Making the Most of MS Teams for Client Comms, Part 1: Which Deployment is Best for Your Business?
Microsoft Teams has rapidly gained popularity for client comms, and with the introduction of phone services, many businesses are considering – or already using – MS Teams for unified communications that house voice calls, chat and email under one platform.
How you integrate MS Teams into your unified communications has a significant impact on usability, system performance, reliability and costs. This series discusses how to leverage MS Teams to fully capitalize on the advantages of unified communications, tailored to your business needs.
There are four ways to deploy MS Teams
1. MS Teams as a standalone solution: Use only Microsoft’s phone service for voice
2. Hybrid environment: Use both existing phone services and Microsoft’s phone service for voice
3. Direct connection: Use your existing phone service for voice, but routed through MS Teams
4. Third-party application: Use a separate tab in Teams for calling via a third-party vendor
Benefits and limitations of MS Teams as a standalone solution
MS Teams base is included in Office 365, so you probably already have it. However, the base version doesn’t include a phone system. You’ll need two licenses per user to activate pure Teams calling: a phone system license and a calling plan license. There are benefits and limitations to this type of MS Teams deployment.
Benefits
Office 365 integration: MS Teams works seamlessly in the Microsoft ecosystem
Unified communications: Voice calling, video chat, text chat, conferencing and file sharing are all within the same platform
Auto attendant and call queues: MS Teams can automatically route calls based on agent availability, time zone and language. Callers can be placed on hold or directed to shared voicemail
Mobility: MS Teams works across a range of devices, untethering you from the office
Limitations
Complex routing: Though MS Teams offers call routing, it can’t handle complex scenarios such as location-based call routing or if you have many agents, paths or groups
Reliability: MS Teams offers 99.9% uptime, but other providers can deliver 99.999% uptime. The difference equates to two weeks of downtime per year
Support: Microsoft only offers installation and ongoing support if you have 200 or more stations
Infrastructure: You’ll no longer use much of the telecom infrastructure you’ve already invested in
Relationships: You’ve likely built relationships with your existing telecom provider, who understands your business and your needs. Switching to a Teams-only environment means you’ll lose that relationship and won’t have access to a local MS Teams representative
There’s no doubt MS Teams offers significant benefits, but there’s also a reason many companies opt for alternative deployments over a standalone solution: they get all the benefits of MS Teams without its limitations.
The rest of this series discusses alternative deployments and how you can leverage them to get the most out of MS Teams.