I was working a customer who wanted help setting up Conference entry tones and announcements. There isn’t actually a lot to setup:

These are found under Meetings > Conference Bridges > Bridge Settings.

The most important thing to understand is that these settings apply to dial-in users, and not those users who join conferences through a Teams client.

The first setting is to turn on or off entry/exit announcements. Typically, this is useful when a large number of people dial in to meetings, or when you want an audio indicator that someone has joined a meeting.

The second setting allows you to select Tones or name announcement. If you select the option for a name, callers are asked to record their name before they join the conference.

The PIN length setting establishes how long a user’s dial-in PIN needs to be. It’s important to note that this isn’t the phone lock/unlock PIN, nor is it a voicemail PIN (Cloud Voicemail at present, does not have PINs)

The last setting is straight forward – send an email to users if any of their dial-in settings change.

An important thing to note, is that the tone/name announcement is played when dialin users join a conference. If someone joins a conference via Teams client, no tone or name announcement is played. When a tone/name is played, all participants hear the tone. This means that if you are the conference organizer and have dialed in, you will only hear tones and announcements for other people who dial in. This can be less than ideal, however there is excellent roster functionality available in all Teams clients, including mobile.

And finally, note that these settings are not configurable on a per-meeting basis. They’re an all-or-none setting.

Update: It was announced in March 2020 that these settings will become configurable on a per-meeting basis!

Microsoft Teams Room Systems, MTRs, are excellent devices for joining Teams meetings. However, you’re not always going to be in a meeting when you need to make or receive a call on an MTR. It doesn’t always make sense to put a regular desk phone in the room or a speakerphone on the table. So what does the experience look like?

Receiving a call

Receiving a call is straightforward. First, you need to have a phone number assigned to the MTR, either through a Calling Plan or Direct Routing. Note that you don’t need to assign a phone number to your MTR if you’ll only use it in meetings. When the number is called, the device rings, and you hit the answer button and the call uses the MTR speakers and Microphone. This probably isn’t desirable if you’re in a meeting, so you can have a look at turning on Busy-on-busy.

Placing a call

Placing a call on an MTR is different than on a regular Teams phone. The major difference is that the call is placed via the audio conference bridge. This has two implications. First, an outbound call will consume minutes from your outbound conference minute pool. Second, the call will appear to be from the conference bridge number and not any DID that you’ve assigned to the MTR.