Phone Calls with Microsoft Teams

Make phone calls with Microsoft Teams on your PC and mobile devices.
If you work with Microsoft Teams, you can also use the communication tool to make phone calls and manage calls. Whether on the go, from your home office or from your company PC – with Microsoft Teams you can easily call any landline or mobile phone.

With Microsoft Teams, you can make any number of phone calls at very low rates. This protects your company's liquidity and gives you access to the latest infrastructure.

In this article, we address the following questions, among others:

• How can you call people within your own company via Microsoft Teams?
• How can you call people outside your company via Microsoft Teams?
• How can you answer, hold or transfer calls in Microsoft Teams?
• How can you add people to a call in Microsoft Teams or make several calls at the same time?
• Can I integrate my company's phone system into Microsoft Teams?

Quick overview

• Calls within your own organization are free via the Teams app and require no additional telephony license.
• Calls to landlines or mobile numbers require a Teams Phone license plus a PSTN connection: Direct Routing, a Microsoft Calling Plan, or Operator Connect.
• The Microsoft Teams Phone Standard license is only included in Microsoft 365 E5; for all other plans (including Business Basic/Standard/Premium, E1, E3, F1/F3) it must be purchased as a separate add-on.
• With Direct Routing you can keep your existing phone system and numbers – there is no need to switch providers.

Calling people within your own company

• Click the "Calls" button in the vertical menu on the left-hand side
• Your existing contacts are listed under the "Contacts" tab. If you cannot find a contact right away, you can type the name into the search bar
• You can call the selected contact by clicking the "phone icon"

• Alternatively, you can make one-on-one or group calls directly from a chat
• To do this, simply open an existing or new chat in the "Chat" tab and click the "phone icon" in the top right corner

Calling people outside your company

• Click the "Calls" button in the vertical menu on the left-hand side
• In the menu that opens, you can add new contacts, assign them a speed dial, use the dial pad, listen to your voicemails or view your call history

Answering, holding and transferring a call

• When you receive a call in Microsoft Teams, you can choose whether to accept or decline the call.
• Once you have accepted the call, you can decide whether to activate your microphone and/or your camera by clicking the microphone or camera icon. In our example, the camera is deactivated and the microphone is activated.

• Clicking the three dots opens a menu in which you can choose, among other things, whether to put the call on hold, transfer it or display the keypad.

Microsoft Phone System

With the Microsoft Phone System, you can make calls to the landline network directly from Microsoft Teams and receive calls from the landline network. There are, among others, three options for this.

1. You configure Teams so that all calls are handled via an independent telephone provider (Direct Routing).
2. You purchase the calling functionality directly from Microsoft and make calls directly via Microsoft 365 (Calling Plan).

Option 1: Microsoft Direct Routing

With this option, you can connect your existing phone system (PBX) directly to Microsoft Teams. The practical part: you do not have to change your telephone provider or your phone number. This works with any phone system certified by Microsoft as an SBC (Session Border Controller) partner, or via our partner with any SIP telephony provider.

Option 2: Microsoft Calling Plans

With this option, Microsoft acts as your telephone provider. For supported countries, including Germany, you can purchase Calling Plans and assign them to users via the Teams admin center. This first requires Teams Phone licensing: it is already included in Microsoft 365 E5; for all other plans (including Business Basic/Standard/Premium, E1, E3, F1/F3), the "Microsoft Teams Phone Standard" add-on license must be purchased separately before the actual Calling Plan can be licensed.

Option 3: Routing via a virtual phone system/Operator Connect

With this option, you do not need your own phone system but book it directly from a telephone provider. The Teams Phone Standard license is required for this.

Frequently asked questions

How much does calling with Microsoft Teams cost?
Calls between colleagues within the organization are free via the Teams app and require no additional telephony license. For calls to landlines or mobile numbers, costs depend on the chosen option (Direct Routing, Calling Plan or Operator Connect) and include the Teams Phone license plus usage- or provider-based call charges.

Can I keep my existing phone number and phone system?
Yes. With Direct Routing, you connect your existing phone system (PBX) or a SIP trunk provider to Microsoft Teams via a certified Session Border Controller (SBC) – your number and provider stay unchanged.

What is the difference between Calling Plan, Operator Connect and Direct Routing?
With a Calling Plan, Microsoft itself is your telephone provider. With Operator Connect, a certified carrier connects its service directly in the Teams admin center, so you don't need to operate your own hardware. With Direct Routing, you connect any SIP provider via your own or a hosted SBC instance – the most configuration effort, but also the most flexibility.

Do I need additional hardware to make calls with Teams?
No, calls can be made via PC, mobile device or desk phone; a headset is sufficient for most use cases. Certified Teams phones are also available for shared spaces.

Telephony as part of your project work in Microsoft Teams

In practice, the calling function in Microsoft Teams often stays disconnected from the actual project work: follow-up calls with clients, suppliers or team members still run through separate channels, even though chat, meetings, files and tasks already come together in Teams. As a result, the link between a call and the project, task or activity it belongs to is frequently lost.

Holert has supported companies for more than 25 years in using Microsoft Teams as a consistent project management environment – chat, meetings and telephony embedded in tasks, activities and project structure rather than isolated tools. As part of our fixed-price project management software implementation package, we set up Microsoft 365 and Teams accordingly; our project and portfolio management customer references show how we do this for our clients. To see how telephony fits into the broader picture of project work with Microsoft Teams, read our article Project Management with Microsoft Teams.

Holert is happy to help you select and set up the right telephony option for Microsoft Teams – simply get in touch with us.