While working remotely has been on the rise for more than a decade, the trend accelerated geometrically amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, telecom vendors and service providers are scrambling to satisfy the increased demand for remote collaboration services.
Luckily, technology is also moving fast to keep up. In this article, we review a new connector available in Microsoft AppSource that allows all Yeastar IP PBXs to fully integrate with Microsoft Teams, the software giant’s unified collaboration platform. This allows communications between dispersed team members to be even more seamless and efficient.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a unified communications (UC) and collaboration platform that has evolved out of Skype and Skype for Business (SFB). Microsoft Teams is considered the evolutionary next step beyond SFB and is already replacing many SFB implementations, successfully phasing out its predecessor. Just to give you an idea of how fast people have been adopting Teams during the pandemic, in March 2020 there were 44 million daily active users, and one month later, in April, there were over 75 million!
Integration with Yeastar’s IP PBXs
The Yeastar for Microsoft Teams connector, available on Microsoft’s AppSource, delivers deep integrations that make the enterprise-grade calling capabilities of Yeastar PBXs available to Teams users. In other words, users on Yeastar PBX Systems and Microsoft Teams can seamlessly communicate simply by using regular extension numbers, making it a perfect fit for businesses with a mix of Teams and non-Teams users.
The great thing about this integration is that no special configurations are needed on the Yeastar PBX. All the user needs is the proper license for Teams on its Microsoft account to make it work. If a user has a Microsoft 365 Business subscription (Basic, Standard or Premium), then they need the “Common Area Phone” license or the Microsoft 365 Business Voice add-on. If they have an Office 365 subscription (E1, E3 or E5), then the required licenses are already included. Of course, the other element needed is the Yeastar for Microsoft Teams application, available on Microsoft’s AppSource.
Yeastar’s S-series IP PBXs, the high-capacity Yeastar K2 IP PBX, and the cloud-based UC solution all support Microsoft Teams.
Benefits
Once you have the Yeastar for Microsoft Teams application set up on your Microsoft subscription, Teams will function like a regular phone extension connected to your Yeastar PBX, which means that two previously independent and disparate infrastructures and services (namely, Teams and your IP phone system) are now unified and operate as one system. Now, with certified interoperability, communication between Yeastar PBX users and Teams users occurs as if all parties were within the same environment, because they are. There are no complex steps to take to achieve connectivity, nor are there any compatibility hurdles to be overcome. This integration means that:
Supported calling features
Since Teams functions as a Yeastar IP PBX extension, all of Yeastar’s robust calling features are also available on Teams:
Conclusion
Microsoft Teams is one of the world’s leading collaboration platforms, which presents a sizeable business opportunity for Yeastar IP PBX resellers and installers, since this integration allows you to quickly and easily integrate Teams with IP phone systems. The Yeastar for Microsoft Teams integration solution delivers enterprise voice services to Teams users quickly, easily, and cost-effectively, without any additional investment in infrastructure or hardware.
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