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Challenges with Enterprise Microsoft Teams PSTN calls

Providing the ability for employees to perform calls that reach the PSTN is highly valuable for the Enterprise but also challenging to manage. Until recently, the UC team was managing this capability alone with technologies like Cisco and session border controllers (SBCs) that are dedicated to this.

With Microsoft Teams Phone coming into play, the need for better alignment between the UC team and the Microsoft 365 management team has become critical. PSTN calls now rely on both Microsoft and SBC technologies to deliver quality end users.

Therefore, an enterprise’s UC and Microsoft 365 teams both need to have complete visibility on call, network and SBC device performance to ensure maximum reliability for the business lines they support. However, this is often not the case. Though AudioCodes One Voice Operations Center (OVOC) can help, it doesn’t provide proactive network testing, which would prevent potential issues from becoming a user experience problem.

Why Microsoft Teams PSTN Call Reliability is Important?

PSTN calls are usually used either by Executives or by contact centers that are reaching customers and prospects to drive revenue. The quality of these calls is critical, to maintain the company’s image and maximize revenue generation.

Managing Microsoft Teams Phone PSTN calls requires a view of the overall service quality but also visibility into each step of the data flow in order to quickly detect, understand or even prevent issues from affecting the business.

SBCs like AudioCodes are in fact highly reliable but as with any device, it can suffer from overload, misconfiguration or any connection problem which would affect the user experience. On top of that, the data flowing from the user to the SBC or from the SBC to the PSTN provider can also be subject to latency which would create robotic voice or even cause a call to drop.

That is why achieving an end-to-end view is so important and proactive monitoring is so critical.

Ensure proactive support for your Enterprise Microsoft Teams PSTN calls

Martello Vantage DX collects PSTN call data from the Microsoft Teams Call Quality Dashboard (CQD) and correlates it with AudioCodes call detail reports and every possible alarm coming from the SBC itself. This means that the UC and Microsoft Teams management teams have full visibility on the entire route of the call and can also proactively be aware if the SBC itself is causing service quality problems.

SBC alarms cover the chassis, the trunk, the high availability configuration, the device health itself, but also the TLS certificate, the licenses, the password, the network connection of the SBC, the security configuration and the SNMP trap performance. SBC call detail report data is also retrieved and presented in the context of the Microsoft Teams call by correlating it with the Microsoft Teams CQD. Finally, the network route to Microsoft services and to the AudioCodes SBC is continuously monitored to detect any potential issues that would affect the user experience.

With Martello Vantage DX, the UC and Microsoft Teams management teams can efficiently work together, detecting issues before they affect end users. Whether the issues are network or AudioCodes related, both teams can get end-to-end comprehensive data on any PSTN call to understand and fix end user issues faster.

AudioCodes Dashboard

The Results

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Detailed root cause for any poor call using an AudioCodes SBC.

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Proactive monitoring of the SBC and the network connection to it.

Provide end-to-end visibility to both the UC and Microsoft Teams management teams.

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Reduce mean time to repair dramatically.

Resources

Checklist: Optimizing Microsoft Teams with Vantage DX
eBook

Checklist: Optimizing Microsoft Teams with Vantage DX

Are you an IT manager grappling with Microsoft Teams performance challenges? Experience the frustration of blind spots, sluggish issue resolutions, and reactive chaos?

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Deliver a smooth Microsoft Teams quality of service, on every call.

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