I have been working on a Microsoft Teams Voice installation for over a year. It’s been grueling getting people in this building to make a decision but they finally did and our Microsoft Partner started the process.
The facts
- I have 92 DID numbers.
- In the past 5 years, the most calling minutes consumed has been 21,000 (in 2018)
- We currently have a UCX system from e-metrotel. It is based on the nortel software. We’ve been using this system for 5 years and nortel before that for 12…so 17 years of the nortel system.
Microsoft has 2 voice licenses
- Teams Phone with Calling Plan (comes with 3000 minutes per person per month)
- Standard (no minutes but you can leach off the Teams Phone with Calling Plan.
Our network consultants advised us to get 7 calling plan licenses and 87 standard licenses.
10 months later the project is approved and I “get” to squeeze the project in before Thanksgiving.
Fast forward to Monday night when the consultant tries to assign the first DID number to our “Standard” license holders. He can’t do it. He tries every trick in his considerable bag but nothing works.
He opens a ticket. Microsoft works with him for hours confirming that what we want to do will work. The support guy says all of their documentation says it will work.
Parallel to this, I am working with Microsoft Education who is providing the Microsoft Teams training (meetings plus voice). I consult with them on the issue. Everything in THEIR documentation says it will work.
Well, it doesn’t. The support guy calls our consultant last night to give him the bad news. But, since he is a third party support vendor, he can’t tell us WHY it won’t work He also can’t tell us why the documentation says it will work. AND he can’t tell us what in the world the purpose of the standard licenses are if you can’t assign a number to it.
Our only options are
-
assign all 92 people calling plan licenses which will jump the cost of the project from less than $5k to over $12k. (The $12k number is already what we are paying for dial tone so if we hadn’t just passed the 2023 budget I would be less concerned but finding $7,000 extra after it’s been absorbed by other projects isn’t going to be possible.)
-
take DID away from everyone and use attendants. (Mind you DID numbers are on all of our flyers, all over our website and on letterhead.)
We have to get a new phone system, Our UCX is no longer supported and we’ve been using it for 12 months with no software or hardware support. Teams WAS coming in at less than that of the next closest phone system…another on-premise piece of equipment I was hoping to avoid from a company that gives me bad vibes (skeevy salesman, no local presence, tried to go around me through other people, offering me free phones which feels like I’m going to “pay” in other ways.)
I get to have a discussion with the network consultant this morning and then I get to break the bad news to my boss’s boss today.
This is killing me. It’s been a horrible year due to another tough project where a vendor over-sold and I’ve had to bear the brunt of the decision. I’ve gone from a job I absolutely love where I was respected (if not always liked) to receiving nasty email and sometimes screaming phone calls all day from everywhere. I don’t know how much of this I can take. I’m starting to feel numb inside and yet angry all the time. There is this old guy that is difficult and loud and everyone hates him. When I see him act that way in meetings I think “that’s how I feel inside.” I’m tired of looking like a fool. I’m tired of breaking into a sweat when the phone rings or I see certain people in my inbox. I’m tired of the havoc all of this stress has done to my body and mind. I’m tired of my reputation being bounced around.
Anyway, do any of you have any ideas. Are there any miracles. Someone thought a Session Border Controller could help. I have no idea what that is.
