Telephony in the Modern Business
Put simply, telephony describes the technology and systems used for phones and calling. It has long been associated with traditional landline telephones via the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). However, the advent of the internet has hugely transformed telephony technology, and the different ways we can communicate are a far cry from times gone by.
Understand Key Components of Modern Telephony Systems:
What is a PSTN?
Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is a standard telephone network used by many businesses in the last decade.
What is a PBX?
A hosted Private Branch Exchange (PBX) is a private telephone network used within a company.
What is SBC and SIP?
An SBC (Session Border Controller) is used at network borders to protect Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) communications. SIP is an application layer protocol that enables you to run a telephony system over the internet.
What is Unified Communication?
Unified communications is where every communications channel (chat, file sharing, phone calls, video conferencing, email and more) is integrated within one platform.
What is a VoIP Phone System?
While PSTN utilises circuit-switched telephony, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) uses packet-switched telephony. Here, real-time voice signals are transferred between IP addresses through a wifi or ethernet connection.
Benefits of Integrating Different Communication Channels
Why choose Microsoft Teams for External Calling?
There are lots of different tools you can use for business collaboration (including external calling). Our research shows Microsoft Teams comes out top above tools such as Slack, Zoom, GoToMeeting and Google Hangouts. This is because Microsoft Teams offers the most sophisticated capabilities:
- A single access point for all communication channels
- Full PBX functionality
- Ability to call those without Teams
- Seamless integration with Office 365
- Centralisation of data — communication history and contacts
How To Call Someone On Teams
If you’re wondering how to call someone in Teams, there are three main ways to do so:
Teams-to-Teams call
Calling other internal Teams users can be done using any device with Teams installed. However, this may make external communication tricky, has limited analytics and call management functionality, and doesn’t give you a phone number.
Call using another app
Apps like Cisco Jabber, Webex, RingCentral and Zoom can all be used in conjunction with Teams. Overall though, this doesn’t create a seamless, centralised and properly integrated experience.
Use Teams to call anyone
You can either use Microsoft Phone System or Direct Routing to place integrated PSTN calls with Teams. However, the former isn’t a sophisticated control tool, lacking capabilities around call recording, call reporting or queue management. For true PBX capabilities and more, direct routing is the best way forward.
Integrate Teams With Any Telephony Systems Using Direct Routing
What is Direct Routing?
Direct Routing improves Teams in a number of ways by integrating the Microsoft platform with a company’s PSTN telephony system. This enables them to use it as a genuine PBX on any device and properly unify their communications system.
Why you should choose Callroute’s Direct Routing Solution
Here at Callroute, our Direct Routing solution integrates phone calls from Microsoft Teams in minutes. Our unique pricing approach means we charge less than other providers as your business only pays for the capacity you need, rather than every user.
We also offer a free voice channel for life with 250 monthly minutes rather than a time-limited trial. This enables businesses to test our Direct Routing solution before upgrading to a paid plan.
What’s more, our background in corporate telephony means we appreciate the importance of reporting, security and calling features. With our Direct Routing solution, you can select caller IDs, monitor call history, track user activity, monitor calls, manage who calls where and when, facilitate remote access to your phone system, and more from our Callroute user portal.
To learn more about our solution, get in touch to speak to our experts.
