Microsoft Phone System Direct Routing Public Preview
What is Direct Routing?
Direct Routing is a capability of Phone System in Office 365 to help customers connect their SIP trunks to Microsoft Teams. In the simplest deployment model, customers start with SIP trunks from their telecommunications provider. Next, customers will use and configure a supported Session Border Controller (SBC) from one of our certified partners. Finally, they will connect their SBC to Microsoft Teams and Phone System.
Customers will need to focus on these key areas for a successful self-managed preview:
OFFICE 365. Ensure your Office 365 tenant is ready for a Direct Routing preview by having Teams working and ready for use. Begin piloting Teams today prior to getting the Direct Routing Preview started. You will also need to have Phone System in your Tenant. Phone System comes with E5 or can be acquired separately.
SESSION BORDER CONTROLLERS (SBC). Arrange to work with one of our partners who are being certified for Direct Routing. Due to the criticality of Enterprise Voice, Microsoft has been working closely with these partners to ensure compatibility. These vendors are in process and plan to have their SBC certification complete at the time of General Availability. Please review the content for Direct Routing from AudioCodes, Ribbon, and ThinkTel to understand their offers and start a pilot with them.
- Published in Office 365
Microsoft Teams Direct Routing (Connect your own SBC for PSTN), including Direct Carrier Support
This has previously been referred to as “BYOT” (Bring Your Own Trunk) and “Direct Connect”, but has now been more formally announced as “Direct Routing”.
- You will require a certified SBC from Ribbon (Sonus) or AudioCodes
- ThinkTel (Canadian carrier) will also support this scenario, the first direct carrier support to be announced O/S
- Microsoft Teams and Phone System licences * Phone System requires E1, E3 or E5 in 365
Direct Routing will be supported for Microsoft Teams only, not SfB Online. From Nikolay Muravlyannikov of Microsoft: “If you use a supported SBC (AudioCodes or Ribbon) with the CCE you can pair the same SBC, which is paired to CCE, to the Teams backend and migrate users from SFBO to Teams. It is a matter deploying Teams client and changing the voice routing on SBC and in our Cloud. Once all users migrated you can decommission the CCE
Microsoft call out the following scenarios:
- Easy Transition to Calling in Teams. By integrating with an existing PBX, pilot users can be moved to Calling in Teams while users remain on their legacy PBX. Eventually all users can be easily transitioned to Calling in Teams. The call traffic between these users during the transition stay within the organization.
- Telephony System Inter/Op. While users are being transitioned to Calling in Teams, Call Center agents can continue to use their application. Direct Routing enables both use cases to coexist. The call traffic between call center agents and Teams users stay within the organization.
- Support for Analog Devices. If an organization decides to move to Calling in Teams but has analog devices such as elevator phones or overhead pagers, these devices can be connected to Teams and Phone System via Direct Routing. Call traffic between analog devices and Teams users stay within the organization.
CTI can help your business with Office 365 Licencing and set up Microsoft Teams with SIP Trunks. We use Teams in-house, call us for a demo on 1300 888 284
- Published in Mobile, Office 365, Technology