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In November 2025 at Ignite, Microsoft announce a new Copilot license for Small and Medium businesses. Microsoft 365 Copilot Business allows organisations with M365 Business licenses (Basis, Standard and Premium) to access M365 Copilot for $21 per month (circa £16 / €18). M365 Business is available to organisations up to 300 users. This is a steal considering non-Enterprise versions of Claude and Chat GPT are $20 per month! You get the added benefit of Copilot being connected to the Microsoft stack and all of your data remaining in the M365 security boundary. ...

Microsoft announced some Office 365 certificate changes last year: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/encryption-office-365-tls-certificates-changes?view=o365-worldwide If you’re using Microsoft Teams Direct Routing you need to apply a new root certificate to your SBCs. More specifically if your SBC has “TLS Mutual Authentication” enabled on the Teams SIP interface then you MUST make this change. I would recommend making this change anyway and ASAP! How to check if TLS Mutual Authentication is enabled? Log into your AudioCodes SBC, navigate to Setup > Signalling and Media > Core Entities > SIP Interfaces. ...

Big shout out to Kieran Lloyd for suggesting this: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/kieranlloyd Teams now has a Push To Talk feature on the desktop app by pressing {ctrl} +{ space}. This is a bit like a Walkie Talkie, holding the PTT keys will unmute you then automatically mute you again upon release. https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/using-audio-in-teams-17886394-9a9a-4f04-b4cc-e46589408b28 Whilst discussing Push To Talk, Kieran mentioned he had programmed one of his Logitech Mouse buttons to send {ctrl} + {shift} + M to mute and unmute Teams. He then mentioned he should configure another mouse button to send {ctrl} + {space} to use PTT with his mouse! ...

The Challenge Microsoft document how to collect Teams log files here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/log-files The process is fairly simple in Windows 10, right click the Teams icon in the System Tray and click “Collect support files” Teams Collect Support Files This will download a folder to Downloads in Windows where you can open various log files. Unfortunately unlike Lync and Skype for Business, Teams does not have a Snooper application to read log files. By default the files will open in Notepad: ...

History Unlike Lync & Skype for Business, Teams doesn’t have a method to handle unassigned numbers (yet). There is a UserVoice post here requesting the feature: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/38673550-unassigned-number-range Typically the unassigned numbers feature was used to program ALL available number ranges in the system. A number was deemed “unassigned” if it was not populated as a LineURI against an SfB Object (i.e. User, Response Group, Application Endpoint etc). If an unassigned number received a call you had two options: ...

When calling a Teams Call Queue, by default it will play the Microsoft default hold music which is same as Response Groups in Lync and Skype for Business. One of the things I always get asked by customers is “Can we change that to a normal ringback tone?” which you absolutely can. In fact it’s now something I ask up front before creating any Call Queues. Changing a CQ ringback tone is achieved by changing the CQ hold music. Many countries have slightly different ringback tones, in fact in the UK it can vary slightly from carrier to carrier. However this is my trusty file that’s been used for many UK customers over the years. ...

Enable-TeamsDRUsers GUI At the time of writing it’s not possible to enable Teams Direct Routing users via Teams Admin Center, only via PowerShell commands. This PowerShell script launches a WinForms GUI that can be used by anyone. This is useful for enabling or making changes to a couple of Teams DR users. Requirements - Microsoft Teams PowerShell module 2.0 or above - Teams Administrative Rights (Teams Service/Communications Administrator + Skype for Business Administrator) - Users must have a Phone System license ...

A very popular Topology for Direct Routing is to deploy a certified Session Border Controller into Microsoft Azure with SIP Trunks to Teams Phone System and SIP Trunks to a PSTN provider. There are Azure Datacentres all over the world, SBCs are rapid to deploy from Marketplace templates and SBC>Teams traffic effectively stays on the Microsoft CDN. Big carriers may have direct peering with Microsofts network, others will meet the Microsoft Network at Internet Exchanges (i.e. LINX in London). There’s no need to buy expensive WAN circuits and Compute costs for the SBCs are minimal, especially if on 3 year pricing. It’s just an awesome solution! ...

I am writing this post in January 2021 as all school children in the UK now have to study from home. A friend recently asked me how they can run Microsoft Teams on their kids Amazon Fire Tablet. My immediate thoughts were Teams is not on the Amazon Appstore, Amazon’s browser (Silk) is not supported, just install Firefox or Chrome and problem solved. Well it turns out neither Firefox or Chrome are available on the Amazon app store either! ...

This post explains an easy way to block nuisance callers using an AudioCodes SBC. Whilst it’s possible to use New-CsInboundBlockedNumberPattern with Microsoft Teams, what if another type of PBX or Contact Centre hooked up to your SBC? These calls would bypass the Teams rule. Maybe you just want to do your blocking closer to the SIP carrier which is completely acceptable. I’m achieving this by using AudioCodes Dial Plans which are a super efficient way of routing calls rather than having lots of IP-to-IP rules or Number Manipulations. ...