Plug-And-Call (PaC) for Teams is MasterVoice’s innovative phone gateway service that integrates with Microsoft Teams, improving performance and reducing costs for businesses. PaC means you can make phone calls through Teams: the MasterVoice system allows you to make and receive calls to and from internal and geographic phone numbers through the MS program, without the need to subscribe to Microsoft Phone System licences. This is a crucial technological integration, a company app inserted within Teams, that represents a significant factor in remote working and meeting capabilities.
Integrated tools to meet the emerging needs of Unified Communication
Microsoft Teams is an important and widely used application, but it has some significant limitations. For example, currently, to provide Teams users with phone functionality to geographic numbers and other business extensions, Microsoft Phone System licences are usually required: 365 Business Voice or E5 (the costs of which, incidentally, will soon increase), a connection to a Microsoft-certified Session Border Controller (SBC) (physical or virtual), trunking with a traffic provider (an external telephone connection from an Internet Telephony Service Provider, or VoIP telephony provider), a set of geographic numbers (new or number portability). These elements all mean non-trivial costs to businesses and require specialized hardware. In particular, one problematic aspect that can create difficulties for a company is the issue of portability of telephony from standard PBXs to Teams: a step that creates a scattering of providers. Additionally, in Italy, Teams currently only guarantees number portability for numbers in Milan and Rome.
In order to fully exploit the potential and benefits of Teams, integration is needed with other corporate communication tools such as the PBX, telephone numbers and external lines.
As business becomes more virtual and remote working continues to grow, it is essential to have reliable, diverse, and comprehensive capabilities for meetings, communications, and collaboration. That’s why Microsoft itself has worked to open new integrations between MS Teams and other UC solutions, to spark innovation, increase productivity, and provide collaborative tools.
MasterVoice PaC for making phone calls with Teams: all the advantages of integration
In developing full integration with Teams, MasterVoice started with a simple question: is it possible to design a solution that allows people to make and receive phone calls to and from Teams users without needing to purchase Phone System licences and SBC services?
Thanks to PaC, a Teams user can make external calls to geographic telephone numbers, receive calls from geographic numbers directly on their Teams client, and make and receive calls to and from MasterVoice extensions.
In addition, MasterVoice users who do not have Teams will be able to make and receive calls to and from users who have Teams.
Another important feature that makes life much easier for businesses is multi-terminality: a user can have both the Teams interface and other MasterVoice devices active, such as SIP hardware phones, web clients, or MasterVoice mobile apps. The incoming call will cause all of the user’s active devices to ring, and when answered on one, the others will stop ringing. If a user is busy on at least one of these devices, they will be marked as busy if someone else tries to call them in the meantime.
In addition, MV for Teams is a “gateway as a service”, which does not require any purchase of dedicated hardware such as a Session Border Controller.
Configuration is very simple: users can be added without needing to make any major changes to Teams settings.
With PaC for Teams, there is no need to purchase licences.
PaC uses MS Teams Tab technology to be able to add MasterVoice as a business app within Teams. This means that you no longer need a Microsoft Phone System 365 Business Voice or E5 licence to make phone calls with Teams, nor do you need a connection to a Microsoft-certified SBC. MasterVoice can also provide trunking with a traffic provider and geographic numbering (new or via number portability).
A constant focus on security
As far as security is concerned, a subject which should always be paid close attention to, the PaC for Teams system is geographically distributed on several Tier IV Datacentres and covered by powerful protection and anti-fraud systems.
Because of these features, PaC uses technologies promoted directly by the Redmond company.
PaC for Teams is a cloud-based service with pricing on a user/month basis: this results in substantial savings for companies that switch to MasterVoice.
Have we piqued your curiosity? Book an appointment to discover the full potential of MasterVoice PaC for Teams!