Individual Staff
Staff are allocated an extension by the departmental telephone coordinator. This means that staff can handle phone calls using their Teams client on a PC, laptop, desk phone, or mobile phone. This facilitates remote and hybrid working.
Common Area Phones
Common area phones are standard extensions usually assigned to deskphones, which do not have access to Teams Phone functionality beyond voicemail and making and receiving calls. Users can tell whether they have an extension by checking their the 'Calls' tab in their Teams client. If a dialpad and phone number are visible, this confirms that the user has a phone number.
Common area phones can be forwarded to another device, for example a personal mobile. Instructions for the use of handsets can be found here: Teams Phone handset quick reference guides.
Group Working
Group working options exist on Teams Phone, as detailed in our help pages. 'Authorised users' can be enabled to change the configuration of Call Queues. Additionally, a Teams Premium licence will allow these authorised users to set a forwarding destination on the queue by using their Teams client.
Cloud based routing
Some University extensions (for example, College Lodges) must continue to route calls even in the unlikely event of the whole University having a network outage, or the whole telephone system going down. It is possible to host these lines 'in the cloud', so that calls can continue to be delivered to their intended recipients even during a serious disruption. Please contact the Communication and Collaboration Services team for further details.
