This article is part of a series that aims to provide an easy to consume roundup of Ignite 2020 announcements. I’ll be covering anything from the Microsoft 365 stack that I personally think will have the biggest impact on users. I won’t be covering Azure or much on any Microsoft 365 admin controls. If I spotted a release date, I have added that in brackets. Release dates are estimates only and could of course change.
Articles in the series:
- Microsoft Teams Meetings
- Microsoft Teams Calling (this one)
If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below.
New user experience
- Better user interface layout that shows contacts, voicemail, and call history in one view
- Dial names and numbers from the dial-pad
- Call history filters
- Call forwarding and device settings quick access
Call Flows
- Reporting enhancements (preview Q3 2020)
- Historical reporting (available after 15 mins)
- AA and CQ detailed and summary call info
- Per-agent detail and summary call info
- PowerBI template initially, then later in the Teams Admin Centre
- Delegated announcement recording (preview Q4 2020):
- Supervisors will be able re-record Auto Attendant messages
- To do so, you will call into the Auto Attendant and be guided through a series of prompts to change the greetings
Collaborative calling
- Bring Call Queues into your team channels
- Shared queue log for agents and managers to examine history
- View agent status and control queue availability
- Shared voicemail queue
Survivability (preview Q3)
- Session Border Controller (SBC) vendors can implant a Microsoft supplied virtual machine that provides PSTN survivability when offline (much like SfB SBA’s today)
- Leverages Teams Offline Mode
- Will support PSTN calling when connection to the cloud is down
- In the future it will support Teams to Teams calling
More Microsoft Calling Plan countries added
- Austria
- Denmark
- Italy
- Portugal
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- More countries coming in 2021
Devices
- Lots more Microsoft Teams native device options
- Skype for Business phones will be (3PIP) supported beyond 2023!
- Core calling feature support for Cisco, Audiocodes Yealink, Polyphones that are not Microsoft Teams native
- Device as a Service for all Microsoft Teams devices (beginning in US and Canada)
Other
- Mid-call device switching for calls, group calls and meetings
- Quickly add another device to an existing call
- Captions, Transcription and Recording for 1:1 calls
- Support for Direct Routing numbers in Caller Line ID (preview Q4)
- Dynamic caller ID – choose the caller ID per call, for example from an Auto Attendant or Call Queue
- Spam/spoofing call detection:
- Provides an indication that a call is suspected as spam (preview Q3)
- Long term some calls might be blocked completely if Microsoft are certain its spam.
- Global Tenant block list still available
More Info
- Check out the Microsoft Ignite Book of News for more details about all announcements
- Microsoft Teams Ignite 2020 news
