MS Phone System - SMS texting?

[Bob Manjoney]

We have a number of field personnel setup with Teams/PSTN calling plans. They assumed that their PSTN number would be able to send/receive SMS text messages to interact with people outside the organization, but this doesn't seem to be the case. (Apparently RingCentral supports this?) We just had one field sales rep complain that their lead had been texting her, but she never received the text messages. Of course we don't want to share personal mobile numbers with business contacts, and having a separate PSTN number and Mobile cell #'s just to support this seems excessive and old school, but maybe that's the only solution.

Are there any plans to support this type of functionality? I don't necessarily care whether it's Teams or Skype for Business client based - but the ability to interface Microsoft Phone System PSTN with SMS is what we need. I see some third party products that give you the ability to text from SfB, but they do so by assigning you a dedicated additional telephone number - clearly not the solution that would work for us.

Thanks in advance!

Bob

[#2]

I doubt that it will be added to Teams or Skype so that you can receive SMS text messages on your landline number. There is some providers that supports text-to-speech so if you send a text message to a landline number the receiver will get a voice call with that message.

For Skype there is third party tools that allows you send and receive text messages, but I guess it won't work with your landline number in Skype.
http://www.chatabox.co.uk/

For Teams I've seen one application from Cellip that allows you to send SMS text messages from Teams with their bot.

There is a request to get this to Skype.

https://www.skypefeedback.com/forums/299913-generally-available/suggestions/9080452-send-sms-from-sk...

[#3]

Hi Bob,

I've not seen this before as a question/feature.
The best way is to create a uservoice item and promote this over here. https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public

[#4]

@Bob Manjoney  I had been using Google Voice which has always been able to receive texts (and send).  I just assumed that this would available in MS phone system, but it's nowhere to be seen.  I'm really surprised that there isn't more interest in this.  I suppose MS assumes/wants that if someone wants to send a 'text' they can download Teams and sign up for a free account.  That's not realistic for all the SMS systems out there and in place.  Very disappointing.  We want employees to stop using their personal cell phone numbers, but not being able to tell someone to 'text me' to their MS number, it's an uphill battle.  Many people communicate with a text versus a call these days, so it severely limits the MS system to me.

[#5]

Google Voice has been doing this from day one, but I think there is a fundamental difference in the way they handle calls.  It would be super helpful to see this in Teams but I am guessing it will be limited to third party add on.