New calling features on Microsoft Teams

In this article, we summarise recent telephony enhancements on Microsoft Teams that make it easier for organisations and their employees to strengthen relationships and create new ones with a quick call.

Increase the richness of your calling experience

Calling is a great way to reconnect and share information quickly. When you integrate calls with different modes of communication, they can act as a productivity force multiplier. There are many ways to create a more powerful and streamlined calling experience.

Simplified calling experience

Teams is the hub for chat, collaboration, meetings, applications and workflows. The call functionality has been improved and now brings together the most important elements such as - the keypad, call history, voicemail, contacts and settings - in one place. This makes it easier for you to stay connected to your workflow.

Save call records in OneDrive and SharePoint

Call recordings are a great way to track the brainstorming ad that often occurs during a call. Now, team administrators can take advantage of the tight integration of Teams and OneDrive or SharePoint and choose to make OneDrive or SharePoint the default recording storage location, instead of Stream. This new feature offers powerful functionality such as sharing with external guests, faster access to transcripts and greater storage capacity. Read more about the new feature.

CarPlay support

Making and receiving calls in the car will soon be easier than ever, thanks to CarPlay support for Teams Calling. With CarPlay, you can use your car's built-in controls to operate Teams, including using Siri/Bixby to make and answer calls.

Spam identification

Spam calls are frustrating, disrupt workflow, and make you less likely to answer calls from unknown phone numbers. Using advanced industry techniques, Teams will identify potential spam calls so you can be sure to answer incoming calls. In addition, Teams will digitally authenticate outgoing calls to prevent them from being rejected by external recipients. 

Transferring calls between a mobile and a desktop computer

Sometimes you need to move locations or devices to complete your call. From the beginning of 2021, you will be able to transfer your calls between your mobile and office endpoints through an ergonomic interface on the application Teams.

Merge call

Callers can group several different individual calls together to combine conversations and simplify multiple conversations. Call merging is now available for PSTN and VoIP calls.

Low data mode

Whether you want to conserve data or are simply in a location with a poor or limited network connection, it is sometimes useful to limit the amount of data you use during a video call or meeting. From early 2021, users will be able to adjust their settings in Teams to cap the amount of data that will be used during video calls and set different parameters depending on network availability (cellular, wifi, ...).

Improved reverse number search

With automatic reverse number lookup, you will see the name of the caller as they call, in your activity stream and voicemail.

Advanced calling options for your business

Some parts of the business require additional calling capabilities and workflows. Whether it's keeping critical operations running or resolving key customer issues, Teams supports a wide range of needs across your business with these new capabilities.

Voice activated channels

A new collaborative calling capability allows teams to integrate call queues into a specific channel, enabling collaboration and information sharing before, during and after the call. For example, IT or HR helpdesks can now be managed from one channel so that available team members can answer the call and easily share information about service tickets. From early 2021, Teams users will have the option to create new voice-activated channels, to start using this functionality in preview.

Certified Contact Center/Call Center Solutions

Resolving a customer call in Contact Centers is often a team sport, so it is important to identify and reach the right colleague quickly. Contact Center solutions can use presence and user APIs to integrate seamlessly with Teams, allowing agents to find the right colleagues to help. Now, Contact Center vendors can apply for Microsoft certification of their solutions, to give customers the confidence to manage important customer interactions. 

Resilient calls

To support the most critical conversations in the event of an outage, the new Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA) allows users to make and receive PSTN calls even in the event of a network failure. This SBA is available from certified SBC providers such as AudioCodes and Ribbon Communications/Sonus. This new feature is available on SBC and also allows users to work in Teams Offline Mode and continue to collaborate in the event of a loss of connection to the host. Microsoft 365. Lambert Consulting has already been implementing these SBA for years at its customers Skype for Business to guarantee continuity in case of loss of connection with the main site, loss of SIP-Trunk, etc.

Call transfer reminder

While call transfers can be useful for connecting the right people, ensuring that calls stay connected during the process is essential for an excellent calling experience. Now, users of Teams can be assured that when you transfer an important call, it will not disconnect simply because someone on the other end of the line is not available. If the recipient of the transfer does not answer the call, the call is forwarded to the person making the transfer.