Now that IT teams and decision makers have got used to managing remote working environments for their employees, many will be predicting a softphone revolution in 2022. No desk at the office means no desk phone after all.
Microsoft themselves have boasted about calls originating from Teams growing heavily in the second half of the 2021 calendar year, and the threat of another winter of COVID-19 variants makes Teams Calling an attractive proposition.
Common sense is not the only driving factor behind Teams Phone integrations. According to a poll of 1,000 UK workers conducted by Samsung, 65 percent of the workforce are confident to work in remote locations thanks to the devices and solutions that they use on a daily basis.
Given that the survey found that relationships between colleagues and ‘the boss’ have also improved since the pandemic, it’s no wonder that remote working is starting to feel like it will be one of the permanent changes from these past few years.
Standing out
Many businesses using Microsoft Teams are starting to make the decision to adopt a softphone option. As a service provider or reseller of telecoms services, there are different ways to make this possible, but to stand out the option you provide should focus on the user experience. Is it easy to use? Intuitive? Ubiquitous? In order to stand out against competitors, there are 5 key factors to consider when building an integration between an external PBX or SIP Trunk and Microsoft Teams.
- Native – Easy to use, everywhere – The most important element to every integration is basic usability. Teams users need to be able to dial and receive calls, whether using Microsoft Teams PBX or any external existing PBX, with the same effort as a desk-phone; if not less!
- Notifications – The Activity Feed is where a Teams users sees notifications about new chats, events, documents and any other workflow item in Microsoft Teams. A friendly integration gives the user notifications at the right moments..
- PBX Tools If you put a softphone into Teams, it is because the user wants to work in Teams but they want the same buttons and controls they normally use just as readily available. The best bet is to provide the option to present familiar portals and buttons with minimal user effort. The more that can be done without leaving Teams, the better.
- Presence Status – Once you integrate multiple systems that each have presence parameters it can be a headache to manually regulate each system. PBX users often use presence status and applications like call and contact center packages rely on accurate presence. Therefore linking the presence status on external systems to Teams presence can be quite key.
- Customization – The only standard in current business telephone systems is that every customer wants to tailor a solution to their own requirements. A Microsoft Teams integration can vary based on required dial-plan, softkeys, external portal integration, notifications management, branding, and geographic region. A great integration must be future-proof especially as things are changing so quickly with Microsoft Teams.
According to Micah Singer, Managing Director at TeamMate Technology, service providers often default to the most basic Teams integrations for their customers. Keeping it simple leaves their customers with a basic integration which risks turning the service provider into a Microsoft add-on commodity. Using these keys to create a great Microsoft Teams integration that is user-friendly is a great way to convert interest in Teams calling into a new market opportunity.
“The early market for Teams integration has been Direct Routing automation – turn Microsoft Teams into a SIP Trunk. Adding External PBX and Contact Center integration is the logical next step,” said Singer. “What gets the most exciting is when you can build workflows that go between the external PBX and Teams. This let’s service providers standout in a crowded field.
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