
Welcome
My name is Shoulun Wang. I am a Microsoft Unified Communications professional. I have worked with a number of IP-PBXs and UC platforms but I spent most of my years with Microsoft UC products such as Lync, Skype for Business and Teams. I have worked for UC service providers delivering Microsoft UC solutions and held various roles throughout my career. This little space is where I put out my thoughts and opinion in this area and hopefully you could find it useful.
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New Trusted Root CA for Direct Routing
You may or may not have picked this up via various official communication from Microsoft – I defo missed it… Microsoft is changing the Root CA for Teams Direct Routing (along with some other Microsoft 365 workloads). Microsoft originally released a message back in March this year (2022) under MC343794 titled “Office TLS Certificate Changes”.… Read more
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Teams PowerShell Module – versions older than 4.x.x to be retired (MC350371)
Microsoft recently pushed out a notification, as below, that Teams PowerShell Module (TPM) older than version 4.x.x will be retired by 15 June 2022. With this change, some of your Teams PowerShell scripts may need to be modified or updated. Or, you’d see some errors when executing. Here are some of things that I have… Read more
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Configure Teams Room account with Direct Routing
If you have ever tried configuring a Microsoft Teams Room account with a Direct Routing phone number and an Online Voice Routing Policy, you would most likely have encountered the error that I’m about to mention in this article. Firstly, the Exchange Room Mailbox. I won’t go into too much details here because it has… Read more
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[PS Script] Bulk create and assign Resource Accounts to Teams Auto Attendant/Call Queue
Recently I came across a need to create and assign multiple phone numbers and Resource Accounts to an Auto Attendant in Teams. To do this manually, the normal procedure is: Purchase the Phone System Virtual User licenses (FoC) via Microsoft or your CSP Go to Teams Admin Centre (TAC) Create the Resource Accounts Associate them… Read more
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Microsoft launches SIP Gateway in Teams
Microsoft announced that a new key feature, SIP Gateway, is now GA in Teams as of December 6, 2021. With this new feature, businesses will be able to repurpose their existing 3rd party SIP phones in order to have a smoother transition into native Teams phones without a steep initial hardware investment. The full details… Read more
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Teams Meeting PSTN Dial-out: Who is paying?
Meetings have always been one of the core features in Microsoft Teams. I’m sure many of us have used the feature where you are in a Teams meeting and you dial out to PSTN to “drag someone in”. But, where do those calls go out from and who is paying them? It also gets interesting… Read more
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Restricting/Barring International Calling in Teams
From time to time, Teams admins may come aross the need to limit some (or all) Teams voice users’ calling capability to domestic-only. There are many different ways to implement this. But, I’m going to write up this method below as I found it to be the most effecient and can be used on both… Read more
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The dreaded “Cannot find specified Gateway”
For everyone who has been doing Teams Direct Routing deployments, the famous “Cannot find specified Gateway” error would definitely be up there being one of the most dreaded errors to see. There are a couple of places you may see this error, depending on the format of Teams Direct Routing you have chosen to configure:… Read more
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Retirement of Skype for Business Online Connector
Back in December last year, Microsoft communicated that the Skype for Business Online Connector will be retired by February 15, 2021. Well, that date is pretty much upon us. If you manage or deploy Enterprise Voice in Teams, you would have been using the SfB Online Connector to establish your remote PowerShell sessions. Therefore, this… Read more
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[NEW] 1:1 Call Recording Policy
This is only a very quick post. If you use 1:1 call recording in Teams, you’d need to take a look at this and double check your configuration. A change and impact alert labelled as “1:1 Call Recording Policy Introduction” under MC227292 has come through over the weekend. The new –allowCloudRecordingForCalls switch in the Set-CsTeamsCallingPolicy… Read more
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Voice routing for Teams Direct Routing explained
Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams is great. The voice routing configuration for Direct Routing, however, isn’t the easiest concept in the world to understand. I’d like to help people understand it to get the most out of Microsoft Teams voice. So here is my attempt on explaining the topic. Before we begin, I’m more of… Read more
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[Ignite 2020] Upcoming Calling Features in Teams
A few very welcome addtions to Teams calling capability have been announced at Microsoft Ignite 2020. Let’s take a quick look at them: Modern Calls app Straight to the very core – the Calls app in Teams client gets an major upgrade. The biggest change in the new Calls app is that now an amalgamated… Read more
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Custom meeting logo in Microsoft Teams
A couple of new meeting features are coming to Microsoft Teams in September. I find the custom logo particularly interesting and useful. It would make your meetings look much more professional and stand out from the crowd. The organiser would need to have Advanced Communication license to take advantage of this new feature. A little… Read more
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Test Drive Microsoft 365 Connectivity Test
During this time more than ever, we all want to know if our network is good enough to work from where we are sitting. There is handy website provided by Microsoft, currently as a proof of concept, to run such tests against some key Microsoft 365 workloads. The test is located at: https://connectivity.office.com/ It will… Read more
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Skype / Teams interop and hybrid, explained
The coexistence and interop between Skype for Business (Online and on-prem) and Teams have been an interesting topic since the day Microsoft Teams was introduced. It is not a new topic, but I feel it still needs clearing up. Hopefully this could help people and businesses understand the possibilities and implications, and in turn get… Read more
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“Our meetings are fine in Teams but not in Skype” – WFH
Since the lockdown started we have heard this statement quite a few times. The “Skype” here refers to Skype for Business on-prem server edition. Organisations who currently have a deployment of on-prem Skype for Business environment started to notice that Microsoft Teams deliver better meeting quality now the majority of their workforce work from home.… Read more
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Top Ear – UC Headsets, WFH review and more
The current COVID-19 lockdown has given me a chance to take my various wireless headsets for a good spin, where I’m not just working from home but also have kids schooling from home, washing machine flat out on spin cycle and all sorts of clinking clanking and clattering from the kitchen. I can now give… Read more
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