Call forwarding has disappeared from our Common Area Phones

Question

Hi all

I recently deployed a number of Yealink T-55A Teams phones as Common Area Phones in our office.   These are Licenced with Common Area Phone Licences, are deployed using InTune.  I have created a custom CAP calling policy that has call forwarding enabled.  When I first set them up, they worked just fine, call forward was an option, I tested it and it worked.  I revisited the office recently and was told Call Fwding was no longer an option - I checked and the option has gone.  Nothing has changed at my end.  The only thing that has happened since the initial set up, was that I updated the firmware of the phones from the Admin Portal - this completed fine and the phones are now in a "healthy" state - albeit with no call fwding.   I have tried (at the request of Microsoft) removing the policy (waiting) and  re-adding it and waiting but this made no difference.  Any ideas on what I may be missing here?  Any help/advice greatly appreciated.  Martin

Answer 1

Hello Martin C Littleton,

As far as I know, call forwarding is one feature of Phone System, and Phone system is also supported by Common Area Phone license, we need to make sure the license is still active. The device you’re using seems to be a Teams certified device and in Teams admin center it shows in healthy status. Since issue occurs after upgraded the device, issue could be related with this recent updating. Is there any way you can reboot this device for checking? I noticed that you’ve already reached our related team for this issue, may I confirm with you if they’re our team from Microsoft 365 admin portal? The policy you’ve tried to re-add is call forwarding police?

Best Regards,

Anna

Answer 2

I have the same issue since patching some Poly phones this week.

For some reason the calling options have moved to behind the Admin Only settings menu, which is undesirable because we put a password on those settings to stop people messing with them.

I've noticed this is the case in both CAP and Meeting sign-in modes. Haven't tried User yet, but it would be daft if it were the case in that mode as well.

Answer 3

So I ended up raising a Premier Support call about this and it transpires that the change is intentional. They had the following to say:

"This change was updated in the January Firmware updates and we got few cases last month regarding the same. We had engaged our engineering team and got the information that it is product design change and reason they gave us was " Conference and CAP accounts will see the option is under the admin settings as these aren't accounts aren't designed to be altered by just anyone. However, regular user accounts will see the option under the standard option menu.""

I've put a UserVoice up here to suggest the behaviour is configurable in future: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/42681214-call-forward-options-for-teams-phones-in-common-ar

Answer 4

Thank you for this - I thought I was going mad.  I will roll back the firmware to get Call Forwarding option back - we need it on our phones.  I really hope MS put it back in the next release.

Answer 5

Hi There,

We have also same problem with the option for Call Forwarding. Disappeared from the Yealink phones. So users from this phone couldnt forware the calls.

What happend, did Microsoft removed this feature for the Common Area Phones. Are they gonna fix this.