UCStatus Podcast

UCStatus Podcast

By Randy Chapman, Mark Vale & Shawn HarryNewsTechnologyTech News
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UCStatus Podcast episodes

  • UCStatus Podcast Episode 54: Callroute Special

    Hello Readers, I hope you’re well.

    Welcome to Episode 54 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman), Mark Vale (@markvale83) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry).

    This week we chat with Mark about his day job at Callroute.

    Callroute is a small company in the south of England who started with a platform to deliver telephony to Teams through Direct Routing as a service, but with a unique widard based sign up and provisioning process. The simple process starts with giving an app some permissions to read and write to your tenant. Which means you can be making and receiving calls in under 10 minutes from start to finish.

    Mark went on to talk about Callroutes latest service which launched on the day of recording. The ner service is all about user lifecycle management.

    User Persona Management – Knowledge Base – Callroute Knowledge Center

    Callroute User Personas gives admins the ability to create custom policy sets which contain all of the user assignable Teams policies for a given persona. A persona could be a location or job role or a function or a project. You decide what you need, then create a bunch of user policies in Teams Admin Centre. All policies are in scope, including the voice policies. When ready you can sync the policies to Callroute and create your personas. Think of personas like Teams policy packages, but without the need for an additional Teams license. Once you have created your personas you create conditions for auto assignment and let Callroute do the rest. As new users are added to Callroute via the sync function, when they match a persona they are assigned a package.

    I don’t want to give away too much and let you listen to Mark explain it.

    Stay tuned for some additional content from me as I get started with Callroute telephony service and put User Personas through its paces.

    If you want to know more about Callroute, visit their website at Callroute.com. They have a chat tool on the site. They also have a great knowledgebase on everything Callroute does, including User Persona Management.

    You can also see Callroute at UC Expo Callroute To Exhibit Auto-Provisioning At UC Expo at Stand S76. Hope you enjoy.

    As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below.

    You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, TuneIn or iHeartRadio. The links are below.

    If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share.

    Sign Up

    We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes so why not leave a comment.

    1 hr 4 min
  • UCStatus Podcast Episode 53: More recent Teams Rooms News

    Hello Readers, I hope you’re well.

    Welcome to Episode 53 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman), Mark Vale (@markvale83) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry).

    This week we chat about some of the most recent news for Teams Rooms and Teams Phone. I pulled some stuff from the Message Centre, What’s new in Teams Blogs and the Roadmap. Then we had a big whinge about the tooling and management for MTR.

    Here’s the short list of topics

    • Front Row AI with spacial audio and unified background for teh ga;llery
    • Join 3rd party meetings from Teams desktop client – basically Direct Guest Join for the Teams client
    • Unbundling Teams from M365 – The Teams workload will no longer be part of your E, A, G or F SKUs for M365 in the EEAA. If you want it, you have to buy it separately for 5 EUR.
    • Teams Panels to have QR codes for adding a room to existing meeting or booking a new meeting in that room. Shameless plug for my video on this https://youtu.be/5h0bLJ7Dv1A
    • Device Management Changes for Microsoft Teams Android Devices. In the first half of 2024 there will be a firmware update which will move devices from Android device administrator to Android AOSP management. – More info here https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home?ref=MessageCenter/:/messages/MC665936
    • Shared Device License on Mobile App for Android – offers a shared identity-based , common area phone experience, including basic and advanced calling, people search, voicemail and walkie talkie, on an Android smart phone.
    • Certificate changes for Direct Routing SBCs
      • On September 5th (starting 9 AM UTC) Microsoft will perform a 24h test where all Microsoft SIP endpoints will be switched over to use certificates where the certificate chain will roll up to “DigiCert Global Root G2” Certificate Authority (CA). If your SBC doesn’t trust this CA you might not be able to connect to Teams SIP endpoints.
      • What’s New Direct Routing – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn
      • Algo overhead pagers, alerters and door entry devices now compatible with SIP gateway
      • End of Support for Cortana on Microsoft Teams Room on Windows and Teams Displays
        • Microsoft will implement this change by September 29, 2023. Users will no longer be able to invoke Cortana via the push-to-talk button or use the keyword (“Cortana”) when this change is implemented.
        • Face enrollment on Teams Desktop to support recognition in Teams Rooms

          • After this, at around the 40 minute mark, we talk about the opportunities for better tooling and management for MTR.

          As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below.

          You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, TuneIn or iHeartRadio. The links are below.

          If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share.

          Sign Up

          We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes so why not leave a comment.

          1 hr
        • UCStatus Podcast Episode 52: Microsoft Teams Phone Special

          Hello Readers, I hope you’re well.

          Welcome to Episode 52 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman), Mark Vale (@markvale83) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry).

          This week we chat about Teams Telephony, Teams Phone, Teams Calling and Voice stuff. Yes I know they are all the same but I wanted to try to make it sound exciting.

          I pulled some stuff from the Message Centre, What’s new in Teams Blogs and the Roadmap

          Message Centre and What’s new in Teams
          1. Dynamic emergency calling on Teams Web. Including adding an emergency location
          2. Make calls through speed dial and call history on Apple CarPlay
          3. Changes in Normalization: Microsoft is stopping normalization on number that starts with + sign
          4. Authorized users will be able to Change call queue and auto attendant greetings and announcements
          5. Compliance recording for redirected calls
            • Redirected scenarios include forwarded and transferred calls, calls redirected to voicemail, delegated calls, and call to call groups.
            • Teams Calling Policy version 2 – You can now choose different routing settings for PSTN calls and VoIP calls from federated Teams users in Teams admin center.
              • option to either allow all incoming calls, redirect calls to voicemail, or redirect calls as per user’s unanswered settings.
                • Roadmap
                1. Skype for Business OnPrem user will be able to call Teams Call Queue via VoIP or PSTN – rolling out from June
                2. Microsoft Teams: Location-based routing for Teams on VDI – Rolled out April
                  3. Other Telephony stuff
                  Operator Connect news
                  • now has 67 operators globally
                  • 155 regions listed
                  • 8 operators for audio conferencing dial-in numbers
                  • 5 for Teams phone mobile

                    • We also chat about Teams Phone Mobile (what was called Operator Connect Mobile) and an alternative from Tango Networks.

                    As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below.

                    You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, TuneIn or iHeartRadio. The links are below.

                    If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share.

                    Sign Up

                    We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes so why not leave a comment.

                    48 min
                  • UCStatus Podcast Episode 51: Recent MTR news from the Message Centre

                    Hello Readers, I hope you’re well.

                    Welcome to Episode 51 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry).

                    This week we chat about a long list of news and new stuff from the Microsoft 365 Message Centre.

                    If you didn’t know, that’s a great source of news. The Roadmap serves it up, sometimes a year in advance and with a rough idea of when its gonna land. The Message Centre is when its imminent, although sometimes several months out, or more. You also need to check frequently because the posts get updated with new timelines as they slip a month or 3. And if for no other reason, you should absolutely check the message centre because some things require admin work to prepare for what’s coming. Or it warns of things being switched off, like Skype for Business phones on Teams. You can of course listen here and get a filtered list of what we think is interesting.

                    The list:

                    • Join BlueJeans meetings using Direct Guest Join on MTRoW – Early May
                    • SIP / H323 dialing from MTR on Windows to a VTC with SIP guest join – early June. Requires a Pexip license
                    • Content camera (aka Magic Whiteboard) on Teams Rooms on Android. Requires a Logitech Scribe, with many more devices in the future. – July (update 2)
                    • Smart camera controls (user based controls to change intelligent framing options during a meeting) for Teams Rooms on Android. Requires the Pro license a smart camera/solution (e.g. Logi Rally Bar) – July (update 2)
                    • MTRoW Windows 11 support – requires 4.16.134 or better. You can manually install and test. 4.17 will support Windows 11 by default, and it will automatically upgrade if you let it
                    • A new default home screen and an enhanced custom background feature for Teams Rooms on Windows. (see my blog post here https://ucstatus.com/2023/06/11/updated-guidance-on-custom-backgrounds-for-your-microsoft-teams-rooms/). Enhanced custom background requires the Teams Rooms Pro SKU. – from 4.17
                    • Track and pause firmware auto-updates for Teams Android devices (Teams phones, display, panel, room and touch console) from Teams admin center. Basiclally update rings in TAC for Android
                    • Upgrade to Microsoft Defender for Endpoints Plan 2 for Teams Rooms Pro customers
                    • Net Promoter Score survey coming to Teams Rooms on Windows – vote for how good the meeting was after it finishes. From the MTR
                    • Simplified Device Registration Process for Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro Management Portal. MTRoW will embed the agent for Pro portal in the client. So when you sign in, if the account has pro it will enrol.
                    • Spatial audio in Teams meetings
                    • Animated Backgrounds in Teams Meetings
                    • Microsoft Teams: Hotline Phones (Private Line Automatic Ringdown)

                      • As always we had a lot of fun so have a listen.

                      One last shameless plug. See you at Commsverse in a few days

                      As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below.

                      You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, TuneIn or iHeartRadio. The links are below.

                      If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share.

                      Sign Up

                      We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes so why not leave a comment.

                      49 min
                    • UCStatus Podcast Episode 50: Commsverse 2023

                      Hello Readers, I hope you’re well.

                      Welcome to Episode 50 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman) & Mark Vale (@markvale83) talking about Commsverse 2023 which is just around the corner on 21st and 22nd of June (as I write this, it is week after next).

                      This year will be our biggest yet. So if you’re into Microsoft Teams or Viva there is still time to grab a ticket.

                      As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below.

                      You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, TuneIn or iHeartRadio. The links are below.

                      If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share.

                      Sign Up

                      We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes so why not leave a comment.

                      25 min
                    • UCStatus Podcast Episode 49: Microsoft Teams Premium Licensing
                      Hello Readers, I hope you’re well. Welcome to Episode 49 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman), Mark Vale (@markvale83) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry). This week we chat about the Teams Premium licensing and the features inside. The list of features in Premium are broken down into 5 separate categories. And therein, 5 […]
                      27 min
                    • UCStatus Podcast Episode 47: Something, Something Teams
                      Hello Readers, I hope you’re well. Welcome to Episode 47 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry). This week back to basics. Shawn and I have no agenda or list to cover. We just talk for 40 minutes about Teams stuff. The list: As always we had a lot […]
                      44 min
                    • UCStatus Podcast Episode 46: Best of Ignite 2022
                      Hello Readers, I hope you’re well. Welcome to Episode 46 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman), Shawn Harry (@shawnharry) and Mark Vale (@markvale83). This week we chat about what we thought was interesting from the recent Ignite conference. The list We also briefly mentioned a few things I found in the roadmap, […]
                      55 min

                    About UCStatus Podcast

                    From the publisher's feed

                    The UCStatus Podcast is your resource for news and insights for Microsoft UC, focusing on Teams and Skype for Business. It is presented by current and former Microsoft MVPs and experts in the Unified…