Many have adopted Microsoft Teams as the underlying foundation, delivered as part of the Microsoft 365 portfolio, with integration into the rest of the Office 365 suite of applications. Microsoft Teams has firmly established itself as part of the digital IT ecosystem and the catalyst for organizations’ future success and growth.

These organizations are now expanding their vision for Microsoft Teams and looking to deploy for enterprise voice: Communicating and working with external partners over traditional telephony networks. Essentially, VOSS enables organizations to give their Microsoft Teams solution a voice.

The benefits are significant, but so are the challenges in consolidating traditional enterprise voice systems and migrating into a new environment. Service data must be moved, users must be retrained, features must be remapped and service levels maintained. Attempting this manually is fraught with danger: errors are made, there is too much data to be checked and correlated, and the process is slow. Long freeze periods are required, the migration becomes complex, and resolving user issues leads to significant post-migration support costs.

Large amounts of data are involved – difficult to manage and refresh

• Service data – call routing, devices, telephone numbers, services, users
• Inter-relationships, conflicts, duplication – difficult to identify on spreadsheets
• Bulk loading input sheets – are large and unwieldy and difficult to maintain

The process is manual and relies on key staff – constrains the speed of the deployment

• Extracting existing data is complex, ties up key staff (requires PBX skills)
• Normalization of data – manual steps, large Excel sheets
• Loading into MS Teams – specialized, PowerShell – slows migration

The features do not easily convert (like/like)

• Requires mapping & transformation – very specialized and detailed
• Non-transferable features – difficult to identify, convert or manage

End to end, the process is insecure

• Distribution of access credentials to the wider build team is an issue
• Access, confidentiality, integrity of the data – difficult to control and manage
• Limited audit logs, roll-back and traceability on changes

VOSS discovery and migration services offer a fast, efficient pathway to migrating to Microsoft Teams Enterprise Voice.

The service includes:

• Discovery and insight into existing systems • Automation – flexible mapping rules & business logic
• Multi-vendor migration engine (Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft SfB & more)
• Controlled and managed process (batch loading, scheduling, reporting, audit)
• Option to extend into ongoing ‘day2’ service management • Professional services to assist and support

The service is staged in three phases – Discovery, Migration and Management – and is triggered by an export from the existing service, along with a planning workshop to optimise the approach and plan to your specific requirements.

All migrations are fully backed by VOSS Professional Services, who work with you during the project to provide advice, best practise, regular reporting and a service to ensure the migration is delivered as you expect.

The first step performs a deep data discovery and audit, extracting from multiple sources as necessary to capture all pertinent data. This step is essential for planning and design and can be completed without impact to any live service.

This phase delivers an analysis of the existing configuration, an inventory of all devices, detail on call routing, and migration considerations and likely issues to inform the migration planning process. The output from this step is delivered in a workshop style forum so that the results can be actively discussed and reviewed – including migration dependencies and possible issues.

The existing voice configuration, numbering plan and device inventory can be retrieved from an existing / traditional voice system. This data is retrieved from an export from the system, reducing the need for access and any disruption on the live service. The export is then uploaded into the VOSS migration portal. The following systems are supported:

Typical data extracted from the existing voice system includes:

Once extracted, the data can be reviewed with regard to dependencies, conflicts, duplication and artefacts that cannot be mapped into Microsoft Teams, flagging these for review. This step provides the opportunity to identify issues early and plan and address them in a proactive manner before proceeding with the migration process.

Standard Rules can be configured to filter and automatically map source data into the required setting on Microsoft Teams – for example an internal extension number can be automatically converted into an external E164 telephone for each Microsoft Teams user with voice, or a policy might be migrated for a user to the equivalent on the new service.

Standard rules are included on the service; further rules can be configured for the project as required. The exact ruleset deployed is discussed and agreed during the project workshop.

The migration process may be segmented into Batches and these batches then aligned with the migration process and cut-over schedule (EV Enabled). Each batch typically contains a nominated set of Sites and these in turn contain users, devices and associated services. During a migration, the process will normally be tested with a Model Office Test Site, followed by batches of live sites (of increasing size as the migration progresses).

Flexible filters are provided to collect sites into batches – or some alternative mechanism such as a department or manager – assuming this information is available in the source data set.

During each batch run, the data set may be refreshed quickly and easily – by uploading a new import – automation ensures the latest settings are then migrated into Microsoft Teams and change windows are kept short.

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All you need to know about migrating and integrating voice into Microsoft Teams.

VOSS gives you a central point of control and insight into your UC, collaboration, and contact center processes. Your digital business transformation journey will be supported every step of the way, and underpinned by our award-winning technology.