Ready to Modernise Your Business Phone System?

What Teams Phone actually is#

Teams Phone is a cloud based phone system built right into Microsoft Teams. There is no hardware box, no wiring, and no server rack. It is all software, which means you can get started in minutes rather than days. The most important thing to understand is that your phone number is no longer tied to a desk or a location. It is tied to you. When someone calls your business number, it rings on whichever device you are signed into, whether that is your laptop, your smartphone, or your tablet, and it uses the same number everywhere.

How it replaces a traditional phone system#

For decades, a business phone system meant a large box in a closet called a PBX, short for private branch exchange, that routed calls through copper wires. Teams Phone does the same job in software. Here is how the two compare.

Instead of buying and maintaining your own switchboard, you rent a spot on Microsoft's switchboard. Microsoft handles the complicated parts like routing, redundancy, and security updates. You just say which users get which numbers. That means a five person company can have the same phone system capabilities as a five thousand person company, with auto attendants, call queues, and voicemail transcription all included rather than bought as extra hardware. Your phone system scales with your business, so growing from 10 people to 50 just means more licences, not a bigger box in the closet.

The three ways to connect to the phone network#

Teams handles internal calls between people in your company for free. But to call a regular phone number, like a customer's mobile or a supplier's landline, you need a connection to the public telephone network, which is the network every phone in the world is connected to. Microsoft gives you three ways to get there.

Licensing and costs, simplified#

If you already have Microsoft 365, you are partway there because Teams is included in your subscription. But calling is an add on, and you need two separate pieces to make it work: a phone licence to unlock the phone system features, and a way to connect to the phone network, which is one of the three options above.

1. A Teams Phone licence#

This unlocks the phone system features like making and receiving calls, auto attendants, and voicemail. It costs roughly 8 to 10 US dollars per user each month. If you already have an E5 licence, this is included, so you do not need to buy it separately.

2. A way to connect#

On top of the phone licence, you add one of the three connection options. A Microsoft calling plan runs roughly 8 to 15 US dollars per user each month depending on the minutes you need. Operator connect and direct routing are often cheaper per minute but have different pricing structures.

How does this compare to the old way? A traditional on premise PBX costs roughly 15 to 25 US dollars per user each month once you factor in hardware, maintenance contracts, and phone lines, and that is before the thousands of dollars of hardware you buy up front. Teams Phone is often 30 to 60 percent cheaper. For a 10 person company, Teams Phone might cost 150 to 250 US dollars per month in total, while a traditional PBX for the same company could easily run 300 to 500 US dollars per month plus the up front hardware.

What comes built in#

Voicemail with transcription#

When someone leaves a message, you get a written transcript right in your Teams chat, so you can read it instantly instead of dialling into a voicemail box. If you want the recording, you can play it back with one click, but most of the time the transcript is enough.

Auto attendants#

A virtual receptionist that greets callers and routes them to the right place, such as press one for sales, press two for support. It handles this automatically based on the time of day, the day of the week, and even holidays, and can play a different greeting when your office is closed.

Call queues#

When someone presses one for sales, the call goes into a queue and rings the first available person on that team. If everyone is busy, the caller hears music or a message while they wait, and the system spreads calls evenly so nobody gets overwhelmed.

Delegation#

An assistant can make and receive calls on behalf of a manager. When they call out, it shows up as the manager's number, so if a client calls back they reach the manager, not the assistant. It is a small thing that makes your company sound more professional.

Call park#

You put a call on hold and the system gives you a code. Walk to another room, pick up a different phone, enter the code, and the call connects. It is ideal for moving between meeting rooms or handing a call to a colleague elsewhere in the building.

Presence integration#

You can see if someone is already on a call before you ring them, because their status shows right next to their name. That means you know not to interrupt, and you waste fewer calls reaching voicemail because the person is already talking to someone else.

A small law firm with three lawyers can set up an auto attendant on their main number where callers press one for the first lawyer, two for the second, and three for the third. If nobody answers, the call goes to voicemail and the lawyer gets a transcript in their Teams chat, then calls back from their laptop or phone. No receptionist, no extra hardware, no separate voicemail system, and it all works inside the app they already use for email and meetings.

Security and reliability#

Moving your phone system to the cloud can sound risky. What if it goes down, or someone listens in on your calls? Those are fair questions, and here is how Microsoft handles them.

• Encryption in transit. Every call is scrambled as it travels between you and the other person, using the same security standards as online banking. For one to one calls, you can turn on end to end encryption so that not even Microsoft can listen in.
• 99.999 percent uptime. Microsoft targets a level of uptime that works out to less than five minutes of downtime per year. Because calls run across multiple data centres, if one goes down another takes over automatically, which a single box in your office cannot match.
• Identity protection. Teams uses your Microsoft 365 login, so if you have multi factor authentication turned on, your phone system is protected by the same security. Someone cannot simply pick up a desk phone and make calls as you, because they need your credentials and your second factor.
• Compliance built in. Teams Phone supports standards like HIPAA for healthcare and GDPR for privacy. Recording and archiving are included, so if you are in a regulated industry you can record calls, store them securely, and produce them for audits without buying separate software.

How all the pieces connect#

Teams Phone is not one single thing. It is a cloud PBX, a connection to the phone network, and a set of features, all wrapped in the Teams app you already use for chat and meetings. Here is how a single incoming call flows through the system from start to finish.

The magic is not any single feature. It is how they all connect. The auto attendant does not need someone to transfer calls, the call queue does not need someone to watch who is available, and voicemail does not need someone checking a separate inbox. It all just happens, so you do your job and the phone system handles the rest.

Consultation to go live in 5 simple steps#

Your journey to modern communication, structured, transparent, and fast.