How to Add Cloud Telephony to Microsoft Teams

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How to enable external communications on Microsoft Teams via Direct Routing

The fact that Teams is Microsoft’s fastest-growing business application of all time is no surprise. Today, nearly 260 million people around the world use Microsoft 365, and Teams is embedded with it. This bundling allows businesses to easily adopt Teams and implement it into their workflows.

While Teams is used by 91 of the Fortune 100 companies, telephony is not part of the bundle offer. With Microsoft Teams, organisations can use tools like messaging and video conferencing, but it requires a separate solution to be added on top the Microsoft Teams platform to enable users to make calls from the platform.

In order to enable telephony on Teams, organisations can either add Microsoft Calling Plans, which include a user’s phone number and domestic or international minutes, or via Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams.

Got Microsoft Teams? Try adding RingCentral to vastly improve your phone functionality. Find out how

What is Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams and why is it worth considering?  

Direct Routing is a way to connect Microsoft’s phone system to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) via an existing or new third-party telephony provider. The provider offers the necessary cloud infrastructure to route incoming and outgoing external calls to Microsoft Teams.

Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams has many benefits over Microsoft Calling Plans, especially for larger organisations, as it offers greater flexibility (because organisations can choose their own provider), broader geographic coverage (Microsoft’s Calling Plans have strict limitations on carriers and locations), lower rates, and increased levels of support than calling plans.

About RingCentral Cloud PBX for Microsoft Teams

Businesses that want to optimise their investment with Microsoft 365 while using Microsoft Teams for collaboration can now do so in combination with RingCentral’s robust cloud communications solution. This native Direct Routing integration provides global calling functionality and enables users to get more done with an industry-leading cloud PBX integrated into Teams, keeping Teams at the centre of the collaboration experience.

Originally published Nov 17, 2020, updated Jul 13, 2021

Severine Hierso

Author

Severine Hierso is a Director of Product Marketing at RingCentral, the leader in cloud communications solutions, and is passionate about creating value, differentiation and messaging, ensuring a better experience for customers and partners.

She has gained extensive international product marketing, market research, sales enablement and business development experience across SaaS, telecommunications, video conferencing and technology sectors within companies such as Sony, Cisco, Cogeco Peer 1 and Dimension Data/NTT.

Severine holds a Master’s degree in economics and her hobbies include long distance runs and travelling.