Hello Readers, I hope you’re well.
Welcome to episode 5 of the UCStatus Podcast. As usual, this episode features me (@randychapman), Mark Vale (@unifiedvale) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry).
This week we chat about Teams phones and phone/device management. We spend time talking about the vendors and their current range of phones, what’s good and what could be better. And we dive into the world of enterprise life-cycle management for phones. What works, if anything, and what’s missing? Have a listen and find out what we think.
It was an interesting chat. We would live to hear your thoughts. And we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Here’s the podcast recording 👇
You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or TuneIn. The links are below.
If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to like and share.
We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes.
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Wish Microsoft would focus on fixing the essential online PSTN core, make it solid, consistent and reliable, rather than pushing out new nice to have features.
For too long customers have had to put up with poor Auto-Attendant and Call queue performance, call quality. Too many bugs coming through from TAP to GA and then waiting months for fixes.
Teams Headset firmware is so basic they are not practical for heavy phone users.
All the 3PIP innovation and competition generated has been lost and now stifled by Microsoft in Teams certified phones.
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You have to consider that Teams was only launched 3 years ago. What it doesn’t now is not what was intended for it to do. It’s being developed in real time. This means that features delivered are minimum viable product with the intention to improve over time. The best way to test at scale is to deliver it and wait to hear feedback.
Personally I don’t want Microsoft to stop innovation just to put everything into fixing things. I want them to do both. And I believe they are. There’s so much development going on that nobody knows about but them.
Regarding bugs, they can only start fixing things once they know about them. So raise tickets and push hard for a resolution.
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Baffled by a statement made at about 9:15 with regards to 3PIP phones, stating that (paraphrasing) “They can’t be part of an auto-attendant” and “Scenario with press 0 for receptionist and the phone will ring but you can’t answer.” Can you clarify this -I must have misunderstood since we’ve been using Poly(com) VVX phones for a number of clients in “Teams only” mode who have auto attendants that redirect to individuals with these phones without any issues? Call queues? Those I know are problematic (call setup time in particular), but auto-attendants?
Thanks, love the podcast!
Bob
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Hi Bob,
Thanks. Glad you like the podcast. I’ll try to get the next one online tomorrow.
So 3pip phones can’t answer calls call queue calls. Or at least they couldn’t when I last tested. I’ve tried AudioCodes, Yealink and Poly VVX and had the same behaviour. They ring. But when they try to answer, it fails and continues to ring other agents.
This was also a call queue under an auto attendant.
This is the limited functionality of 3pip phones signed into Teams. Because they are actually registered to a gateway hosted by Microsoft.
If you think it works, I need to go back and test.
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Ok, thanks. Call Queues are the issue (agreed). Your podcast statement seemed to implicate Auto Attendants as well, which I’ve never had any particular issue with (when it comes to 3PIP phones.)
Looking forward to the next Podcast. There’s a dearth of real-world, informed discussion on this topic forthcoming online!
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