Microsoft Teams Phones

Microsoft Teams Phone System is growing in popularity, and you might be researching whether or not it is a fit to replace your company’s current PBX.

But what types of phones (i.e. handsets), can you use with it?

In this short video, AeroCom President, Mike Smith, explains which phones are compatible with Microsoft Teams and why they must be certified by Microsoft.

Want Mike’s recommendation on which vendors have the best Teams Phone System direct routing? Click below.

Ask Mike

About Mike
Mike Smith is the Founder and President of AeroCom and has been helping companies with telecom and cloud services since 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards and in 2011, he was honored as one of the top 40 business people in Orange County, CA., under 40 years old. Follow Mike on LinkedIn, Twitter or SpiceWorks.

Transcript:

Your company is looking at a Microsoft Teams Phone System to replace your company’s current phone system or your current PBX. I know that one of the questions you have is what are our options for handsets or desk phones?

Okay, so Teams, obviously, a soft phone client is the most natural way to use a Microsoft Teams Phone System. That’s the easy answer, but we all know that companies have a lot of employees that aren’t quite comfortable yet with the soft phone and those folks need a desk phone. Well, as of right now, when this video was recorded, there are two options to consider when you’re looking at Teams in terms of desktop phones.

The first, I should preface this by saying the main thing is you cannot take any IP phone and plug it in and use it with Teams. The reason being is that you have to have a phone that’s able to plug into your local area network and transmit out and be recognized as a Teams device. So it has to be able to be recognized as a Microsoft Teams device. So to do that, it has to be certified by Microsoft to work with Teams. And right now there’s only two types of phones that do that.

First and foremost are the Yealink Microsoft Teams phones. Those phones have a big display on them so that you can use all of the features of Teams from the phone itself, from the handsets, so it really enables you to really use Teams to its fullest functionality, even through the desktop experience, desktop phone experience.

The other option you can use is a little less functional, but it still works. There is some Polycom VVX model phones that, I think it’s like the 311 and the 411 and the 600 series, those actually can be used with Microsoft Teams. You can plug them into your local area network and have them be recognized as a Team’s device, but it doesn’t have the big graphics display and so some of the feature functionality is limited with those phones. Basically those phones can just be used to take and make calls. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that the Yealink phones allow you to be able to take advantage of through the Team’s experience.

So those are your two options as of right now, and I hope that helps a little bit. I hope that kind of helps you understand Teams and how it works with handsets. If you have any questions, feel free to give me a call. I talk about this stuff all day long. I’m happy to help in any way I can. I’m also happy to give you some vendor recommendations on the best way to quote a Team’s phone system and so forth. Just reach out. I’m happy to help.

Email me or call 877-465-3505

Hope you have a great day!