Before we get started, let’s open by saying that multi-tenant share calling isn’t exactly the same as shared calling for Microsoft Teams.
There are differences in the way you manage and use multi-tenant shared calling and there are some intricacies in both the operational and financial benefits too.
If you need single Teams tenant shared calling at an unbeatable price, we have that covered too. But, for this blog post, let’s dive into multi-tenant shared calling.
What is multi-tenant shared calling for Microsoft Teams?
Multi-tenant shared calling for Teams is where you can connect your phone service providers to more than one Teams tenant that you manage within your organization.
If you work for a large organization that operates multiple subsidiary companies or grows through acquisition of your competition, then you could end up managing Teams Phone in separate Teams Admin Centers for each business entity.
I’m sure that if this is you, you’ll understand the problems that arise with this. But for others who are experiencing this for the first time, here are some of the main challenges you’ll face.
- Multiple Admin Accounts: To access each Teams tenant to assign phone numbers to users, you’ll need an admin account in each tenant. Inconvenient for you to remember which to use and where, but also increases your identity and information security risk as each account is an attack vector.
- Differing Procedures: Each tenant will have a different set of policies that won’t have the same naming conventions, which means that assigning a number and a similar voice policy to a user will differ between tenants. This will leave you searching for the right documentation.
- Different Script Versions: If you’re configuring Teams Phone using PowerShell or have your own in-house power app to automate phone number assignment, you’ll have to duplicate and customize them for each Teams tenant.
- Multiple Isolated Carrier Connections: Each Teams tenant will need its own PSTN connection provided by a number of carriers depending on your global presence. Whether they connect via Direct Routing or Operator Connect, each connection and contract is specific to each Teams tenant. This complicates your operational service model and prevents you from accessing bigger discounts.
- Lots of Wasted Numbers: You could find yourself with hundreds of numbers in the same area code provisioned to each Teams tenant, but only use a small fraction of them in each. Number rentals can cost businesses between $1 and $70 per month depending on the country of origin.
- Complicated User Changes: When a user moves between operating companies, you’ll need to migrate their data and issue them a new account in the target Teams tenant. You may need to handle number porting between providers if the user must keep their original number which can slow the process down and impact end user productivity.
- Charged For ‘Internal’ Calls : Sometimes, it just isn’t possible to use Teams to Teams calling between users in separate operating companies. This can be down to the fact the person they’re trying to call uses a different UC app, PBX, or contact center. The only way for them to speak is to call their DDI or service number which will egress over the PSTN and incur an associated call charge.
These are the most common operational problems with managing multiple Teams tenants with Teams Phone.
You might be planning a consolidation of users into a single tenant and believe this is just short-term pain that is tolerable.
However, in my experience, tenant to tenant migrations and phone system consolidation never happen quickly and can take many months, if not years to complete depending on the complexities that aren’t just limited to Teams Phone.
Introducing multi-tenant shared calling for Teams
If you’re in either situation, our multi-tenant shared calling can help you make these processes as painless as possible.
As our service is completely cloud driven, there’s nothing to install in your Azure environment. It integrates with EntraID for enterprise single sign-on and everything is accessible via an intuitive web portal that’s designed for first-line support.
Think of us as your own cloud-based communications network, edge gateway, and call session manager.
Using our automated Teams Direct Routing deployment tool, you can deploy Callroute into each of your Teams tenants within a single instance of Callroute.
The process only takes a few minutes.
Once connected, your Teams Phone users from each tenant are synced into your Callroute portal and separated to make it easy for you to manage.
You can then connect all service providers from each of your operating companies to Callroute using our bring your own carrier feature. With this feature, you can select from over 30 different carrier templates that will instantly activate.
If your carrier isn’t, listed don’t worry. We’re able to onboard any carrier in any country that can provide SIP trunking over the internet or private circuit.
When you’ve connected your carriers, it’s as simple as importing your number ranges by CSV or via our user interface and selecting the default route for each range.
When you’re ready to switch over to Callroute, all you need to do is update the Teams user voice routing policy to point at Callroute.
But don’t panic, we have a bulk operation that will automate this for you making switchover painless.
Admin benefits of multi-tenant shared calling for Teams
There are many benefits of using our multi-tenant shared calling for Teams.
From a day-to-day admin perspective, here are some of the biggest ones you’ll get immediately.
- Single Admin Account & Portal: Integrate Callroute with your master Microsoft 365 tenant for single sign on so that you can use your own account to administrate any user in any Teams tenant without having to switch admin centers.
- Share Numbers Between Teams Tenants: Numbers are no longer bound by the Teams tenant the carrier was connected to. Now your users can move between Teams tenants and keep their number without the porting headaches of the past.
- Categorize Numbers Into Locations: Create locations that can contain numbers from any range provided by any of your carriers to make number assignment easier and less bureaucratic than before.
- Standardize Provisioning Procedures: Deliver consistent voice configuration and policy alignment across all users in all tenants. This means that no matter where the user is, the process to assign them a number and voice related policies is the same as any other.
- Automate Provisioning Across Tenants: You can even create provisioning rules that will assign a user their number and voice policies based on their Entra ID group membership or account attributes. This gives you complete zero-touch provisioning without needing to write scripts or deploy countless power apps.
Operational benefits of multi-tenant shared calling
The biggest operational benefit is Callroute will greatly simplify your user support processes and will free up engineer time to concentrate on other tickets improving your service levels across multiple support groups.
You won’t need to rely on your specialist engineers to complete what should be simple jobs.
Instead, you can use your frontline support engineers and integrate Callroute’s provisioning system into your service catalog using our API for self-service provisioning.
Having all your carriers aggregated into Callroute gives you one service point to operate from rather than several you once had.
If you’re experiencing an issue with a carrier, perhaps their service is interrupted, you can failover to your other carriers.
Beyond service support, our multi-tenanted solution enables you to connect other phone systems, contact centers, and SIP devices into the same tenant.
Now when calls between each connected system happen, they remain ‘on-net’ and won’t incur a call charge, even if they cross operating company boundaries.
When it comes to users needing to move from Teams tenant to Teams tenant, you no longer have to factor in number porting should they need to keep their number.
If you do want to issue them a new number, they can still keep their old number for a period of time to aid a smoother transition for them and your customers.
All these make for a seamless and uninterrupted service your users can rely on.
Financial benefits of multi-tenant shared calling for Teams
Converging your carriers and services using Callroute gives you an unrivalled opportunity to optimize and transform the once disparate telephony service into a true shared service that can be enjoyed by all your users across the organization.
From an expenditure perspective, it offers an opportunity to run down existing contracts and seek to consolidate carriers who can offer the same PSTN calling services in the same regions into one.
Having a collectively larger pool of users and calling requirements gives you bigger buying power with your carriers to access better deals.
The consolidated call detail reporting within the portal provides insight into your overall usage across all Teams tenants so you have a more accurate view of the minutes you’re consuming.
You may find that you don’t need to pre-buy as many minutes or numbers as you once thought you needed.
When it comes to number porting, there is no need to reconfigure the affected Teams users.
Their number doesn’t need to be temporarily unassigned or their voice routing policy updating in Teams.
All you need to do is update the carrier assignment on the number range at the point of porting and everything is taken care of instantly.
Summary
In summary, if you’re working within a multi company organization with Teams Phone, then you need to consider Callroute for your shared calling service.
The benefits speak for themselves.
