Teams – Audio Conferencing – Thiago Beier🍁

Hi there

In this post I’m covering the Audio Conferencing feature at Microsoft Teams

You use Audio Conferencing licenses when you need to add a regular phone number call into your Microsoft teams meetings.

You can add phone dialing capability to online meeting or host phone only conference call using this feature.

Audio conferencing is licensed per user so there is a small per user fee for each account that you attach the feature to.

Once you have the Team’s app and new Team’s meeting button in Outlook and you are able to create online Team’s meetings the only difference is that when audio conferencing is enabled you will now see a phone appear in body of your Team’s meetings invites.

You can Try Audio Conferencing as Part of Office 365 Enterprise E5 free trial program.

Steps

Have your Office 365 Tenant ready and Microsoft Teams Operational with basic features deployed to users.
Assign for the Office 365 Enterprise E5 free trial program – click here.
Wait for the Conference bridges options (menu) to appear under Meetings Tab on Teams Admin Portal OR go the Legacy Portal under Teams Admin Portal (Left Tab) after Planning Tab section and check the following
1. Under Skype for Business admin center
2. Click on audio conferencing
  1. You have tree options to check: Microsoft bridge, Microsoft bridge settings and users.
  2. Under Microsoft bridge (from left to right) you should be able to see the phone numbers used with this conference bridge on different countries globally.
    1. Check which number is your default based on your Office 365 tenant E5 trial activation information (Microsoft set’s your default number as the closest address you’re located , where your Office 365 Tenant is activated on).
  3. Under Microsoft bridge settings (the one in the middle) you should see the meeting join experience and security options for joining meetings using Audio Conferencing.
  4. Under users, you should see which Audio Conferencing users has its default toll number (default conference bridge number) from Microsoft. All other licensed users (Teams users) will also show up on this users screen. Click on the drop-down menu to use the predefined search options:
    1. All
    2. All conferencing on << pick this one.
    3. All conferencing off
    4. Conferencing Provider – Microsoft
    5. Conferencing Provider – Other
    6. Users ready to be moved to Office 365 Audio Conferencing
      TIP! – if all these steps worked for you and you can see your current licensed users you can proceed with Sending invitations out to evaluate your audio conferencing joining experience.
Pick the Audio Conferencing users list and test the following:
1. Open MS Teams (client or web client)
2. Go to your Calendar tab
3. Create a new Meeting invitation
4. Give it a name and add the required attendees
5. Select the date and time for the meeting
6. for this skip “Add channel” and “Add location”
7. type a description for your meeting
8. click SAVE to send it
9. Wait for the meeting to be saved and appear at your Teams Calendar and click on it
10. check the Meeting message body you should see the “Join Microsoft Teams Meeting” header with Toll number option based on your subscription location (that can be changed if needed) as well as the Conference ID number and other options: Local numbers, reset PIN, Learn more about Teams and Meetings options.
Testing the “Join Meeting Experience”
1. Start the meeting from a device with audio
  1. join with a web client from a remote session or incognito browser session
  2. from the meeting on Teams add the number you want to dial out to join the meeting (i.e. + 55 61 XXXX YYYY – my landline service on Skype)
  3. I got the call on my mobile phone app and joined the meeting with a audio conferencing experience (not from Teams Client)
  4. from your Skype App
  5. call the bridge number on the Meeting invitation with the Conference ID
  6. get joined on the call and evaluate your experience
  7. drop the call after 1 minute