considered for the decision.

Thansk again,

Helbert

Bob, we are going to be wanting to do this same exact thing.  We had to assign our main number to a user and utilized team calling since AA is not available yet.  Once it is we would want to make that number a service number also. 

Since the AA preview was recently provisioned on our tenant, I went ahead and created a support request to have them change one of our assigned "user" telephone numbers to be a "service" number instead. They required a bit of information (including a form to be filled out and signed - it looked like the form you'd use for a port order). Once received, I was told it would take a couple of weeks to make the change. Sigh.

Unfortunately for us I haven't received any notification of being accepted into that preview as of yet.  I signed up about 2 months ago.  I'm hoping to get accepted and have been checking almost daily to see if the option is in our tenant, but not luck yet.

Wow, that seems a little rough to change a number.  I'm sure there is some process on the backend that I'm unaware of, but hopefully this can be resolved at some point.

I am in the UK, and I have just managed to get Microsoft to port 5 user numbers to service numbers. It took weeks for them to work out how to do this but it is possible.

 

Further Information:

I had 5 numbers listed with British Telecom, which were ported into Skype for Business as User Numbers. When I informed Microsoft that these need to be Service numbers, they suggested that I port them out of Skype for Business and then port them back as Service numbers. This was not going to happen, as British Telecom would lock the numbers into a new contract. So this was given back to Microsoft to sort out.

Hi

 

We would like to do this too but support are saying its not possible.

 

Could you post the SR number you used so we could refer to it when talking to support?

I sent a email to my support contact at Microsoft:

 

This is the reply from my contact.

 

"Even the porting team has received multiple requests from customers to convert numbers from Subscriber to Service or vice versa. This, however, is still not a supported scenario in EMEA region.

 

Your number conversion was the first time this was done and only as a goodwill gesture from our carrier partner.

 

However, with your move we faced numerous challenges and quickly learned that we and our partner are not ready to support this scenario the same way it was done for you.

 

We still do acknowledge the need for this feature and as such, Microsoft is actively working on coming up with a plan to start supporting such scenarios in EMEA, but the work on this is still in progress."

 

So it looks at present this is still a Microsoft goal, but not yet.

 

 

 

Hi David

 

Thanks for the reply, looks like we will have to port it out and back in again.

 

 

I have waited over a month for a 2 new service numbers for Bedford in the UK. After chasing the support ticket I got an email back that evening saying 2 numbers had been injected into the tenant, however I can see where they are in SFB admin console. So at the moment I am either thinking that it needs time to replicate or I have to wait another month.  Really want to adopt this tech because I think it will resolve some business requirements to make us more site independent.

Sorry the dalyed reply.

@Jason Beney has thing issue been resolved yet? 

There are no delaed replication from the point the numbers in inject into your account/tenant. If you still can't see the number in the Admin Center, we'll need to look into it.

If this matter hasn't been solved yet, please send me a private message and I'll help engaging with Support.

 

Do you guys know where this is in the product road map?  Like others, we have clients who ported in their numbers waiting for AA capabilities and would like to utilize AA now that it is GA.  However we have assigned the numbers as users as well. 

Unfortunately I don't have a roadmap to share at this point. Please use the service desk approach.

Follow up:

I talked with O365 support.   There is a reference on the "Skype how to get phone numbers page" to an email address to send requests to, in the USA at least, for converting a user number to a service number. Link below.

Get-phone-numbers-for-Skype-for-Business-Online

It has you send emails to ptn@microsoft.com requesting a change to a service number. 

 

You need to change a user's number to a service number.

Send us the list of user numbers you want to convert to service numbers.

 

Support told me that the requests take up to 48 hours to complete. 

 Hi Helbert,

yes I changed approach and went to PTNEU@microsoft.com, really helpful team that did it in minutes for me! Have submitted another request as we are now up and running with our internal IT Service Desk running off SFB. This is going to make the team site independent and enable them to work From Home or anywhere. Looking to roll this out to a few other Depts. too.

 

Jason

Is there a recommended approach during the porting process/wizard to port respective numbers as service numbers instead of as user type numbers? This would save me a step during customer Phone System projects.

 

Kind regards,

Carnegie

@CarnegieJ-IAYF if you request the LOA template from ptn@microsoft.com, there's a tick box to specify if you're porting subscriber v. service numbers, but no way I've seen to do a mix of the two; we're winding down on our ports, but I've been bringing every site over as subscriber, then firing off an email to ptn@ when the port happens to get numbers converted; it normally happens with 30m of submittal, actually been the easiest part of every port so far (15 and counting)