In 2020, we saw a massive rise in remote working which has given way now to a permanent hybrid workplace for many organisations. At the same time, Microsoft Teams became the collaboration application of choice – by virtue of the fact that it came free with any Microsoft 365 subscription and organisations needed a quick solution to meet the needs of their remote workforce.
However, while Microsoft Teams provides users with some great collaboration features, it doesn’t deliver enterprise-grade telephony. Built-in telephony isn’t included in most Teams packages, and even when purchased as a separate add-on, it comes with a range of limitations in geographic coverage, PBX functionality and feature set.
Given that 77% of businesses provide some of their users with a fixed telephony number for use at work and the phone ranks as the second most popular channel in the workplace for communicating both for internal and external contacts, seamlessly integrating that business phone number and calling capabilities into your Microsoft Teams environment is very compelling.
What is direct routing for Teams?
Organisations can connect Teams to a third-party telephony provider for an enterprise-grade, high-performance solution that connects your Teams and Microsoft 365 deployment to the PSTN networks. This allows users to make and receive external phone calls from anywhere on any device running natively in the Teams application.
RingCentral’s Direct Routing solution RingCentral Cloud PBX for Microsoft Teams gives users access to the robust cloud communications features of RingCentral while utilising the Microsoft Teams interface. That includes advanced call controls and systems management, and the security and reliability of an enterprise-grade communications infrastructure with a global delivery footprint in more than 100 countries.
It also reduces the adoption challenges and encourages user uptake of Microsoft Teams by enabling all the RingCentral communications features to be initiated and operated from the Teams application interface. Most of our Australian customers have seen a dramatic uptick in Teams usage with the introduction of Direct Routing.
Our eBook, Enhancing Teams with enterprise-grade telephony demystifies Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams and provides organisations who use Microsoft Teams with a great guide on what to look for in a long-term telephony solution that meets the needs of today’s hybrid workplace.
Originally published 12 Aug, 2022, updated 13 Jan, 2023
