How To Assign Numbers In Teams At Scale

We love the industry buzzwords, don’t we? Scale. What does this even mean and is it even relevant to assigning phone numbers?

When we talk about scale, we are talking about managing phone number assignments to users in large organizations daily.

Your organization may not experience a high level of user change. If this is you, you’re a lucky admin.

Inevitably in many large organizations users starting and users leaving happens every day. Keeping on top of moves, adds, changes, and deletes is an important task, so your organization’s costs don’t escalate and security to systems are not compromised.
 
In this article, we’re going to look at how Teams Phone number management plays a part in this admin task.
 
First, let’s talk about what tasks we need to perform when a user joins your organization.
 
At the very beginning we need to understand what Teams experience the user should receive.
 
What teams should they be a member of?
Do they need Teams Phone?
If so, do they need domestic or international calling?
What country do they need a number in?
Do they need to be an agent in any call queues?
 
Then, once we have the answer to all these questions, we can go ahead and provision their experience.
 
If you don’t subscribe to Office 365 E5 licenses, then Teams Phone will need to be added to the user’s Entra ID account.
 
You can do this in a few ways:
 

• In the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal
• Moving the user into a security group and using Entra ID group-based licensing
• Use PowerShell or the Microsoft Graph API

 
Whatever you choose, this step will take some time for Teams Phone to activate so that you can assign a number. Usually this takes around 15 minutes, but it is known to take well over an hour.
 
Whilst you’re waiting you might decide to complete another task. That task could take longer than you expected, and you could forget to return to this provisioning task.
 
Meanwhile your new user, Katie, starts, and they don’t have access to what they need to perform their job and raise a support ticket.
 
Now you’re back on task, the next step is to assign them a phone number, so you open your Excel spreadsheet and find an available number.
 
Armed with the number, you head over to Teams Admin Center, find Katie, and then attempt to assign them the number.
 
But Teams Admin Center gives you an error, “This number is already assigned to a user”.
 
Someone forgot to update the spreadsheet. Let’s find another, and another, and another…
 
Finally, you find one that works, and the task is completed.
 
Now let’s look at when a Katie moves roles between offices. The ticket tells you to assign the user with a number in New York.
 
The New York office is connected using Direct Routing, but Katie has an existing Teams Calling Plan number.
 
Now you must login to the Teams Admin Center, find Katie, and remove the Calling Plan number from their account.
 
When done, you now need to remove the calling plan license from Katie’s Entra ID account.
 
This might mean that you need to move Katie between security groups and also remove the calling plan license manually from their account and wait for directory synchronization.
 
Again, while you wait for Microsoft’s back-end systems to complete the deprovisioning tasks, you could be distracted and forget.
 
Now you’re ready to assign a New York number to Katie, you open your spreadsheet, find a New York number and go back into Teams Admin Center and assign it.
 
Assuming this works first time, you now need to assign Katie the New York dial plan, emergency routing policy, voice routing policy, and other Teams user policies to ensure that they are properly configured.
 
Did you forget to update the spreadsheet? I thought so.
 
Katie has had enough. They’re tired of waiting for IT to fix their problems and leaves the organization.
 
You have a defined leavers process that removes all Microsoft licenses from Katie’s account. By doing this also automatically removes Katie’s phone number.
 
Who’s going to update the spreadsheet to show that Katie’s number is now available?
 
That’s right, no-one.
 
2 weeks later, Katie has a change of heart and returns to your organization.
 
Katie wants their old number assigned back to their Teams account.
 
What number did they have? There’s no record of it.
 
Katie tells you and you go and assign it, only to be greeted with the Teams admin message of “This number is already assigned to a user”.
 
Now what? How are you going to manage this change? Does Katie have to be given a new number and then update all her contacts? Or are you going inconvenience another user?
 
Managing numbers in Teams at scale is difficult when you don’t have the right set of tools and processes in place to support it.
 
You’re spending far too much time preparing information and handling errors than performing the changes you need to.
 
How much of your salary is spent on navigating your way through inefficient and error-ridden processes?
 
Are you even happy in your job as a result?
 
There are ways you can escape this hamster wheel and with a bit of help with the right toolset, it can be very easy to make immediate, positive change.
 
First, we need to solve the underlying problem of number management. Spreadsheets just don’t cut it.
 
You need a solution that can:
 

• Automatically sync with Teams and keep up to date with changes to number assignments without you having to do anything
   
• Categorize numbers into segments that match your business roles and needs
   
• Split number ranges into custom locations to match where your offices are
   
• Keep a history of who each number has been assigned to and can reserve numbers for a set amount of time, just in case Katie comes back
   
• Manage all number types including Microsoft, Operator Connect, and Direct Routing

 
Then we need to solve your provisioning standards so that we reduce the number of mistakes made when assigning policies and access to teams and call queues.
 
Writing documentation and process guides are OK, until the business makes a change and these documents aren’t reviewed, updated, or even communicated to the IT admins.
 
And even then, we’re relying on people following process.
 
We need a solution that will allow us to create these standard profiles and package them so they can be assigned to users consistently and quickly.
 
Once we have solved both these problems, we can then look at how we can automate some of these tasks without needing human intervention.
 
So how do we do this?
 
Orto by Callroute enables you to super charge your Teams admin by giving you a platform where you can define your Teams provisioning requirement and manage your numbers at scale.
 
Orto’s number management module keeps in sync with your Teams tenant. Not only does it update number assignments even if these change directly via PowerShell or Teams Admin Center, but it allows you to maintain complete visibility across all your numbers.
 
In addition, Orto number management allows you to segregate your numbers into office locations, categorize them further using tags, and maintains the history of the last person assigned to them.
 
Being able to access all your numbers and administer them through a web portal without having to worry about keeping them up to date will save you hours every week.
 
Orto also is a full Teams lifecycle management solution. Now that we’ve solved the number management problem, Orto gives you the ability to create your standard Teams configuration profiles.
 
You can create role-based packages that:
 

• Assign the right licenses needed to a user based on their job role
• Assign the right Teams user policies including voice settings
• Add them as a member or owner to all the teams they need to collaborate in
• Add them as an agent to all the queues they need

 
The Teams product owner can control the standard profile experiences within the product. Then as the business needs change, users can be moved from one experience to another in a click of a button.
 
IT support admins can assign the right phone number, licenses, Teams policies, call queues, and team access quickly using our intuitive web portal.
 
Orto can also help to reduce manual admin tasks by automating moves, adds, changes, and deletes so you don’t have to login and press any buttons.
 
Using Entra ID user attributes or group memberships you can configure automation rules that will assign the correct licenses, phone number, Teams policies, team, and call queue memberships a user needs.
 
To find out more, visit Orto for Teams.