Introduction
We recently designed, configured and planned a Microsoft Teams Voice migration for a large government organisation. Between user DDI’s, auto-attendants, and call queues, there was approximately 6,000 numbers requiring migration. As we had already deployed Microsoft Teams to the organisation as a collaboration tool, the users were familiar with making and receiving internal voice and video calls using the solution, so moving PSTN calls into the same solution made the most sense.
The Process
Once the design was agreed upon and approved, the platforms were configured as per the approved design, and the migration itself was pretty straight forward. Prior to migration, whist the platforms were being configured, we hosted a number of internal presentations with stakeholders and support teams, and larger presentations to staff, to ensure everyone had a good grasp on what was going to happen. These presentations were a great way of us to improve the users comfort with the solution and its features, present an expected timeline of when we expected it to happen, and most importantly to answer any questions or concerns anyone might have. To ease the transition, once the platforms were configured we first enabled outbound only calling for everyone. This allowed users to get comfortable with making outbound PSTN calls from Microsoft Teams without affecting how they work, they could still make and receive calls using their existing processes.
From the existing PBX we pulled out some reporting on usage in order to split users into high, medium and low usage groups. For those users we considered low usage, we were pretty hands off, they were communicated to over e-mail informing them what was going to happen and when, we then ported over their number, then followed up to check everything was okay. As the usage went up so did the amount of communication and different types of engagement, we ran more presentations, got as much feedback as we could on functionality used so we could show them how to replicate it, and made sure everyone was as comfortable as we could make them prior to porting. The process of porting all the numbers was quick, and the comfort level was high, and with a little added pressure from the business we managed to get everyone migrated in a very short timeframe.
The Outcome
This project was perfectly timed, not planned, to finish just before the second COVID lockdown, and now that users could make and receive calls on their corporate DDI’s whilst at home meant those that do work on the phone could easily move from the office to home without complex processes of call diversion. This lead to the project getting more visibility and praise from the business than you’d normally expect. It was a great success considering the size and complexities that come with a phone system that’s been in place for over a decade, with no downtime, the users had been prepped enough to have the confidence to just pick it up and run with it.
Project Overview
Our customer was looking to move their telephony services off their old PBX system, and had tired and failed to do this in a previous attempt. However, with the help of Tranquil IT, were able to migrate over 5,000 users and over 6,000 phone numbers to Microsoft Teams Phone System within a very short space of time, just in time to reap the full benefits of a cloud PBX when COVID 19 lockdowns came into effect.
