Microsoft Teams Phone + Mobile

The gap

A company had moved office calling to Microsoft Teams with auto attendant and call queues. But the system stopped at the desk.

When a customer called the office, the Teams call queue rang everyone — office staff on Teams, and field staff through the Teams app on their mobile phones. Field staff mostly missed those calls because they worked in areas with limited or unreliable internet. So office staff fell back to manually forwarding calls to each field person's separate mobile number, keeping a list of personal workarounds at their desk.

When calls did go to voicemail, they landed in one employee's mailbox and were not visible to the rest of the team. The workflow was fragmented, calls were missed, and follow-up depended on one person checking their own voicemail.

The solution

I led a company-wide rollout of Microsoft Teams Phone, with Teams Phone Mobile for anyone using a company mobile phone — mainly field staff.

Teams Phone Mobile gave each user one work number that worked in the Teams app and on the native mobile dialer. Field staff could answer queue calls straight from their phone's regular call screen, without relying on the Teams app or a data connection. That let them participate in call queue coverage the same way office staff did.

The call queue could also route voicemails to a shared mailbox, so missed calls became visible to the team instead of being locked in one person's mailbox.

At the time, Rogers was the only Canadian carrier offering this integration. Today, two carriers support it in Canada.

My role

I handled this end to end: researching the solution when it was still new, designing the rollout, configuring the platform, coordinating with the carrier, training users, and managing the cutover.

Outcome

• Field staff can reliably answer Teams call queue calls without internet.
• One work number per user across Teams app and mobile.
• Less manual forwarding from office staff to individual mobile numbers.
• Missed-call voicemails go to a shared mailbox, not an individual one.
• Better call coverage across office and field teams.