The Microsoft Teams Phone Problems No One Talks About During Council Mergers (And How to Fix Them)

As local authorities transition into unitary authorities as part of the Local Government Reorganisation (LGR, council IT departments are tasked with combining multiple legacy systems into a single platform to improve collaboration, communication, and support hybrid working. Microsoft Teams has been the go-to tool for many, with Teams Phone fast becoming the preferred telephony solution.

However, the use of multiple Microsoft Teams tenants and telephony systems across merging councils is creating significant operational challenges.

The Challenge for Consolidating Teams Voice

As local authorities merge, unifying Teams Phone services has become one of the most difficult parts of the IT transformation process. While Microsoft Teams calling is widely adopted across councils, the lack of standardisation in voice infrastructure is creating serious obstacles to consolidation and service delivery:

• Diverse telephony setups: Councils made independent decisions about Teams Phone, often selecting different providers and deployment models such as Operator Connect or Direct Routing.

• Fragmented vendors and platforms: Voice services are spread across multiple carriers, platforms, and configurations, creating inconsistency in delivery and support.

• Lack of interoperability: Disparate technologies hinder the ability to manage and scale voice services centrally across newly combined councils.

• Migration complexity: Moving all users to a single vendor or voice platform is technically difficult, time-consuming, and potentially disruptive.

Together, these factors make it extremely difficult for IT teams to deliver a unified telephony experience or gain visibility and control across the new authority. As a result, councils are left supporting siloed systems with increased risk, inefficiency, and administrative burden.

Approaches to Microsoft Teams Tenant Consolidation For Local Governments

1. Full Microsoft 365 Tenant Migration

Tenant migration is typically the best route to remove technical and collaboration limitations in the long term, but it’s also the most complex. It involves migrating users, mailboxes, SharePoint sites, telephony, policies, and other data with considerable risk and cost. The process must be meticulously planned to minimise disruption and downtime.

2. Azure B2B Guest Access

Azure B2B Guest Access allows for some cross-tenant collaboration, but this does not provide a seamless experience and still separates each council in their own bubble. You can't consolidate governance, enforce consistent policies, or unify voice services.

3. Use a Unified Management Interface Without Migrating

By connecting all Microsoft 365 tenants into a single management system, councils can continue using their existing Teams tenants while providing IT administrators with one view of all tenants and users. This is where Callroute’s Multi-Tenant Teams Management comes in.

How Callroute Solves the Voice Challenge

Callroute’s Multi-Teams is the only Microsoft-integrated solution built for simultaneous, secure, and scalable operation across multiple Teams tenants. Key capabilities include:

• One Portal for All Tenants: Access and manage users, numbers, and policies from a single pane of glass.

• Smart Filtering by Tenant: Instantly isolate resources per tenant without profile switching.

• Cross-Tenant Voice Integration: Consolidate different SIP carriers into a single Callroute tenant and share these across multiple Teams tenants. 

  Unified Teams Provisioning with Personas: Automate the assignment of numbers, policies, and licences using reusable templates.

• Granular Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Control who can access what, by user, number, geography, tenant, or function.

We Consolidated 5 Tenants For A Council Without Migration

One large UK council used Callroute to modernise and unify its Teams voice provisioning across multiple boroughs without migrating tenants. Results included:

• Five tenants consolidated into a single pane of glass within a week.

• Significant reduction in day-to-day provisioning time.

• Increased standardisation across tenants leading to better governance.

• Support tickets relating to Teams Phone dropped by 50% as a result of standardisation and leveraging automation.

“The product has taken a weight off my team’s shoulders in a very busy project. It allowed us to streamline the Teams Phone System provisioning process completely.” - Elliott, ICT Network Support Officer.

Read the full review on Capterra.

Next Steps For Council IT Leaders Facing LGR

For IT administrators navigating the complexities of LGR, Callroute offers a practical, efficient, and secure solution for managing multiple Microsoft Teams tenants.

By centralising management and automating provisioning, councils can achieve seamless collaboration and communication across newly formed unitary authorities.

Book a demo to explore how Callroute can support your council's transition.