Reference - Getting Started

  • Applies to: Microsoft Teams

This article is for IT pros and Teams administrators who are ready to start setting up their Teams Phone Agents, auto attendants, and call queues.

Getting started

Once you complete the planning tasks in this series, follow these steps to get your auto attendants and call queues set up:

  1. Design call flows to identify the number of resource accounts, Teams Phone Agents, auto attendants, call queues, and associated configuration items you need.
  2. Plan for Auto Attendant and Call Queue authorized users who can be responsible for administrative changes to auto attendants or call queues.
  3. Get a Teams Phone Resource Account license for each resource account that you plan to create. These licenses are free, so we suggest getting a few extra in case you decide to make changes to your resource accounts in the future.
  4. Create a resource account for each Teams Phone Agent, auto attendant, and call queue that directly answers calls.
  5. Assign a Teams Phone Resource Account license to each resource account.
    • If the resource account is used to transfer calls externally, assign a pay-as-you-go license or communications credits to the resource account.
  6. Get service numbers for the Teams Phone Agents, auto attendants, and call queues that you want phone callers from outside your organization to call.
  7. Create click-to-call configurations for the Teams Phone Agent/Auto Attendant and Call Queues that you want users on your website or in your mobile applications to call.
  8. Create the holidays for which you want to have separate call routing in your auto attendants.
  9. Create the groups, Teams channels, or Shifts scheduling groups that you want to use to contain the representatives (agents) for the call queues.
  10. If you plan to enable dial by extension, ensure that you add your users' extension numbers to their Microsoft Entra ID profiles.

Once you complete these steps, you're ready to create your Teams Phone Agents, auto attendants, and call queues. Refer to the workflow diagram that you created to determine what should be created first.

In the example diagram, we recommend creating the sales and support call queues before the Contoso main auto attendant, because the auto attendant needs to direct callers to the queues.

See the following articles for information on how to create Teams Phone Agents, auto attendants, and call queues:

Important

A user's Microsoft Entra ID GUID token is stored as part of the auto attendant or call queue configuration when the user is configured as:

  • an auto attendant or call queue Authorized user.
  • an auto attendant Operator.
  • a Person in Organization transfer point.
  • an individual member of a call queue.

The Teams Phone Agent, auto attendant, and call queue configurations aren't synchronized with Microsoft Entra ID lifecycle events. Teams administrators need to manually update configurations to remove this personal data when a user included in the configuration leaves the organization.

This doesn't apply to call queue representative memberships that are configured via distribution lists or channels. It also doesn't apply to users who are reached through the Dial by Name or Dial by Number feature of auto attendants.

Alternate provisioning tools

Auto Attendant and Call Queue Backup and Bulk Provisioning Tools are a set of tools that provide a way to configure auto attendants, call queues, and authorized users through Excel spreadsheets and PowerShell scripts.

Previous planning articles

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