Common Area Phones with Microsoft Teams Phone System

September 27, 2023 Minh Le

Your company is considering buying Microsoft Teams Phone System, but you’re not sure about the common area phones.

In this video, I break down the costs, licenses, and alternatives for common area phones.

Want my recommendations on the best dial tone providers? Click the button below and ask me today.

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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

Your company is in the market for a new phone system and you’re looking at Microsoft teams phone as a possible replacement. Well, something you might have heard of thrown around. Maybe, maybe not is the term common area of phone. So I want to make a video on this and just kind of define what a common area of phone is and what your options are when it comes to Microsoft teams phone system, because this is an important thing to cover.

Reach out and ask for my recommendations

But before we get too far ahead, really quick, if you’d like my recommendation on the best third party VoIP companies to use for the dial tone for Microsoft teams phone system, there’s a bunch of options out there and it’s a great way to go. But reach out and contact me, send me an email, give me a call (714.593.0011). This is my job. I’m a broker for all the major VoIP companies out there. You definitely want to use a third party for your dial tone for teams phone system, especially if you have like 25 or more phone system users. But there is dozens of them out there, so it’s hard to choose the right one, but there’s definitely a few that you should be coding based on your company’s requirements. So reach out and ask me. That’s my job. It’s absolutely free to do that. More information on that at the end of the video.

Comment for a chance to win a free hat

Also, I’ve got a great promotion I’m offering here, so leave a comment in the comments section down below and I’m going to pick the comment I feel is most worthy. You’re the best one. Within a month after I post the video and send you a free new era arrow, come out. These are great hearts. New era, in my opinion, is the highest quality hat. It’s the type of hat that I love to wear. There’s a newer hat also, but it’s official hat of Major League Baseball, so we know had no expense spared and got some really nice arrow come hats. And I want to send you a free one. So go ahead and leave a comment down below and get yourself one. Also, as always, don’t leave the video without making sure you’d like. Subscribe. Ring the bell. I’d really appreciate it.

What is a common area phone?

Okay. What is a common area phone? so common area phone is just a phone in your company that is like, say for instance, a common area. So like a lobby phone, a kitchen phone, a warehouse phone, a shop floor phone, a phone that has a live extension So incoming calls can be transferred to that phone or somebody can go over to that phone and pick it up and make an outbound call. But that phone is not associated with any particular user. And also, a lot of times the phone doesn’t have voicemail associated with it because it’s a common error phone. No one’s going to check the voicemail for the kitchen phone. Right. So that’s a common area of phone.

What license do I need?

So what are your options when it comes to teams phone system? Well, your your option with teams phone system because you’re thinking, okay, what do I do with teams phone? Do I sign that a an office 365 license because I have to have teams phone standard for every user. Right. If you’ve watched any of my other videos, you know that. So what do we do for these commentary phones? What am I going to do for our warehouse phone? Do I have to have a license for that? phone? Do I have to have a user license for office? 365 The answer to that is you get a shared device license for each of your commentary phones so you don’t have to get an office 365 license or Microsoft 365 license as they’re now called. Supposedly, you don’t have to get a full license for those phones. You just have to get a shared device license. You don’t have to get teams phone stand. That shared device license covers that. So it’s around $8 per month per phone. It’s called a shared device license. And that’s what you get for each of your common area phones individually, like a conference room or a warehouse phone or a kitchen phone. All those phones,

Common Area Phones with Microsoft Teams Phone System

Using a third party solution instead

you might be wondering, well, what’s what’s the alternative? Are there other ways to do it? Yes, there are other ways to do it. if you use a third party for the dial tone for Microsoft teams phone system and you use something called direct routing as a service, sometimes those service providers who give you the dial tone are actually powering Microsoft teams phone system with their third party cloud PBX application. And you can mix and match which of the users on the system get Microsoft teams or which are just going to be on their third party platform on their Cloud PBX platform because it’s set up like that. If you use a direct routing as a service provider that’s powering teams with their third party cloud PBX application, you don’t have to get a shared device license for all of those individual phones. You can just use that third parties phone system license for all those common area phones. And then you get, you know, teams phone standard for all your normal users. But you don’t have to get a share device license for your common area phone.

Save money with a third party solution

So if you have a lot of common area phones in your company, that might be a nice cost saver for use to use a third party direct routing as a service provider because that will save you those $8 per month per share device license cost that you would normally have to get with teams. Phone system. That third party can just give you a normal license of their system, which a lot of times is a very reduced price and that includes the dial tone and phone license. So if you’re only paying like maybe $5 per month per extension total, including calling plan for those phones, that’s a pretty good deal. So that saves you a lot of money as opposed to going the other route with teams phone where you have to get an $8 share device license plus a calling plan for every single one of those commentary phones. So that’s that’s an alternative there.

Confused? Reach out and contact me

again, if you’re confused on any of that stuff or if you’d like my recommendation on the best third party companies to quote for your team’s phone system, dial tone, reach out to me. Send me an email, give me a call (714.593.0011). I’d love to help you. This is my job. I’ve been doing it for over 20 years. I’m a broker for all the major cloud phone system and VoIP companies out there and all the ones that supply dial tone like direct routing as a service and operator connect. I’m a broker for all those major companies and I know the niche each one has, so I’ll help you make a lot more educated decision in a fraction of the time. You don’t have to Google around to figure out which providers are out there. Also, make sure you get hooked up with the providers with the best reputation so you don’t end up with a provider that you didn’t realize has a really bad reputation for customer service or service quality, things like that.

My recommendations

So I’ll match up with some great providers, ones that not only give you great service, but also have great pricing and have all the features that match your company’s requirements. Also introduce you to the best salespeople to work with and oversee the coding process to make sure you get the best pricing on the service provider of your choice. And the nice thing, as I mentioned earlier in the video, is that the service providers pay me my broker fee so your company doesn’t have to pay me a dime. So there’s no reason not to at least reach out and see what my opinion is on this stuff. So I want her to at least see what I have to say. So reach out, send me an email, give me a call. I’d love to help you guys out. That’s why I do these videos. So if you want to pay me back for a little bit of the knowledge, reach out and ask me for a quote.