Voice Services Migration from SFB Server to Teams: 4-Wk Imp

Voice Services Migration from SFB Server to Teams is a 4 weeks long solution to help customers with existing telephony services migration to Teams.

Background

During the pandemic Teams usage grew by 894% only during the first month of restrictions. But Teams and its competitor apps are excellent tools for workers to remain productive and in contact with colleagues, they are not initially designed for external use. So, most of organizations that switched their employees to “work from home” mode had problems providing office-like user experience when they needed to call customers, partners and suppliers via PSTN. Incoming calls routing became another issue as IVR or receptionists had to have all employee mobile numbers and forward calls via PSTN which increased telephony bills and made such calls less reliable. Using softphone clients supposed to be a quick fix for this problem but brought more issues related to connectivity, security, licensing, implementation, and support costs. For many organizations with existing Skype for Business Server PBX or PSTN integration deployed switching to Teams Voice features became a challenging task.

Project benefits

1. Minimize integration complexity
2. Increase user productivity by Integrating PSTN calling functionality to well-known Teams UI.
3. Overall 25-40% cost savings comparing to siloed solutions (UC + softphone + conferencing services)

Delivery

The project consists of 2 main project phases:

Current state assessment • Plan Usage Scenarios for services and users • Determine licensing requirements • Plan for Teams Phone Devices • Plan and design Teams Phone Features • Plan for Voice Mail • Design network for media optimization • Design local site internet breakout strategy for client media optimization • Design and validate VPN Split tunnelling • Managing bandwidth by configuring Media Bit Rate (MBR) • Optimize WiFi • Design and implement QoS • Plan for SFB co-existence and migration

Teams Voice Implementation • Activate required licenses • Configure hybrid environment • Configure Teams Phone • Configure Auto Attendants and Call Queues • Port user and service numbers • Configure Direct Routing SIP trunks or configure Operator Connect • Endpoint configuration • Configure and migrate users, IP Phones and Meeting Room Devices