Configure emergency calling for Teams Calling Plans
Several countries/regions around the world have specific regulations and policies that require phone numbers to be aligned to the physical address of the users so that emergency calls route to the correct Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), and they're aware of the users' address to dispatch any emergency services.
A Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) is a call center where emergency calls are sent. They talk to the caller and displace the appropriate services, like police, fire brigade or ambulance.
Microsoft Teams supports "emergency calling," which ties a specific static address to a phone number, and "dynamic emergency calling," which provides the capability to provide the current location of the user based on location services of the operating system or an end-user confirmed address.
We're looking at configuring Emergency Calling addresses first in this module as a phone number must be aligned to an emergency calling address. How this is configured varies by country/region. In the United States, you need to associate an emergency location when you assign the phone number to the user. In Europe, you need to associate an emergency location with the phone number when you acquire the phone numbers from Microsoft or your Operator Connect provider.
Define emergency calling addresses
Emergency addresses for Teams can be categorized by different types. The following list shows the location precedence used when an emergency number is dialed:
A dynamically acquired address is defined by the tenant administrator in the Location Information Service.
An address the end user confirmed, edited, or manually entered which is associated with the local network the Teams client is connected to.
An address is automatically suggested by the operating system.
An address the administrator statically assigns to the phone number.
To add phone numbers to Teams, the first step is to configure emergency addresses. To assign Calling plan numbers successfully in many European countries/regions such as Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, and Spain, the emergency address must match the area code of the phone number area code of the number ordered from Microsoft.
You can add emergency addresses by following these steps:
Navigate to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com.
Select Locations and Emergency addresses.
Select Add to create a new entry.
Enter the following information for the new address:
Country or region: The region of the new emergency address
Input address manually: Off, to look up the address automatically
Address: The address of office/site
Organization name: Organization name is your organization name. By default, the tenant organization name is populated automatically.
ELIN: Session Border Controllers (SBCs) can include Emergency Location Identification Number (ELIN) records. These records are only relevant to Direct Routing and don't apply to Calling Plans or Operator Connect. This field can be left blank.
Select Save to finish creation.
By default, Microsoft attempts to look up the address, when you entered it as shown in the following picture.
If it can't be found, you can also toggle to input addresses manually by following these steps:
Navigate to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com.
Select Locations and Emergency addresses.
Select Add to create a new entry.
Enter the following information for the new address:
Country or region: The region of the new emergency address
Input address manually: Turn On, to look up the address manually
House number/name: The address of office/site
Street name: The street name of office/site
City/town: The address of office/site
Postal code: The address of office/site
Latitude: The latitude GPS coordinates of office/site
Longitude: The longitude GPS coordinates of office/site
Organization name: Organization name is your organization name. By default, the tenant organization name is populated automatically.
ELIN: Session Border Controllers (SBCs) can include Emergency Location Identification Number (ELIN) records. These records are only relevant to Direct Routing and don't apply to Calling Plans or Operator Connect. This field can be left blank.
Select Save to finish creation.
Tip
When inputting an address manually, you should include Latitude and Longitude, if you don't know these, input the address into Bing maps, and when the location comes up on the map, right select the location to see the Latitude and Longitude.
Once your emergency address is added, the address it shows in the list. Usually addresses show as validated right away, but sometimes Microsoft needs to manually validate the address. Once validated, the addresses can be used.
Configure emergency calling policies
Emergency calling policies define what happens when a user in your organization makes an emergency call. For Calling Plans, only the Emergency calling policy applies. Emergency call routing policy is only for Direct Routing and will be explained in another module.
The emergency calling policy allows us to notify a person in your organization, typically the on-site security team, when a user dials an emergency number.
You can assign emergency calling policies directly to users or to network sites to be inherited by the users dynamically when located on those sites. Users will automatically get the global policy unless you create and assign a custom policy, or a network site policy applies.
For example, an emergency calling policy might be assigned to the "London site" so that any user that roams from home or another location is configured. Therefore, when they're on the London site, the London security team is notified and conferenced in if they dial an emergency number.
Emergency calling Policies are configured by following these steps:
Navigate to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com.
Select Voice and Emergency policies.
Select Add to add an Emergency Policy.
Enter a meaningful Name and Description.
Select Notification mode, the options are:
Send notification only: A Teams chat message is sent to the users and groups that you specify.
Conferenced in muted and unable to unmute: A Teams chat message is sent to the users and groups that you specify, and they can listen (but not participate) in the conversation between the caller and the PSAP operator.
Conferenced in muted but can unmute: A Teams chat message is sent to the users and groups that you specify, and they can unmute to listen and participate in the conversation between the caller and the PSAP operator.
Define the Numbers to dial for emergency calls notifications. If you select one of the conference modes, you can put in a E.164 PSTN phone number or a security group or you can put in both.
In Users and groups for emergency calls notifications, you can define one or more users and groups that are notified for emergency calls via email. You can send notifications to the email addresses of users, distribution, and security groups.
Select Apply
Configure network locations for dynamic emergency calling
Dynamic emergency calling provides the capability to configure and route emergency calls, provide the correct emergency calling address, and optionally notify security personnel (via emergency calling policies) based on the current network location of the Teams client.
Although this information applies to emergency 911 calling in the United States, user-entered locations are conveyed to the screening center in Canada as well.
Dynamic emergency calling works by the Teams Phone administrator populating a database that maps specific network addresses to physical locations/addresses. Location Information Service (LIS) is the service that provides the correct details to the Teams client.
During startup and periodically afterward, the Teams client sends a location request that contains its network connectivity information to LIS. If there's a match, LIS provides the correct details.
To configure dynamic emergency calling, firstly we need to map the relevant Network Regions, Network sites, network subnets, and Trusted IP addresses. This configuration is done under Locations > Network topology in the Teams Admin Center.
Adding a network site to Network Topology
Network Site is the level where you can align an Emergency Calling policy, as well as Location based routing and Emergency call routing policy for Direct Routing. Multiple network Subnets can be associated with a single network site.
Network Region is a collection of Network Sites; you can configure your network region by selecting or adding one when adding a network site.
Adding a trusted IP to Network Topology
Trusted IP addresses are the enterprise's public external IP addresses that a Teams user shows as routing from on the public internet. These IPs are important as they validate that the user is on an enterprise network, and the system should check if they are on a mapped subnet. If the public IP of the user doesn't match a Trusted IP address, the location map isn't checked. This validation prevents subnets on different networks, but with the same internal subnet numbering, from being accidentally mapped to the wrong emergency address. You don't need to map Trusted IPs to specific networks.
Mapping a network to a physical location (emergency address)
Once the network topology of Region, Site, and subnet is complete, you can now map specific network locations to physical Emergency Addresses. This is populating the Location Information Service (LIS) database.
Tip
This configuration refers to Emergency Locations, but the Teams admin center refers to them as Emergency Addresses. They are the same thing.
You can map emergency location\addresses to:
Wireless Access Point (WAP) by BSSID (Basic Service Set Identifier) - Each AP has a BSSID.
Ethernet switch by Chassis ID. Each network switch is stamped with a Chassis ID that is used to identify a specific switch on a network.
Ethernet switch port, which maps both the Chassis ID and the port ID. This mapping allows a switch that spans multiple locations to be more accurately mapped down to the port.
The subnet is the network address the user has. Unlike mapped subnets in the Teams Network topology, The Location Information Service (LIS) doesn’t maintain a list of Networks and Subnet masks, it relies on the NetworkID of the subnet.
This subnet mapping is configured by following these steps:
Navigate to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com.
Select Locations and Networks & locations.
Select the tab that represents the network identifier that you want to add, Subnets, Wi-Fi access points, Switches, or Ports. Select Subnets for this example.
Select Add to add a subnet and Emergency Location.
Select an IP version, IPv4 or IPv6, as appropriate for the network you wish to map.
For Subnet, enter the Network ID of the subnet to add.
Enter a meaningful Description.
Search for and select an Emergency Location from one of the Emergency addresses already defined. Or, if you haven't defined the emergency location you need yet, Select Add an emergency location.
After performing the described steps, your network is mapped to an emergency address location.
Allow end users to configure their emergency address
In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Voice > Emergency policies.
Select Add.
Enter a name for the emergency calling policy, for example, Emergency-911-WFH.
Turn on External location lookup mode.
Select Apply.
Grant the new emergency calling policy using the same methods discussed earlier.
After enabling this feature for your end users, from the Calls tab, the user can add, edit, or confirm an emergency address and display the address after being set. Keep the following tips in mind:
The work-from-home experience described is for Teams desktop on Windows and Mac.
Teams phone devices don't support the work-from-home experience.
Teams mobile supports automatic location detection but not the user entered experience described.
Privacy settings can conflict with automatic location detection - Mobile Device Management systems can be used.