Set up the Call me feature for your users

• Applies to:

  Microsoft Teams

In Microsoft Teams, the Call me feature gives users a way to join the audio portion of a meeting by phone. This is handy in scenarios when using a computer for audio might not be possible. Users get the audio portion of the meeting through their cell phone or land line and the content portion of the meeting—such as when another meeting participant shares their screen or plays a video—through their computer.

Important

During periods of high meeting volume (which we've been experiencing in conjunction with the COVID-19 outbreak), we recommend that users join meetings by clicking the Join Teams Meeting button rather than dialing in by using the PSTN conference numbers or by using Call me at. This helps ensure quality audio during times when high meeting volume is causing congestion on the PSTN network.

Note

We are frequently updating how you can manage features, so the steps here might be a little different from what you see.

The user experience

Join a meeting by using phone for audio

Click Join to join a meeting, then Phone audio on the Choose your video and audio options screen, and click Join now. From here, users can have the meeting call and join them or dial in manually to the meeting.

Let the Teams meeting call

On the Use phone for audio screen, the user enters their phone number, and then clicks Call me. The meeting calls the user and joins them to the meeting.

Dial in manually

Another way to join is to dial in directly to the meeting. On the Use phone for audio screen, click Dial in manually to get a list of phone numbers to use to dial in to the meeting.

Get a call back when something goes wrong with audio during a meeting

If a user experiences audio issues when using their computer during a meeting, the user can easily switch to using their phone for audio. Teams detects when an audio or device issue occurs and redirects the user to use their phone by displaying a Call me back option.

Here's an example of the message and the Call me back option that's displayed when Teams doesn't detect a microphone.

The user clicks Call me back, which brings up the Use phone for audio screen. From here, they can enter their phone number and have the Teams meeting call and join them to the meeting or dial in manually to the meeting.

Set up the Call me feature

To enable the Call me feature for users in your organization, the following must be configured:

• Audio Conferencing is enabled for users in your organization who schedule meetings (meeting organizers). To learn more, see Set up Audio Conferencing for Teams and Manage the Audio Conferencing settings for a user in Teams.

• Meeting organizer can dial-out from meetings. To learn more, see Manage the Audio Conferencing settings for a user in Teams.

If the meeting organizer doesn't have dial-out from meetings enabled, the Phone audio option on the Choose your video and audio options screen isn't available to anyone, and other users can't receive a call to join them to the meeting. For users with dial-out enabled, once they have joined the meeting, they can join others dialing their number from the Show participants icon.