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Audio Conferencing policy settings for toll and toll-free numbers

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Microsoft Teams

Teams Audio Conferencing policy

Use Audio conferencing policies to manage audio conferencing toll and toll-free numbers to be displayed in meeting invites created by users within your organization. You can use one of the two automatically created policies or create and assign custom policies. The two automatically created policies are global (Org-wide default) and AllowTollFreeDialinFalse (assigned to all existing users within the organization that are not enabled for toll-free dial-in numbers). You manage audio conferencing policies in the Microsoft Teams admin center or by using PowerShell.

  • The setting for AllowTollFreeDialin can no longer be managed for an individual user through Teams admin center or PowerShell. Tenant admins will only be able to manage this setting through the new audio conferencing policy.
  • The Global policy can't be modified from the Teams admin center.

Note

Custom Audio Conferencing policies are not supported for customers enabled for Skype for Business Regionally Hosted Meetings. Customers enabled for Regionally Hosted Meetings can manage the Audio Conferencing settings of users via their default settings. The Audio Conferencing default settings of users can be changed in the Teams Admin Center by navigating to Users -> Manage Users -> Select User -> Account.

When a Teams audio conferencing policy is enabled in the tenant, there will be two automatically created policies available in the tenant. The two automatically created policies and their default settings are:

Global (Org-wide default)

In this policy the value for AllowTollfreedialin will be set to ON and there will not be any phone numbers defined in the policy. This will be the default Policy for all users in the tenant who at the time of launch have AllowTollfreedialin set to On. Since the policy doesn't have any phone numbers defined, when users of this policy create a Teams meeting, the phone numbers available in their meeting will be the same phone numbers that the users had prior to the policy. These phone numbers normally default to the user’s country/region, unless changed by the Tenant admin for individual users.

For example, if a user based out of Germany had Germany toll and toll-free phone number assigned prior to the launch of the Audio-conferencing policy, then at launch the user will be assigned the Global policy and the phone numbers they'll continue seeing in their meeting invite will be the same as before the policy was applied (That is, the German toll and toll-free numbers). An end user won't see any change when the policy is launched. If, however, a tenant admin modifies the Global Policy, and includes specific phone numbers into the policy that are different from before, then all users of the policy will only see the phone numbers that are included in the policy in any meetings they schedule.

Note

If instead of Modifying the Global policy a tenant admin creates a custom policy and applies it to users, then the settings defined in the custom policy will be what the end users see in their meeting invites.

For example, if the custom policy has “AllowTollFreeDialinFalse” and has No phone numbers defined then Users of this policy will not be able to have Toll free numbers and since no phone numbers are defined in the policy the Toll phone number that will be used in meeting invites created by such users will be the same phone numbers that the users had prior to the policy. These phone numbers normally default to the user’s country/location, unless changed by the Tenant admin for individual users.

AllowTollfreedialinFalse

In this policy the value for AllowTollfreedialin will be set to Off and there won't be any phone numbers defined in the policy. This will be the default policy for all users in the tenant who, at the time of launch, have AllowTollfreedialin set to Off.

Because the policy does not have any phone numbers defined, when users of this policy create a team meeting, the phone numbers that will be available in their meeting would be the same phone numbers that the users had prior to the policy. These phone numbers normally default to the user’s country, region, or location, unless this has been changed by the Tenant admin for individual users.

For example, If a user based out of Germany had a Germany toll phone number assigned prior to the launch of an Audio Conferencing policy, then at launch the user will be assigned the “AllowTollfreedialinFalse” policy and the phone numbers they'll continue seeing in their meeting invite will be the same as before (That is, the Germany toll number). An end user won't see any change when the policy is launched. If, however, a Tenant admin modifies the AllowTollfreedialinFalse policy and includes specific phone numbers into the policy then all policy users will only see the phone numbers included in the policy in any meetings they schedule.

Create a custom audio-conferencing policy

An overview of the steps:

  1. In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Meetings > Audio conferencing.
  2. Select Add.
  3. Enter the name and description of the policy. The name can't contain special characters or be longer than 64 characters.
  4. Choose the settings that you want.
  5. Select Save.

For example, you may have a group of users who regularly have meetings with participants from more than one country/region. In our example, the participants are from Canada, Botswana, and Singapore and they all want to join the meeting via audio conferencing by dialing a phone number. You can create a new custom policy named “Canada Botswana Singapore” and select phone numbers from these three countries/regions to be included in the policy through the Add a phone number option, and save this policy. You can then assign this policy to the required users.

This ensures phone numbers that you selected for Canada, Botswana, and Singapore will be included in the meetings invites created by users of this policy.

Step by step instructions on creating a custom policy based on the example

  1. In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Meetings > Audio conferencing.
  2. Select Add.
  3. Enter the name and description of the policy. The name can't contain special characters or be longer than 64 characters.
  4. Choose whether or not to Include toll-free numbers in meetings created by users of this policy. Setting this to On will let you add toll-free phone numbers in this policy.
  5. Select Add a phone number.
  6. A pane will open on the right of the screen, containing the Search by location box.
  7. Enter Canada, and select a telephone number from Canada from the results.
  8. Select Add.
  9. Repeat steps 6 and 7 in the same way to search and add telephone numbers from Botswana and Singapore.
  10. Select toll-free numbers if you've turned on the setting to Include toll-free numbers in meetings created by users of this policy in step 4.
  11. Select Add on the bottom right-hand corner of the pane. The telephone numbers from the three countries/regions that you selected will be listed.
  12. There is a rank column that determines the order in which the telephone numbers will be displayed in meetings invites created by users of this policy. You can change the order by selecting a phone number and moving it up or down using the Move up and Move down buttons respectively.
  13. Once you have put the phone numbers in the order of your preference, select Save.
  14. Your custom policy named “Canada Botswana Singapore” is created.
  15. After creation is complete, you can assign this policy to your users.

Edit a meeting policy

You can edit any custom policies that you create. (Note the Global policy cannot be edited from the Teams admin center)

  1. In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Meetings > Audio conferencing.
  2. Choose the policy you want to edit by selecting to the left of the policy name, and then selecting Edit.
  3. Make edits.
  4. Select Save.

Note

You can't delete a policy if users are assigned to it. You'll need to assign a different policy to all affected users, and then you'l be able to delete the original policy.

Assign a meeting policy to users

Important

Once a new Audio-conferencing policy is applied to a user, the phone numbers defined in the policy will only be available in new meetings created by the user with this policy. Any old and recurring meetings scheduled prior to the policy will continue to show the old settings, for example one toll and one toll-free number (if toll-free was enabled for that user). A scenario here could be that a user had Allow Toll-Free turned on and had a toll-free number assigned, and they created recurring meetings for future. In this scenario, if you create a custom policy with AllowTollfreeDialIn turned Off and apply it to this user, any new meetings created by this user won't include toll-free numbers, but the old and recurring meetings will still show toll-free numbers. So if callers dial this toll-free number to join the meeting, the call will fail because toll-free is now disabled for this user due to the policy. To prevent this, you can migrate users' old meetings after assigning them the new audio-conferencing policy. Please review Using the Meeting Migration Service (MMS).

You can assign a policy directly to users or to a group that the users are members of (if supported for the policy type), either individually or in larger numbers through a batch assignment (if supported for the policy type).

To learn about the different ways that you can assign policies to users, see Assign policies to users and groups.

Note

A user can be assigned only one audio conferencing policy at a time.

Important

It can take up to 24 hours for the assigned phone numbers to show up on your meeting invite. If you aren't seeing updated numbers appear, please wait at least 24 hours before contacting support.

Known issue

When you start a meeting using the Meet now option from Microsoft Teams > Calendar > Meet Mow, if you then select the ellipsis ... menu option, and then Meeting Info, there will be an issue with the lower portion of the section under Or call in (audio only). All phone numbers defined in the policy will be shown, but the alignment of the numbers makes it difficult to read.