Overview

Teams Direct Routing allows Microsoft Office 365 customers to add cloud voice workloads to their own telephony carrier for Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) connectivity.  With direct routing, you can use Teams & Microsoft's Phone System with virtually any telephony carrier including Evolve IP.

Evolve IP brings a powerful combination of analyst-acclaimed intellectual property and enterprise hosted PBX, which enables the deployment of flexible, purpose-built business collaboration experiences that are designed to meet the unique needs of your business environments and improve your employee productivity.

When you incorporate your Microsoft Teams environment with Evolve IP through direct routing, you leverage Evolve IP's voice platform that includes 9 datacenters, 17 carriers, 100+ routes, and Evolve IP's 100% network uptime.

In This Getting Started Guide

This getting started guide is for Evolve IP customers who wish to configure and manage Teams Direct Routing on their own.  Evolve IP is providing this documentation as a courtesy to Office 365 administrators who prefer to pave their own way and keep full control over their Office 365 environments – we fully understand and respect this stance.

Please keep in mind that Microsoft is constantly changing and updating their online services.  We will do our best to keep this getting started guide fully updated, but if you do notice anything that needs to be updated, please let us know, and we will make adjustments as soon as possible.

The direct routing deployment portion of this guide is broken down into 4 major steps, which should be followed in order.  Additionally, the first step that outlines the planning and prerequisites for direct routing should be thoroughly reviewed.  There's a lot of info in that step that will help you achieve a smooth, successful deployment. 

• Teams Direct Routing - 01 - Planning and Prerequisites
• Teams Direct Routing - 02 - Add the Domains
• Teams Direct Routing - 03 - Configure Direct Routing
• Teams Direct Routing - 04 - User Provisioning

Microsoft Video Resources (Ignite 2018)

Deployment Checklist

Here's a checklist you can use for Here are some deep dive videos released by Microsoft from their 2018 Ignite conference, which should help you with your direct routing deployment.

Teams Direct Routing Deep Dive (Ignite 2018) - For voice engineers and Office 365 admins.

Microsoft Teams Call & Meeting Quality Deep Dive (Ignite 2018) - For voice engineers and Office 365 admins.

Understanding Media Flows in Microsoft Teams (Ignite 2018) - For voice engineers and Office 365 admins.

Microsoft Teams Call Usage & Troubleshooting (Ignite 2018) - For voice engineers and Office 365 admins

Microsoft Video Resources (Teams IT Pro Academy)

Here are some additional deep dive videos released by Microsoft in the past year, which have a lot good content that's still relevant.

Network Planning for Microsoft Teams - For voice engineers and Office 365 admins.

Teams Direct Routing Deep Dive - For voice engineers and Office 365 admins.

Intro to Phone System - For voice engineers and Office 365 admins.

Microsoft Video Resources (Upgrading from Skype for Business)

Here are some deep dive videos released by Microsoft, which cover upgrading from Skype for Business.

Planning Your Upgrade - For Skype for Business admins & Office 365 admins.

Identify Your Upgrade Approach - For Skype for Business admins & Office 365 admins.

Implement Your Upgrade Approach - For Skype for Business admins & Office 365 admins.

Ready Your Users - For Skype for Business admins & Office 365 admins.

Microsoft Documentation Resources

Environment Discovery & Planning

• Verify all licensing requirements
• Determine a list of pilot users
• Verify your Teams upgrade coexistence mode
• Verify your Teams voice calling policies
• Verify your Teams caller ID policies
• Verify that you can connect to your Office 365 tenant using the Microsoft Teams PowerShell module

Office 365 Tenant Configuration

• Add & verify the routing domains provided by Evolve IP
• Create a user/service account for each routing domain and assign a temp Office 365 license
• Configure Teams Direct Routing
• Create the PSTN Usage Objects
• Create the Voice Routes
• Create the Voice Routing Policies
• Create the Phone Number Normalization Rules & the Tenant Dial Plan
• Wait 24 to 48 hours, and then remove the temp Office 365 licenses from the user/service accounts

User Provisioning

• Add/purchase the licenses for the pilot group
• Assign the licenses & provision the pilot group
• Test and verify all features & functions with the pilot group
• Add/purchase the licenses for remaining users
• Assign the licenses & provision the remaining users
• Plan Direct Routing
• Configure Direct Routing
• Teams Cloud Voice Guidance
• Understanding Microsoft Teams Call Flows
• Monitor and troubleshoot Direct Routing
• Migrate to Direct Routing
• User Accounts in a Hybrid Environment with PSTN Connectivity
• Networking Principals for Office 365
• Client Connectivity to Office 365