Ignite 2019 - TMS40 - Managing Microsoft Teams effectively

Presented by: Anne Michels

Session summary:
With simple and granular management capabilities, Microsoft Teams empowers Contoso administrators with the controls they need to provide the best experience possible to users while protecting company data and meeting business requirements. Join us to learn more about the latest security and administration capabilities of Microsoft Teams.

My notes:

This session is for IT administrators to understand Teams in the areas of

• Architecture
• Security and compliance
• Manageability

A "team" is an Office 365 Group and a SharePoint Team site. The Teams client will be a part of Office 365 pro-plus and will be part of the Semi-annual channel.

Each private channel will have its own SharePoint site collection, and the number of site collections in a tenant is raised to two million.

Information barriers in Microsoft Teams are available for chats and channels and are soon coming to files and SharePoint.

A demo of how create a Data Loss Prevention Policy and how it looks like when it is activated in the client.

Office 365 ATP Safe Links are soon coming to Teams.

Teams can be managed by

• Microsoft Teams Admin Center
• Microsoft 365 Compliance Center
• Microsoft 365 Security Center
• Azure Active Directory Admin Center
• PowerShell

Advisor for Teams is part of the Teams admin center that will help you in a roll out of Microsoft Teams. It configures a Team for the deployment, provides plans and step-by-step guidance as planner tasks included in the Team.

The difference between settings and policies are that settings applies to the tenant, while policies can be applied on a per-user basis.

Management of Teams Rooms Devices is coming to the admin portal and a demo with scheduled restarts of devices and download of logs was shown. Usage analytics is now available both in the Microsoft Teams admin center and in the Teams client itself.

Security and Compliance in Teams are growing

Ignite 2019 - TMS20 - Intelligent communications in Microsoft Teams

Presented by: James Skay and Paul Cannon

Session summary:
Microsoft Teams solves the communication needs of a diverse workforce. Calling and meeting experiences in Teams support more productive collaboration and foster teamwork across Contoso. Join us to learn more about the latest intelligent communications features along with the most recent additions to our device portfolio.

My notes:

There are five main parts of Microsoft Teams.

• Meetings / Live Events
• Chat
• Calling
• Files
• Teams as a platform, apps and workflows

Meetings
 
There are four main types of meetings that run in Microsoft Teams.

• Scheduled - structured, planned of time with internal or external participants.
• Ad Hoc - click "Meet now" to start sharing screen, work on documents.
• Channel - A scheduled meeting inviting everyone part of a channel
• Live Events - meetings for up to 10,000 people (or even more with eCDN providers.)

Teams helps these meetings being efficient before, during and after the meeting.

• Before - context, history, chat in the channel, files beforehand, pre-join stage
• During - cloud recording, live captions, whiteboard (with content camera), sharing (with system audio), reconnecting
• After - notes, actions, view recording, search transcript

Recent Innovation in Teams Meetings

Audio Conferencing dial-in is available in 72 countries, interactive voice response in 44 languages - Swedish included.

Calling
 
Calling Plans are available in 12 countries and Direct Routing is now used in more than 80 countries and it is possible to mix and match both types. A demo of voicemail, delegates, consultative call using chat was shown, followed by a video about Microsoft Teams Rooms.

Ignite 2019 - THR2130 - Raising Visibility and Trust in Apps on Teams

Presented by: Bill Bliss

Session summary:
We, at Microsoft, aim to expedite adoption of Teams apps within enterprises through improved transparency and trust between Teams app developers and Enterprises. Come learn about our programs that provide visibility into security and data handling postures of apps built on Teams.

My notes:

A lot of large enterprises turned off all apps in Teams to start with since they did not know if they could trust the apps. They need to trust the apps that are being run in their organization.

Understanding this Microsoft now announces a new Microsoft 365 Certification Program (for apps.) and the goal of this program is to raise visibility and trust in Apps on Teams.

At the Microsoft 365 Publisher Attestation page information about apps are in a single location, in a consistent manner. The Certification program takes this a step further.

In the list of apps, you can click any app and see four information areas for the app, General, Data Handling, Security and Compliance, CSA STAR.

In the future the Teams Admin center will show information about all apps, and indicate if they are certified or not.

Apps in the Teams Admin portal

The same type of app certification exists for other Office programs as well such as Word, Outlook, etc.

Resources:
Overview and app info: https://aka.ms/AppCertification
For developers: https://aka.ms/AppCertificationDevInfo

Ignite 2019 - VCE20 - Updates for Direct Routing

Presented by: Nikolay Muravlyannikov

Session summary:
Direct Routing allows Microsoft 365 customers to use their telecom provider and phone numbers in Teams. In this session you will learn about the latest updates such as the new SIP Tester, troubleshooting with the latest Usage Reporting, Dynamic Emergency Calling (e911), new SBC vendors going through certification, choosing your media server by region, and more. Attendees who are new to Direct Routing are encouraged to review the video at https://aka.ms/dr-training

My notes:

• Direct Routing overview
  A brief description of the Direct Routing service. Check out the "Direct Routing in Microsoft Teams" video for more information.
  

Direct Routing for Teams

• SIP Tester
  A PowerShell tool to validate the call flow end-to-end after pairing the Session Border Controller. Two bots are configured TeamsIn and TeamsOut and is used to make a call. Download the tool and documentation here:
  PowerShell script to test Direct Routing Session Border Controller connections
  
• Health Dashboard and Call Details Records
  A view in the Teams Admin center which helps you to monitor and troubleshoot reliability issues in interconnection between an SBC and the Microsoft service. The information shown in the Health Dashboard is:
• Network Effectiveness Ratio
  Microsoft guarantees 99.9% of availability of Direct Routing service. If a call reached Direct Routing, the call will be accepted from or delivered to an SBC. To notify about issues with SBC Microsoft provides a NER metric to the customers via the Health Dashboard.
• Average Call Duration.
  On average a PSTN call lasts 4 to 5 minutes, values below 4-5 mins can indicate issues.
• TLS Connectivity Status.
  Shows the status of TLS connections between the Direct Routing and the SBC. Health Dashboard also analyses the certificate expiration date and warns if certificate expires within 30 days so administrators can renew the certificate before the service disrupted.
• SIP Options status.
  By default, an SBC sends SIP Options messages every minute. This configuration can vary for different SBC vendors. This field will show the status of these messages. Direct Routing warns if SIP options are not received or not configured.
• Concurrent Calls Capacity.
  When an SBC is paired to Direct Routing, you can specify the limit of concurrent calls that SBC can handle. The parameter calculates how many calls were sent and received by Direct Routing using specific SBC and compare with the limit set. Note that is this SBC also handles calls to different PBXs this number will not show the actual concurrent calls over the SBC.
• Network Parameters.
  Packet Loss, Jitter, Latency
  
• Call Details Records
  In the usage report PSTN usage / Direct Routing all calls made to or from any client in the tenant will be listed. This data can be downloaded as an excel file, and analytics of this data is coming to the portal in the future.
  
• E911 with Direct Routing overview
  You can pair your SBC and route emergency calls and send location information to a Public Safety Answer Point in the US.

Updates on partnership and more features

What’s New for Calling in Microsoft Teams (Ignite 2019 Edition)

Direct Routing allows the routing of calls to 3rd party systems such as mobile network, this also known as "Dual Forking". Occasionally this would generate a "false positive" missed call indication in Teams when the call was picked up at the other fork. Teams can now suppress this unwanted missed call message which provides a better experience. In order for this to work the SBC must be configured to send a Cancel on the other Fork as follows: REASON: SIP; cause=200;text"Call completed elsewhere" See the article Manage call notifications for more information.

Some great new SBC partners being added!

Ignite 2019 - BRK3204 - Troubleshooting Microsoft Teams

Presented by: Carolyn Blanding and Bryan Wofford

Session summary:
During this session we dive deep into how to troubleshoot Microsoft Teams. We review many common areas of misconfiguration and the corresponding errors that you might see in these deployments. This session covers end-user scenarios and deep dives into the nuts and bolts of these scenarios through the tools of troubleshooting.

My notes:

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." - Benjamin Franklin

How can a user tell if they have connectivity problems in Teams?
User Facing Diagnostics will let the user know if connectivity to the service is lost.

What should Administrators do to be sure that the Teams client can connect to our services and provide good call quality?

• Make sure firewalls are open for traffic to Teams.

• 13.107.64.0/18 - TCP 443
• 52.112.0.0/14 - UDP 3478-3481

• Configure QoS (DSCP markings and port ranges will be used)
• Bypass VPN for media
• Use local breakouts

How can Administrators investigate connectivity issues?
By using the Network Testing Companion

How can administrator’s stay informed of changes to Office 365 IP’s and URL’s and keep their network perimeter equipment up to date?
By using the "Office 365 IP Address and URL web service".

Guest Access must be turned on by an Administrator and can take up the 24 hours before it kicks in. It is possible to set which teams should be able to invite guests and which teams that should not. If errors occur, check the audit log.

Guest or External - who is who?

Allow time for user provisioning which can take some time in Office 365. When migrated a user can get into a stage where the Skype for business client is not working, and the chat and calls tabs are missing in Teams. This is because it takes some time for the client to be informed about these changes. Use Ctrl + Shift + Alt + 1 to download the client logs, and open the main "MSTeams Diagnostics Log.txt" and search for "OfficeIntegrationFirstRun" to see which policy the client is getting from the service. For example: "OfficeIntegrationFirstRun: sfbTeamsUpgradeService returned policy.mode=TeamsOnly". This is also why it is always a good idea to do migrations on Friday nights, so that everything can be set to go for Monday morning.

How can Administrators see the actual policy in use in the Teams client?
Use the debugger of a web browser such as Edge (F12), look at network and search for "TenantSettingsv2".

How can Administrators be sure that users enabled for Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) calling have a dial pad in Teams?
The requirements for a dialpad to show up are

• 1:1 Calling Enabled
• SfB Account is Online
• Enterprise Voice Enabled Online
• Business Voice Policy, or Hybrid Voice Policy and Online Voice Routing Policy

Next, download logs with Ctrl + Shift + Alt + 1, open the file and search for "CallingSupportService", check the parameters:

• isCallingAllowed
• isSkypeCloud
• isEVEnabled
• isBusinessVoicePath
• isByotEnabled

What do Administrators need to do to prepare for external communication with other organizations in Teams?
In the Teams admin center check Org-wide settings / External Access and check the SRV records for the domains in your tenant.

• _sip._tls.domain.com:443 should got to sipdir.online.lync.com
• _sipfederationtls._tcp.domain.com:5061 should got to sipfed.online.lync.com

Ignite 2019 - THR2102 - Microsoft Teams: Personal call routing

Presented by: Habib Mankal (@habibmankal) from WaveCore IT

Session summary:
In this session come learn how a Microsoft Teams user can manage their own call routing.  These key features in Microsoft Teams voice puts the user base in the drivers seat by providing them the control to enable:

Call Park - Answer and Park a call for another user to pick up
Group Call Pickup - Ring multiple Teams members
Shared Line Appearance - delegate to answer or handle calls on their behalf

My notes:

Personal call routing - the ability to manipulate a phone call as it goes through your Microsoft Teams environment.

• Requirements
  Enterprise Voice Licensing (Phone System) and Configuration settings (Number assigned + Teams Only mode)
• Shared line appearance (delegates)
  Boss-Admin and vacation scenarios. This is enabled default with Teams Enterprise Voice.
• Group call pickup
  Send my incoming call to a group of people. This is enabled default with Teams Enterprise Voice. Limit of 32,000 groups.
• Call park - needs to be enabled by an admin in the Teams Admin portal.
  Scenarios: Reception - park the call, shout out (intercom) someone else can pick it up. Transfer from mobile to desktop. Support from channel, park the call let the channel know. Does not work with devices (desk phones)
• IT Pro (Administrators)
  The Group call pickup and the Call delegation the user have configured is visible in the Teams Admin center and can be modified by an administrator.

Who is missing SEFAutil?

Ignite 2019 - VCE10 - Calling in Microsoft Teams

Presented by: Paul Cannon

Session summary:
Learn about the basics of Calling in Teams and also get an update on the latest such as Reverse Number lookup, Delegation, and more.

My notes:

Calling is a native part of the Teams architecture. Direct Routing is currently being used in 80 countries. Use Calling Plans for initial tests / PoC and use Direct Routing for larger rollouts. It is possible to mix Calling Plans and Direct Routing

Dynamic Emergency Calling is coming to Calling Plans.

Many SBCs are certified for Direct Routing and the number is growing. Here is the List of Session Border Controllers certified for Direct Routing

A video on the new packaging "Business Voice" was shown. This is designed for customers with up to 300 seats and Audio Conferencing is included in Business Voice, and is currently available in the UK and Canada.

Calling Plans or Direct Routing will get a dial tone to your Teams clients.

QnA

Can we use Express route for Teams voice?
It is generally not recommended but could be appropriate in some situations.

How is branch survivability being addressed in Teams?
Microsoft is looking into SD-WAN to solve this. Some customers still want appliance devices and this is also being investigated.

Will Microsoft build an Attendant console for Teams?
Right now, there are several partners doing that.

Past, present and future innovation in Teams calling

Ignite 2019 - BRK3216 - Optimizing the Microsoft Teams experience with data and analytics

Presented by: Jamie Stark

Session summary:
Are your users taking full advantage of Microsoft Teams? Is your environment set up to deliver the best experience possible? Does your management know the business value provided by Teams and M365? Come out to this session and get a strong "YES!" to each of these questions as we discuss in depth the data and analytics capabilities of Microsoft Teams. Learn how data driven insights can accelerate adoption, improve service quality, and help optimize your network.

My notes:

Call Analytics - Quality from a media perspective.
After being in preview for a long time, CA have now moved into the Teams Admin portal in the user and devices detail page. Two admin roles exist to give access to Call Analytics. A demo of Call Analytics showing how to filter the call hitory, gantt chart of a conference call, response code, information on devices and exporting reports.

Usage reporting - shows usage across Office 365 workloads.
Basic information is in the Office 365 admin center and deeper information about Teams is in the Teams Admin center. A demo showing the Teams usage and Teams user activity, full screen report, getting to Call Analytics from the usage reports, Teams device usage (operating systems), spark lines on Teams activity, live events, PSTN usage and export to excel. The "information cards" in the admin portal will become customizable in the future.

Reporting via APIs - using Graph to go beyond canned reports.
Working with o365 usage reports in MS graph. A demo using PowerShell to get data from the last 180 days, creating an AzureAD app with a client secret, Teams activity data compared to email activity

Graph can be used from PowerShell

 
Roadmap

• More Call Quality Reporting in the Teams Admin center
• Per channel analytics for Teams
• Additional metrics & reporting through Graph

Resources

• Quantifying the value of collaboration with Microsoft Teams
• Overview of people and workplace intelligence in Microsoft Graph
• Microsoft Teams device usage reports (Graph)

Ignite 2019 - THR1094 - Learn how to use Shifts in Microsoft Teams

Presented by: Keara James

Session summary:
Discover how to create and manage shift schedules and learn about the latest mobile features in Teams.

My Notes:

Firstline worker - anyone who clocks in and clocks out, for example a nurse, teacher, construction worker, police officer.

A schedule can be created in the GUI or by uploading an excel file, a schedule can be created first and when done shared with the team. Schedules can be exported to excel or as a pdf for easy printing. Team members can easily swap shifts with each other. Schedules can be populated from Chronos or JDE.

With an F1 license you see the Shifts app in the mobile Teams client. A user can be part of multiple Teams / multiple schedules. Employees clock in and out and take breaks, and they can request time off using the mobile client

The mobile Shifts experience

Off-shift access can be enabled by administrators to provide a notification to Firstline Workers when they access the Teams app on their personal device outside of their payable hours. When the user acknowledges this message they can still access the mobile Teams app.

Delegated User Management allows Firstline managers to manage user credentials (phone numbers) via the My Staff portal.

SMS Sign-in will allow a Firstline Worker to sign-in with only the phone number and a one-time passcode received via SMS.

Global sign-out will sign out from Teams and any other LOB application the Firstline Worker might be signed in to.

QnA

What do we need to start using Shifts?
The Teams app installed on the mobile phone, and an F1, E3 or E5 license.

Is the Outlook calendar integrated with Shifts?
No, but the product group is considering this.

What is the maximum number of users in Shifts?
Same limits as for Microsoft Teams.

Is it possible to clock in and out with the desktop app?
No, but the product group is considering this.

Ignite 2019 - THR3044 - Top five things you need to know to optimize your network for Microsoft Teams

Presented by: Johan Delimon

Session summary:
Avoid the pitfalls that will break your intelligent communications experience for Microsoft Teams. Learn how you can optimize your internal and external network in order to deliver high quality communications in Microsoft Teams.

My Notes:

Johan took us on a history tour to the time before the Internet, then came firewalls and proxies. These devices were used for security, control and compliance. Next VPNs became popular to use from home or from other sites. When cloud services came we just accessed these through the firewalls and proxies in place. This might have been ok from a security standpoint, but not from a quality or media optimization view.

The issues were

• Proxy servers (TCP 80 & 443)
• Firewalls only allow Proxy Servers to Internet
• VPN used for Internet access
• Remote sites using a central internet breakout
• Office 365 not a trusted destination

Fixing the Issues

• Proxies
  Bypass the Proxy for Office 365 traffic and open the firewall for this traffic. Get a proxy that can use the "Office 365 IP Address and URL web service" to open for all the "Office 365 URLs and IP address ranges" in this list.
• Firewalls
  Allow all Office 365 IPs and Ports (TCP 443 & UDP 3478-3481 for Teams for example.) Also check if any internal firewalls or firewalls between sites are blocking media (TCP/UDP 50000-50059) between clients. In this case calls will still work since the clients can use the external Transport Relays to send media, but it is not optimal of course.  
• VPN
  Bypass the tunnel for Office 365 traffic by using split tunnelling
• Delay
  Connect to a Transport Relay as close as possible by using local Internet breakouts.
• QoS
  Use Windows Group Policy Objects to define QoS for the client.
  
  

 The road to happiness (or at least to good quality in Teams media)

Ignite 2019 - BRK3261 - Learn about new, innovative and intelligent devices for Microsoft Teams

Presented by: Sandhya Rao (personal devices) and Greg Baribault (shared room devices)

Session summary:

Learn what’s new with Microsoft Teams Devices that will bring the modern workplace experiences to life across all spaces and conference rooms in your organization.

My Notes:

There is a certified devices program where devices are tested to work well with Teams, please use these devices.

New Teams-certified Speaker phones with a "Teams button" which indicates missed calls, and quick meeting join.

• Poly - Calisto 3200
• Jabra - Speak 750
• Sennheiser - Expand SP 30T
• Yealink - CP700 / CP900

Last year there were 20 million desk phones sold globally, and this number is growing.

Hotdesking is a new feature to be used with the Teams desk phones. The phone is logged in, but a user can come and login on the phone with his credentials, use it for a while, and at logoff the phone will revert to the original number. It will be possible to dial 911 straight from the lock screen (how about 112?)

New Collaboration Bars hardware are coming from Poly and Yealink in early 2020. The Collaboration Bar will contain a camera, speaker and compute so no additional computer needed to run a meeting.

Console / compute systems are available from Crestron, HP, Lenovo which have the audio built in the console, and Logitech, Yealink which have the compute section separate, so it could be hidden under the table for example. Crestron and Logitech also have content cameras (white board cameras) available.

With Proximity based meetings you simply walk into the room with a meeting running on your device - mobile phone or tablet or PC - and the room will be added to the meeting automatically and your device will be muted and silent to avoid howling.

Whiteboard and Content capture camera, makes it easier to whiteboard and include remote users. The front of room displays can be configured with custom images and branding on the console itself will soon be available.

Direct guest join for third party meetings will allow a MTR to connect to Zoom and/or Webex meetings using WebRTC. A demo of joining a Webex meeting with video was shown. Cisco and Zoom devices will be able to join Teams meetings as well.

Management of MTRs is coming to the Teams Admin portal showing the usage and health of the rooms.

A "Managed meeting rooms" service will be offered from Microsoft for $50 per month per room, see the "Managed Meeting Rooms Service Overview" session for more information.

A closer integration between Surface Hub and Teams Rooms is being worked on. These two devices will be aware of each other and cooperate when they are in the same room. They will also join the meeting together by inviting each other.

QnA

Is the MTR a separate license?

Yes, it has a separate license (Meetingroom SKU) which is like an E5 without the office apps and is about $15 per room per month.

Will the 3rd party join work if the device is in SfB only mode?

Maybe (should not be any technical blockers.)

Ignite 2019 - BRK2373 - Managed Meeting Rooms Service Overview

Presented by: David Howell and Irena Andonova

Session summary:
Managed Rooms is a cloud-based IT management and security monitoring service that keeps Microsoft Teams Rooms devices and their peripherals, secured, up to date and proactively monitored, maintaining an environment optimized for a great user experience. In this session you will learn about how this service can help you scale and manage your meeting room deployment either on your own or with the help of partners.

My Notes:

Managed Meeting Rooms - Microsoft is the operator for your rooms. The number of rooms are rapidly increasing, still many customers will only have a small number of rooms. The rooms should be kept secured and managed at all times. There will be a cost related to this service, a cost is already present due to updating of the firmware, security updates, troubleshooting, monitoring.

Managed Meeting Rooms applies Microsoft expertise, machine learning, global footprint, scale elasticity, operational insights, cross customer learning, and a trusted partner network to free IT professionals from the demands of meeting room management, allowing them to focus on their core business. This is being orchestrated from Microsoft’s operations center. At the moment Microsoft is managing more than 1700 rooms for more than 130 customers.

https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/across-devices/spaces

is a page where Microsoft have collected all know-how around Teams rooms which will help customers select appropriate devices for different types of rooms.

The customer dashboard of Managed Teams Rooms

A demo was showed with examples of how some faults are reported

• A camera was disconnected
• An IT department applied MFA to all room accounts
• The device got the wrong time zone applied
• BIOS not up to date

The portal also contains Usage reports showing how often is the room booked, and how many attendees are online.

Foot locker came on stage to tell about their experience with Managed Meeting Rooms. One of their rooms in Milwaukee went from being the least used room to the most used room just by placing an MTR in the room. They noticed that local IT would take a tour every morning just to check all the rooms if cables were connected, was the hardware online?

With Managed Meeting Rooms the customers get expert management, proactive security, enhanced insights and trusted partners to keep to rooms running great.

Ignite 2019 - MTG30 - Microsoft Teams Rooms deployment for an inclusive and enhanced meeting room

Presented by: Christian Schacht, Greg Baribault and James Corso from Foot Locker

Session summary:
Learn about the different options for meeting spaces, what to consider during planning, deployment, best practices, and new tools for managing your Teams meeting rooms at scale.

My Notes:

New Collaboration Bars hardware are coming from Poly and Yealink in early 2020.

Foot locker came on stage to tell about their experience with MTR. Foot locker have 40,000 employees in 27 countries. Before MTR they used audio conferencing, with MTR they like the one touch experience to join meetings. Effortless content share, ease of use and the flexibility of the meeting rooms hardware is also appreciated. Foot locker have a plan to stop using earlier persistent chat systems and Skype in favour of Teams. They see the Surface hub as a compliment to MTR, not a replacement. They even had a user calling the helpdesk thanking them for implementing Teams - not bad!

Microsoft Teams Rooms are

• Easy: Start meetings in seconds
• Inclusive: Everyone gets a seat a the "table"
• Scalable: Configurations for any space
• Ready: Deploy and Manage at scale

MTR consoles are available from Crestron, HP, Lenovo, Logitech, Yealink. Full Catalogue available at https://aka.ms/TeamsDevices All features of MTR are available on all the different hardware options.

A lot has happened since Skype Room Systems became Teams Rooms.

The content capture camera will be supported even on Surface Pro soon.
Branding on the console is coming back again.
Control extensions can enable the console to do room automation such as lights or blinds.

Direct guest join for third party meetings will allow a MTR to connect to Zoom and/or Webex meetings using WebRTC. A demo of joining a Zoom meeting and a Webex meeting was shown.

Management of MTRs is coming to the Teams Admin portal showing the usage and health of the rooms. In this portal functions such as reboot, changing settings such as password and account information will be available, all peripherals with firmware versions will be shown here. There will also be a one-click access from the device to the new Endpoint manager (formerly known as Intune) so that Windows settings can be managed as well. The same way there will be a link from the Endpoint manager portal into the MTR portal. A changelog will be in the portal as well.

There will also be a "Managed meeting rooms" service in addition to the new portal where Microsoft can monitor the room, fix what is possible remote or notify local help if needed.

Ignite 2019 - THR2049 - How to drive successful Microsoft Teams adoption in five steps

Presented by: Adam Deltinger from Stratiteq Sweden AB

Session summary:
Learn how to get better user adoption for Microsoft Teams within your organization in five easy to understand steps! This theater session is intended for IT managers as well as any stakeholder or user champion. Gain a better understanding of how you can perform a successful rollout of Microsoft Teams in your organization.

My Notes:

A session about end user adoption. Introducing a new application without explaining what's in it for the users is not a good idea and can even cause "Shadow IT" apps to be used instead.

Five (+1) steps in 20 minutes? Adoption is not easy, in reality it will take much more time.

1. Collect important information - find adoption stakeholders and set up workshops, make a plan
2. Conduct a Pilot - try quick wins, get feedback and adjust, collect common questions
3. Communication - inform users before, during and after a deployment, use material from Microsoft
4. Champions Program - let your champions join the Microsoft Champions Program, follow up with them.
5. Individual workshops - go Team by Team help them get started
6. Measure usage - Teams usage reports

Ignite 2019 - BRK1069 - Empower your Firstline workforce with Microsoft Teams

Presented by: Keara James and Scott Morrison

Session summary:
From streamlining shift management to customizing the Teams experience, Microsoft Teams can help your Firstline Workers be more productive. Find out what's new in Teams for your Firstline workforce.

My Notes:

Firstline workers should be connected and empowered.

Microsoft Teams - the (mobile) hub for teamwork

Off-shift access is a new setting that can be enabled by administrators to provide a notification to Firstline Workers when they access the Teams app on their personal device outside of their payable hours.

Delegated User Management allows Firstline managers to manage user credentials (phone number) via the My Staff portal.

SMS Sign-in will allow a Firstline Worker to sign-in with only the phone number and a one-time passcode received via SMS.

Global sign-out will sign out from Teams and any other LOB application the Firstline Worker might be signed in to.

A long good demo using only a mobile phone was shown illustrating many functions in Teams and how to customize the experience for the Firstline Workers. Pinning apps, voice messages, content camera, read receipts, urgent messages and were all in the demo from the cell phone. Shifts can be updated via Graph API from workforce management software such as Chronos, JDE or similar. Next, the shifts managers (store managers / department mangers) view were demoed.

There are 8 sessions on Firstline Workers at Ignite 2019.

The presentation ended with a video showing how Alcoa is using the Firstline Workers features in Teams.

QnA

When is recurring Shifts coming?
It is being worked on, meanwhile the copy shifts function can be used.

How about recurring Tasks?
Flow can be used for this, building into the platform is on the roadmap.

How can Regional managers view tasks?
It is on the roadmap.

What are user tags?
Several users can get the same tag by an administrator and can be @-mentioned, or a chat can be started with all users sharing the same tag.
 

Links to more resources - FLW style :-)

Ignite 2019 - THR2069 - Microsoft Teams: Real-world tips for success

Presented by: Tom Arbuthnot from Modality Systems

Session summary:
Based on real-world experience, these tips ensure your success with Microsoft Teams. From business transformation to technical tips, come to this session to learn the top considerations when deploying Microsoft Teams.

My Notes:

Plan your journey in multiple phases. "Collaboration" is good but might not unlock the budget needed to run a Teams project, find other business drivers.

Understand the (Coexistence) modes that can be set on a user basis.

• Islands mode - is both good and bad in the way that you get all functionality, but have SfB side-by-side (which application should we use for feature x?) Islands mode should not be seen as a permanent stage, have a plan on how to get to Teams Only before you send users to the Island.
• Collaboration mode - get the "Teams" functionality out of Microsoft Teams.
• Skype for Business with Teams Collaboration and meetings - good for letting the users get the benefit of Teams meetings using improved codecs and cloud recording.
• Meetings First - only meetings but not the collaboration part, scheduling from Outlook will give Teams meetings and the Meeting Migration Service will convert all SfB meetings to Teams meetings.
• Teams Only - This is where you want to be. Required for telephony functions. It is still possible to join SfB meetings with the "minimized"/stripped SfB client.

Set business goals for your Teams implementation, get an executive sponsor.
Support the cultural change that comes with Teams - sell the benefits.
Governance - important, not exciting. Consider lifecycle management, guest access and document the approach.
Measure success - use the Office 365 reporting and gather feedback.

A Teams project will never be "done". Microsoft Teams will keep evolving adding new features, the organization will evolve and change business processes, new users will be added. Assign a service owner to handle this.

Ignite 2019 - BRK2249 - Advanced Reporting and Diagnostics using Call Quality Dashboard (CQD)

Presented by: Siunie Sutjahjo and Satish Kumar from Accenture

Session summary:

Join us to learn how Accenture have been able to benefit from our latest Call Quality Dashboard (CQD) and supporting capabilities to save time and effort. We demonstrate the latest Call Quality Dashboard (CQD) capabilities and how these help with troubleshooting call quality. We are bringing new analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to assist you in making decisions proactively in near real time.

My Notes:

Before the session Siunie posted an informative article about the new name and general availability for CQD version 3 on the Tech communities, read it here: Introducing the Advanced Call QualityDashboard

What's in Advanced CQD?

Near Real-Time data (on average 30 minutes)

Additional data and dimensions

Integration with Power BI (call quality on maps)

Data from Microsoft Teams or SfB 2019 on-premises

Current and coming features in CQD

 

Accenture runs 216K Teams over 450K devices handling some 350,000,000 audio minutes and 125,000,000 chat messages every month and believes CQD has lot of potential to monitor their call quality. Accenture reviews the dashboard daily and use it as the start for any actions, even "Rate my call" information is reviewed daily to find trends. They also built their own customized reports in Power BI and then surfaced these in Teams - nice! Accenture especially pointed out the possibilities to "drill in" in the data as helpful, when they see a trend they will start to look in one of the four regions they established then go to the location (country) next look at the subnet level, hourly trend and all the way down to a specific user. Also, the possibilities to filter the data is useful like excluding WiFi data and VPN traffic from certain reports.

What are the actions Accenture takes when they see drops in call quality?

They will engage with the local networking Team to find out - is there overutilization at this site, packet loss, changes being made, network hardware running at high CPU, is TCP being used instead of UDP?

 

Enhanced Summary reports

A recorded demo of how to build reports in Power BI using a "CQD Connector" which is coming in preview soon was shown. In the future Machine Learning will be used to analyse the data and find issues.

QnA

Will SfB 2015 on-premises be supported with Advanced CQD?

No, the database schema has changed between SfB 2015 and 2019 and only 2019 is supported.

How do we handle wireless networks with IP roaming?

It was harder to do with CQD v2, but in Advanced CQD Basic Service Set identifier (BSSID) is part of the data collected.

How are Push notifications done?

This is still being worked on, it is in the roadmap but not in preview yet.

Will there be new detailed report templates available?

Not from Microsoft. However, reports created in CQD v2 can be exported and imported to CQD v3.

Will all the data in CQD be available through Power BI?

Yes, if you belong to the right RBAC group for access. Also, due to compliance reasons, personal data is only kept for 30 days.

Are there any special reports available for Direct Routing in CQD?

No, not currently, but it is coming soon.