Nuwave’s Microsoft Teams Phone Operator Connect Review & Demo | Administrative Bliss

Your company has decided to go with Microsoft Teams Phone System and you are evaluating Operator Connect vendors, but you are wondering what actually separates one vendor from another.

In this video, I demo Nuwave’s administrative portal called iPilot, which in my opinion is the best admin portal in the Operator Connect marketplace, and I also tell you a few areas where Nuwave falls short.

Want a demo and quote on Nuwave or their top competitors? Ask me today.

About Me

Mike Smith has been helping companies select the best telecom, WAN, security, and cloud services since 1999. He founded AeroCom in 2003, and has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in tech-heavy Orange County, CA. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

If your company has 100 or more employees and you would like a demo or a quote on Nuwave, do not call them directly. Send me an email or give me a call at 714.593.0011.

I have been doing this for over 20 years and I will get you better pricing on Nuwave than if you call them directly. I will make sure you get the right sales rep, oversee the quoting process, and if you want, recommend the best competitors to compare side by side.

It will not cost your company anything to work with me. Join the thousands of other companies who have used me to help their company make a better decision in a fraction of the time.

Also, do not forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel and check out AeroComInc.com, where you can read and write reviews on providers, watch videos, and filter by features.

What Makes Nuwave a Good Operator Connect Vendor

Before getting into iPilot, here are the basics that make Nuwave worth considering in the first place.

Their sweet spot is medium to large size companies with 100 or more employees. Think IT department. If a company is big enough to have its own in-house IT team, that is Nuwave’s ideal customer.

Nuwave has a strong reputation for call quality and uptime, excellent customer service, and a great implementation process.

Nuwave also offers all the bolt-ons that Teams Phone System needs to fill its feature gaps. These include SMS, MMS, analog recording, compliance recording, analytics, peering with major contact center solutions, and SIP trunks for sites that are not yet ready to move to Teams.

They also offer competitive flat rate pricing and call path based pricing for larger organizations.

There are over a dozen Operator Connect vendors that do all of those things well. So what actually separates Nuwave? It is iPilot.

What Is iPilot and Why Does It Matter?

Without iPilot, your IT team has to log into the Microsoft admin portal to administer Microsoft Teams Phone System.

That is not a great experience for medium to large size companies.

iPilot is Nuwave’s proprietary administrative portal. It does more than improve on the Microsoft admin portal. In my opinion, iPilot is the best administrative portal of any Operator Connect vendor in the marketplace.

Getting Started: Implementation Inside iPilot

Here is how the process works from the beginning.

Once your company signs up with Nuwave, they assign you a project manager and a porting specialist. You have a kickoff call and establish a port date from your existing provider. The porting specialist then uploads all of your company phone numbers into iPilot.

iPilot syncs everything you configure directly with your Microsoft Teams tenant. You can also view those configurations in the Teams admin portal. But iPilot makes the process much easier.

Once Nuwave loads your numbers, you assign a user principal name (UPN) to each phone number.

If you want to add a feature to multiple users at once, select those users and choose the feature from a dropdown. The Microsoft admin portal does not give you the same ability to make these bulk feature and policy changes across multiple users. iPilot makes it easy.

If an assignment fails, iPilot displays an orange alert on the specific number and tells you exactly what went wrong. For example, the UPN may have the wrong type or the user may be missing a Teams Phone Standard license.

Managing Changes Long Term

In a medium to large size organization, changes are constant. iPilot handles long term management just as well as initial setup.

After you port your numbers, you can manage individual users and change features including outbound and inbound caller ID, SMS, MMS, international calling, call forwarding, disaster plans, DID rerouting, and spam blocking.

For group changes, iPilot uses a feature called Sites.

Sites can represent actual physical office locations, but they can also represent departments like sales or customer service. You can assign users to multiple sites simultaneously.

Once you group users into sites, you can filter your inventory by site and apply feature changes to the entire group at once. The Microsoft admin portal does not offer the same capability.

What Happens When Your Company Acquires Another Business?

Here is a real scenario iPilot handles that most Operator Connect vendors struggle with.

Your company acquires two new sites. One has an on-premise phone system on a SIP trunk with six months left on its maintenance contract. The other site uses Zoom Phone, and the users love it and do not want to switch yet.

With iPilot, you can port all of the phone numbers from both sites over to Nuwave immediately.

Nuwave provisions the first site on a SIP trunk, which you can manage inside iPilot. The second site can use a Nuwave calling plan for Zoom Phone, which you can also manage inside iPilot.

Moving Sites to Teams Later

When those sites eventually become ready to move to Teams Phone System, you do not need to start another porting project.

Instead, you make a module to module move inside iPilot.

Select the number, choose the destination module, and move it. Available modules include Teams Phone, SIP trunks, Zoom Phone, Amazon Connect, and Webex Calling.

This approach works especially well for large companies with dozens or hundreds of sites that do not share the same contract or migration timeline.

Nuwave can port everything up front, and your IT team can manage the migration over months or years inside iPilot as each site becomes ready. You avoid repeated porting projects and do not need to juggle separate platforms.

Adding New Users and Managing Licensing

When a new hire starts and needs access to Teams Phone System, iPilot handles that too.

From the left hand menu, you can check your Microsoft 365 licensing inventory and see how many licenses your organization currently uses.

You can even order additional licensing directly inside iPilot if you have entered your CSP credentials.

Once you confirm that you have enough licenses, you can follow a straightforward process to select the region, calling plan vendor, country, site, and specific phone number from your available inventory.

You can also purchase hardware through Nuwave and add it directly during this process.

Checking Port Availability

If you are unsure whether Nuwave can port existing phone numbers at a new site, iPilot has a built-in port availability checker under the tools menu.

Enter a single number or a range of numbers, and iPilot immediately tells you whether Nuwave can port them.

Disaster Planning Inside iPilot

iPilot lets you create an unlimited number of disaster plans.

If Teams Phone System ever goes down, you can automatically route phone numbers to a different number based on the scenario and the specific employees involved.

To activate a disaster plan, simply click the play button next to the plan you want.

It is a simple, fast, and reliable option for a company that cannot afford to have its phone system go dark.

Where Nuwave Falls Short

Nuwave is not perfect. Here are three situations where they may not be the best fit.

1. Nuwave Is Not a CSP

Nuwave is not a CSP. That means they cannot sell your organization the Teams Phone Standard add-on licenses you need alongside the Operator Connect calling plan.

If your company wants to purchase everything from one vendor, Nuwave cannot provide that setup.

2. Nuwave Is Not Built for White Glove Long Term Service

Nuwave does a great job during implementation, but their model focuses more heavily on self-service for ongoing management.

If you want to call someone and have them handle every add, move, and change for you on an ongoing basis, another provider may suit your company better.

Nuwave designed iPilot around a self-service approach. They can still help with these changes, but other providers specialize more heavily in ongoing white glove support and typically charge for that service.

3. Nuwave Does Not Have the Largest Global Footprint

Nuwave can service virtually every country, but they use other providers to deliver service in some countries. This can result in separate billing arrangements.

If your company has global locations, reach out to me before assumingNuwave is the right fit. The specific countries matter.

Want a Demo and Quote on Nuwave or Their Top Competitors?

If your company has 100 or more employees and you are exploring Teams Phone Operator Connect, do not start calling vendors randomly.

There are over 100 Operator Connect vendors out there, and most are not the right fit for a medium to large size organization.

Send me an email or give me a call at 714.593.0011.

I am a broker for all the major Operator Connect vendors. I know which ones to recommend and which ones to avoid, and I will get you better pricing than going direct.

I will introduce you to the right salespeople, get you a great demo, and oversee the entire quoting process. I do not charge your company anything.

Do not forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel and check out AeroComInc.com.

Thanks for watching. I will catch you on the next one.