Plan - Business Decisions for Teams Phone Agent, Auto Attendant, and Call Queue

  • Applies to: Microsoft Teams

This article is for IT pros and Teams administrators who want to understand the business decisions to make before you configure Teams Phone Agents, Auto Attendants, and Call Queues.

Business decisions

General decisions

Before you set up your Teams Phone Agents, Auto Attendants, and Call Queues, there are some decisions that you should make about how to use these features in your business.

Document your answers to these questions and provide the information to the administrator doing the configuration.

  • How do callers reach you? Internally only? Externally? Click-to-call on the web?
  • What languages do you need? Where are these languages needed - which department or group?
  • Do you want to allow voice inputs from callers or only dialing inputs?
  • Do you need separate call routing for off hours or holidays? What are the hours and holidays?
  • Do you want to allow representatives (agents) in a call queue to opt out of taking calls?
  • Do you want representatives in your call queues or your operator to have a specific caller ID if they dial out?
  • For the voice prompts, do you want to record your own or use the system-generated voice? (The system-generated voice is easy to update.)
  • Do you want to delegate certain auto attendant and call queue administrative tasks to authorized users?
  • Do you want to enable Shared Call History?
  • Are there any compliance recording requirements?

Call queue decisions

Call queue representatives

Representatives (agents) can be added to call queues in the following ways:

  • Option 1
    • Individual users (maximum 20)
    • Distribution lists
    • Microsoft 365 security groups, including mail-enabled security groups
  • Option 2
    • Teams channels
  • Option 3

Tip

For Option 1, Microsoft 365 security groups are recommended.

We recommend choosing a strategy for adding representatives to queues before you start your configuration.

Migrating phone numbers

If you have existing auto attendants and call queues that you're migrating to Teams, you need a plan to transfer your existing phone numbers to the new Teams Phone Agents, Auto Attendants, and Call Queues. You might need to create a port order to move your numbers from another provider.

Tip

We recommend that you temporarily acquire one or more new phone numbers and test your call flows in Teams before moving your numbers from another provider.

Next step

Nested call flows

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