Speaking at abtis Modern Teamwork Roadshow 2019
Soon, I’ll speak at the abtis Modern Teamwork Roadshow in Pforzheim (19/03/2019), Heidenheim (20/03/2019) and Freiburg i.B. (19/03/2019). The event and speakers cover different topics all around modern teamwork.
I’ll talk about Microsoft Teams and (PSTN) telephony. My session “Telefonie mit Microsoft Teams – Das sollten Sie wissen” is about frequently asked questions and things you should know regarding Teams and (PSTN) telephony. I’ll give answers to frequently asked questions and provide first ideas on how you could start with adding PSTN telephony to Teams to enable your fellow employees for modern teamwork throughout your business.
Additional Ressources
How to port Microsoft Phone System phone numbers between Office 365 Tenants?
In this post I describe and share my experience on how you can port numbers from Microsoft Phone System from one Office 365 source tenant to another Office 365 target tenant. First of all, why should you do this? Well, there are several reasons you might have to port existing phone numbers from a source to a target Office 365 tenant, e.g.
- company merger and acquisition
- company segregation
- other forms of organizational restructure measures and needs
- technology change requirements (migrate / cutover / move (partially) from a PoC environment to a production environment …)
- security change requirements
- …
When do you have to port phone numbers?
On the one hand, if one of the above reasons or another reason may apply to your organization. And of course, on the other hand, if your organization and you like to keep the phone numbers to carry on getting calls on these ones. To sum it up,
- you’ll have to port phone numbers if you rely on Microsoft Phone System Calling Plans and
- Microsoft is also your PSTN service provider from whom you get your PSTN phone numbers
- and you might published (to suppliers, customers, partners) and adopted these phone numbers in your company communication with the outside world … (mail signatures, business cards, …)
Is this difficult to do?
Fortunately it is not.
Still, you have to pay attention to a few things to make the phone number porting a smooth cutover and a success. I recommend to read carefully what’s on the Microsoft Phone System documentation and a blog (see links below). I do not mention here that an Office 365 Tenant-to-Tenant migration might has other challenges you have to cope with. I recommend that you plan it – the whole migration – thoroughly to get it working with a minimal impact to your users.
What numbers can I port?
You can port user and service numbers.
What do I have to do?
As a prerequisite I recommend to set up the destination tenant with the appropriate licenses (e.g. E5 + Calling Plan International + Communication Credits + Audioconf …) to be ready for assignment as soon as the numbers are available in the destination tenant. Don’t forget about setting up Communication Credits.
Besides of all your other Office 365 Tenant-to-Tenant (T2T) migration tasks as your first step please read the blog post from “Porting Cloud PSTN Telephone Numbers Between Office 365“.
What data do I need to submit to the Microsoft PSTN Porting team?
Because it is almost always the same data you need to submit to Microsoft for a T2T migration I just created an easy to use table which you can copy and help as a guiding and supporting tool.
| Data | Value (you need to insert) |
| O365 source tenant domain name | ….onmicrosoft.com |
| O365 source tenant unique identifier | … |
| O365 source tenant (porting) PIN | … |
| O365 destination tenant domain name | ….onmicrosoft.com |
| O365 destination tenant unique identifier | … |
| O365 numbers emergency location address (for the numbers) | e.g. (Floor, Building,) Street, City, ZIP, Country |
| Number(s) to be ported from source to destination tenant | e.g. +49711xxxxxxx to +49711xxxxxyy |
| Number type (user vs. service phone numbers?) | e.g User |
| Requested date and time range of port requestion execution | e.g. 17/03/2019 10am |
| Request mail-to [Microsoft PSTN Team, see port request Microsoft page] | e.g. Microsoft PSTN Europe Team |
What’s next?
After you have submitted the request the Microsoft PSTN Team answers, either with additional questions or a confirmation request. You than need to confirm the port request which enables the Microsoft PSTN Team to port your numbers based on the details of the confirmation mail.
During the porting
- the numbers will be removed on the source tenant,
- users will not be able to be called or make a (PSTN) call [inform your users early enough],
- numbers will show up in the destination tenant.
If you have licenses, numbers ready, congratulations you made it and can now assign the user/service numbers within the target O365 tenant.
Conclusion, opinion and summary
In my opinion porting phone numbers is really a smooth migration part of an Office 365 T2T migration. Recently, I had to port numbers and was really positively surprised how straightforward and smooth it worked. The only thing I really want to note and highlight is that if you should have all your licenses early enough in the destination tenant because in a recent T2T migration the licenses where added/booked quite late and that’s why it took some time till phone numbers could be assigned to users.
Additional Ressources
General
- Microsoft Phone System – Here’s what you get with Phone System in Office 365
- Port a Phone Number to Cloud PBX in Office365 [2016, general post about porting numbers from a PSTN provider to Microsoft Phone System, still a good read, bit different to do in the EU/Germany]
- Transfer phone numbers to Office 365
- Transferring phone numbers common questions
Phone Number Porting Tenant-2-Tenant
- Porting Cloud PSTN Telephone Numbers Between Office 365 Tenants [worked fine for me; in EU/DE you could send a mail to PTNEU instead of PTN; or other mail address you used at requesting (new)/porting (of) numbers the first time; good read]
Online Audiocodes Command-Line Reference Guide for SBCs/GWs Version 7.20
This post is about news regarding the Audiocodes CLI Reference Guide. If you configure Audiocodes Session Border Controllers (SBCs) or Gateways you may know that there are some features and settings you might need or prefer to set them via command line (SSH/telnet).
In the past you downloaded the latest reference guide from the Audiocodes Library as PDF. Now there is a new site where all the commands can be found and looked up. You can find the guides as before via the Audiocodes Library.
Conclusion, opinion and summary
I prefer to use the site instead of the PDFs because the commands are easier to find at least for one version. However, it would be nice to have the option to switch between versions. E.g. if you have still a SBC with 7.0 a version selection which enables you to switch from 7.20 reference guide to 7.0 would be nice. Otherwise you had to navigate via the Library to that version. Finally, this new content delivery is nice and all you need. I like it.
Additional resources
Microsoft Teams Calling for everyone
Microsoft rolls out Teams Calling for everyone. What does it imply?
It means that everybody will get the “Call”/”Phone” button in the Teams navigation pane on the left. Additionally users will get voicemail capabilities. For existing “calling” users there won’t be a change as it reads on the official roadmap.
So, your existing CsTeamsCallingPolicy etc. should be as is.
Conclusion, opinion and summary
I like this because it will make adding telephony, PSTN voice, just a tiny little change if you go for telephony with Teams. User adoption for telephony might not require so much efforts because for the user it’s just a little extra.
Additional resources
- Office 365 Roadmap Item 33579 https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=33579
Microsoft Teams Devices and IP Phones
In this post I’d like to highlight and share resources about Teams devices and IP Phones. Does one of the following questions or even both apply to you?
- Are you planning to transition your conference rooms to collaborative spaces and rooms?
- Are you planning to migrate telephony completely or partially to Microsoft Teams?
In both cases, to begin planning, I recommend to browser to and do not miss to check the below links. Microsoft as well as third-party vendors offer a wide range of devices to cover your needs by leveraging the Microsoft Teams platform. The best place to go and check for (certified) devices is the “Microsoft Teams Devices Marketplace”. There you’ll find …
- Headsets
- Speaker phones
- Desk phones
- Room systems
- Conference phones and
- Cameras
Conclusion, opinion and summary
I recommend to take a look on the linked pages to get an overview on available certified devices.
If you are about to start your journey towards Microsoft Teams it might help you assess your users/rooms /spaces requirements and to create suited personas (e.g. 6-Seat-Room –> Surface Hub, Office Information Worker –> Notebook + wired Headset, Assistant –> Notebook + Mobile + Teams IP Phone xyz).
Additional Ressources
- Microsoft Teams Devices Marketplace https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/across-devices/devices/category?devicetype=34
- Microsoft Teams IP Phones and Intune Enrollment https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Microsoft-Teams-IP-Phones-and-Intune-Enrollment/ba-p/330432
- Bringing Intelligent Communication in Microsoft Teams across devices https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Bringing-Intelligent-Communications-in-Microsoft-Teams-across/ba-p/170324
- Manage your devices in Teams https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/device-management
- Microsoft Surface Hub https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-hub
- Yealink T58A series: https://www.yealink.com/products_43.html
- Audiocodes C450HD Native Teams IP Phone (Demo): AudioCodes C450HD Native Microsoft Teams IP Phone
Exchange Online Unified Messaging is transitioned to Cloud Voicemail
In this post I’d like to point out the most important aspects of the discontinuation of Exchange Online Unified Messaging (hereinafter: EXO UM, voicemail and auto attendant capabilities). EXO UM is discontinued as announced by Microsoft months ago. Now, Microsoft published an information regarding the planned transition towards Cloud Voicemail. Below a short summary of the announced information by Microsoft:
- EXO UM will be transitioned and migrated to Cloud Voicemail in calendar year 2019 (not later than February 2020)
- Voicemail messages can still be stored on Exchange Online as well as Exchange Server
- You’ll receive a transition notification by Microsoft via Office 365 Admin Center
- You can postpone the transition to Cloud Voicemail via the support panel in the Office 365 Admin Center (however before February 2020)
- EXO UM with Lync Server 2010 will not be supported anymore and will not be transitioned
- EXO UM with Lync Server 2013 will be transitioned to Cloud Voicemail
- EXO UM with Lync Server 2015 will be transitioned to Cloud Voicemail
- EXO UM Auto Attendants must migrated to Cloud Auto Attendant services
- EXO UM Auto Attendants must be re-created on the Cloud Auto Attendant service
Conclusion, opinion and summary
EXO UM will be replaced by Cloud Voicemail. The EXO UM service will be transitioned to Cloud Voicemail based on Azure. To me it seems that it will not be a big difference for your users. They’ll still get voicemail and auto attendant capabilities. It’s more an slight cut over to a different backend for the same features.
However, if you are still on Lync Server 2010 you should consider to upgrade to Skype for Business Server to carry on providing voice mail and attendant services.
In case of many auto attendant services on EXO UM you should prepare and plan to re-create auto attendant services on Cloud Voicemail.
Further Resources
- Retiring EXO UM https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/exchange/2019/02/08/retiring-unified-messaging-in-exchange-online/
- EXO UM migration support https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/SkypeForBusiness/plan/exchange-unified-messaging-online-migration-support
- EXO UM https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/voice-mail-unified-messaging/voice-mail-unified-messaging
- Cloud Voicemail https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/hybrid/plan-cloud-voicemail
My Microsoft Teams Federation Notes
In this post I’ll describe how federation towards federated partners can work. I’ll not describe meetings and guest access for Teams which are great capabilities for modern teamwork across companies but not subject for this post. Teams provides options for federation with external organisations like suppliers, clients and partners.
Basically there are eight federation scenarios I’d like to describe below. The federation scenarios are based on Microsoft Teams as well as Skype for Business.
Skype for Business Federation
Let’s take a look on federation with Skype for Business. In Microsoft Skype for Business Server / Online (hereinafter: SFBx) there are two major federation types:
- open federation: Users can communicate openly to everyone except users behind blocked domains.
- closed federation: Users can communicate only to federated domains configured by the SFBx admin.
Teams Federation
Now, with Microsoft Teams federation is similair to SFBx federation but not 1:1 alike.
You can decide to federate with everyone, openly, except towards blocked domains (blacklist).
Or you can decide to federate only with allowed domains (whitelist).
Another thing to keep in mind is what’s your current Teams upgrade mode or status?
In Microsoft Docs there are five modes listed but not all are available by now.
- Islands: All workloads on SFBx + Teams
- Skype for Business-only: SFB for all workloads. Single client.
- Teams-only: Teams for all workloads. Single client.
- (not in Admin Center, Feb. 2019, TAP customers-only) Skype for Business with Teams (collaboration-only): SFB for chat, calling and meetings. Teams for collaboration.
- (not in Admin Center, Feb. 2019, TAP customers-only) Skype for Business with Teams (collaboration and meetings-only): SFB for chat and calling, Teams for meetings and collaboration.
Scenario 1a+1b
You are on Microsoft Teams.
You can federate with other organisations having a) SFBx or b) Microsoft Teams, too.
Scenario 2a+2b
You are still on SFBx.
You can federate with other organisations having a) SFBx or b) Microsoft Teams, too.
Scenario 3a+3b
You are on SFBx as well as Microsoft Teams but your Teams Upgrade mode is “Islands”.
Your users are having two clients installed and only the SFBx works for federation communication.
You can federate only via SFBx with other organisations having a) SFBx or b) Microsoft Teams, too.
Scenario 3c+3d
You are on SFBx as well as Microsoft Teams but your Teams Upgrade mode is “Islands”.
Your users are having two clients installed and only the SFBx works for federation communication.
Your users cannot have an internal cross-client chat or else c) from SFB to Teams or d) from Teams to SFB.
Conclusion and summary
Teams federation provides the ability to federate with external organisations similair to what we’ve used to from SfBx. Nevertheless we need to pay attention to the user experience and federation experience which migh be slightly different during a coexistence of SFBx and Teams.
Further Ressources
- Choose your upgrade journey from Skype for Business to Teams https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/upgrade-and-coexistence-of-skypeforbusiness-and-teams
- Understand Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business coexistence and interoperability https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/teams-and-skypeforbusiness-coexistence-and-interoperability
- Teams / SFB Coexistence modes https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/migration-interop-guidance-for-teams-with-skype#coexistence-modes
Manage your Office 365 ProPlus deployment with cloud-based policies (preview)
Typically you manage your Microsoft Office installations by using group policies(-only) and options you have before you deploy the software to the computers within your organisation. However, now cloud-based policies for Office 365 ProPlus are in preview (Feb. 2019). These new option helps you to centrally mange Office 365 ProPlus deployments either for domain-joined or non-domain joined (but MDM managed) devices.
The cloud-based policies are for enforced user-based settings management and can complement group policies.
It only works for the Offce 365 ProPlus suite.
Further Ressources
- Announcement of cloud-based policy management for Office 365 ProPlus https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Announcing-the-new-cloud-based-policy-management-service-for/ba-p/310405
- Administrative Template files (ADMX/ADML) and Office Customization Tool for Office 365 ProPlus, Office 2019, and Office 2016 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49030
- Deploying Office apps with ConfigMgr + new MDM-less policy management (2019)
Microsoft Teams Backup and Restore?
In this blogpost I’d like to describe on a high level what you can do regarding backup (and restore) Microsoft Teams chats and files (January 2019, this might be subject to change).
Do you need backups of Teams (data) stored within a global hyperscaler cloud infrastructure? Shouldn’t it be resilient and highly available based on the SLAs …? Well, there is no one-size-fits-all-answer. It depends on your requirements and needs. However, in my opinion, it’s not a bad idea to have a (working) backup in place in case data was deleted or became inaccessible, anyhow.
Where are my Teams conversations and files located?
We need to differentiate between actual Teams and Chat (see screenshot below, I’ll call it hereinafter “Personal Chat”). “Personal Chat” are direct one on one (1:1) as well as one to many (1:m) chats or conversations. The difference is what’s being used under the hood. Let’s dig in a bit deeper.
“Personal Chat”
Your chats are stored on your Exchange Online (EXO) Mailbox in an hidden folder (not on Exchange Server). The hidden folder “TeamChat” on your EXO mailbox is underneath of the “Conversation history”-folder. By default the chat copies are available for 14 days in the Deleted Items folder in Outlook.
Teams Chat
Teams are Office 365-based, i.e. Office 365 Groups with SharePoint Online and Exchange Online are utilized.
For Teams Chats almost the same as for “Personal Chat” applies: Due to the fact that we therefore have Office 365 Groups, its mailbox hidden folder on EXO (not Exchange Server) are the storing the chats.
“Personal Chat” Data
If you exchange files it will be stored in your OneDrive For Business\Microsoft Teams Chat Files.
Teams Data
If you share files in a Teams Channel it will be stored in its associated SharePoint Online Document Library Folder of the Teams channel.
By default deleted files on SharePoint online are available for 93 day to be restored if no other configuration was set or quotas are applied and excceeded.
What backup and restore limitations do I have (after a “soft-delete”period)? (January 2019)
If a Team was deleted and you notice this or get requested to restore a Team after the “soft-delete” period of 30 days (default) the content is permanently deleted and cannot be restored, see link at the bottom “Restore a deleted Office 365 Group”.
You cannot restore a Team 1:1 after its 30 days “soft-delete” period.
Chat even if you have the data cannot be restored or at least I did not find a way to accomplish this easily. I was thinking about importing chats based on scripts in a newly re-created Team and it’s channels but it seemed to be a way to cumbersome to quickly test it with some lines of ps script code.
What backup options are there?
Option 1: Archive Teams
Archiving is not backup. However if you archived instead of deleting it, you can restore it easily via the Teams Admin Center or via the Teams Client, see link at the bottom “Archive or restore a team”.
Option 2: Office 365 Security and compliance center (eDiscovery cases, retention policies)
You can maintain copies of chats by using eDiscovery cases/litigation/inplace hold/retention policies. You can set this up to store the copies hidden in the mailbox. Either for a certain periode of time or indefinitely.
You can configure retention policies to retain files longer and to be stored in the preservation hold library. However, you might search and access the retained chat/files but not within Teams as it were before the “permanent” delete.
Option 3: Thirdparty solution/s?
Most of the thirdparty backup solutions are offering options to backup Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive For Business data. Some providers also mention capabilities to restore Office 365 groups but it needs clarification if they have working restore procedures to recover a deleted Teams after the default “soft-delete” period of 30 days. If you consider to leverage a thirdparty solution you should take this into account for your Microsoft Teams evaluation and proof of concept phase.
Conclusion and summary
If a Team get’s (soft) deleted you can restore it within 30 days by default.
Beyond 30 days, there no default or extend restore procedure to get the deleted Team to 100 % recovered as it was before.
Thirdparty solutions might provide an exception to a certain extent and add value based to extensible restore capabilities which should be thoroughly examined during an evaluation or proof of concept phase.
In case you have certain security and compliance requirements you should evalute features provided by the Office 365 security and compliance center, Teams Lifecycle Management options based on the Graph API (https://3k09.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/whats-new-in-managing-microsoft-teams-11-2018/) as well as thirdparty backup solutions.
Further Resources
- Welcome to Microsoft Teams: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/teams-overview
- Location of data in Microsoft Teams: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/location-of-data-in-teams
- Where is my data?: http://o365datacentermap.azurewebsites.net/
- Archive or restore a team: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Archive-or-restore-a-team-dc161cfd-b328-440f-974b-5da5bd98b5a7
- Recreate deleted channel: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/17009224-recreate-deleted-channel
- Re-using the same Channel Name: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/16927219-re-using-the-same-channel-name
- Provide ability to fully recover deleted Teams: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/18643102-provide-ability-to-fully-recover-deleted-teams
- In-Place Hold and Litigation Hold: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/security-and-compliance/in-place-and-litigation-holds
- eDiscovery cases in the Office 365 Security and Compliance Center: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/Office365/SecurityCompliance/ediscovery-cases
- Ovierview of retention policies: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/securitycompliance/retention-policies
- Restore a deleted Office 365 Group: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/create-groups/restore-deleted-group
- Thirdparty Backup (just to list a few)
- Barracuda Office 365 Backup: https://barracudamsp.com/product-details/office-365-backup/
- Acronis Office 365 Backup: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/business/backup/office-365/
- Veeam Office 365 Backup: https://www.veeam.com/backup-microsoft-office-365.html
- CodeTwo Office 365 Backup: https://www.codetwo.de/backup-for-office-365/
- AvePoint Office 365 Backup: https://www.avepoint.com/products/cloud/backup/office-365-backup
What might be next in Microsoft Teams for 2019?
First of all, happy new year! I’m looking forward to all the new opportunities, features, services and integrations around communication and collaboration at the modern or digital workplace. The fresh new year will bring us some new capabilities to do more with Microsoft Teams as well as related apps or services.
To me, the most noticeable Microsoft Teams capabilities which we’ll probably see in 2019 are (01/01/2019 might be subject to change):
- Shared Line Appearance – Allows multiple calls on a single phone number with delegates who can answer the calls.
- Call Park – Park a call “on hold” and grab the call from another endpoint to resume the call by using an unique code, e.g. #150.
- Location Based Routing (LBR) – Route PSTN voice calls based on the location, e.g. emergency call outbreaks for roaming users…
- Group Call Pickup – This enables a group of users to pickup / grab an incoming call for a colleague.
- Yammer Tab in Teams (Preview) – Easily access Yammer via a tab
- SharePoint web parts as tabs in Teams – Direct access SharePoint web parts via a tab in Teams
- Screen sharing in a private chat session – Without calling you can share you screen
- Support for Oracle SBCs in Direct Routing
- Safe Links Protection for Microsoft Teams – Protects users from opening bad / malicious links
- Create an org-wide team (for up to 2,500 users) in Microsoft Teams
- Broadcast Meetings – Town-hall-stlye / large meetings via Teams
- Team Templates – Pre-define Teams and re-use this template to provision a team
- Manage Teams from Admin Center
- Compact Mode – A lightweight client experience for users who might not need all the rich experience elements as in the default client view (https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/17408641-compact-mode)
- …
The above mentioned features and capabilities might be subject to change. This post is just a list to quickly recognize what we could get soon with Microsoft Teams. For more, stay tuned here or directly on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap:
- Microsoft 365 Roadmap [filter set on: “In Development”,”Rolling Out”,”teams”] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=In%20Development%2CRolling%20Out&searchterms=teams
- Microsoft Teams User Voice (don’t forget to vote for capabilities/features you like or post your ideas here and get it voted) https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public
