The Components of Teams Calling Services

Adding calling services to Teams for meetings, phone calls, or both requires the use of multiple services and, particularly for phone calling, can involve deciding between multiple options that are not included in any licensing suite or package. This illustration shows the components involved in Teams calling services for public cloud customers. The hosted Teams service, shown at top, is included in most Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans.

On the right, Teams Phone provides the hosted private branch exchange (PBX) capabilities necessary for users in Teams to place or receive conventional phone calls. Teams Phone is included in the Microsoft 365 Enterprise E5 suite and can be purchased as an add-on to Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 or F3. However, as with a conventional PBX, organizations must still provide connectivity to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) for calls to be placed or received with Teams Phone. Four options are available and can be used together across a Teams tenancy. From right to left: