Calling Numbers Outside Your Organization With Microsoft Teams

Adding guest access is a different approach that allows Teams users to collaborate with organizations that don’t use Teams or Skype. However, it can be a time-consuming process, especially if you need to constantly add and remove guests. In this case, you can set up what the guest can do when using Microsoft Teams, like whether they can call other users or collaborate on Office 365 apps, such as Word or Excel.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that these two solutions are far from perfect. While external access only works for companies that also use Teams or Skype for Business, guest access is too complex to set up just to call someone outside the company. To solve this, Microsoft launched Office 365 Calling – the company’s entry into the VoIP industry. But while this plugin works like a charm with other Office programs, it’s expensive and lackluster when compared to the competition. Fortunately, VoIP providers like RingCentral are aware of how prevalent Microsoft Teams is and provide dedicated integrations that work flawlessly with this app.

How RingCentral integrates with Microsoft Teams

By itself, RingCentral is already a powerhouse. But it’s true that Microsoft Teams is the better option when it comes to team collaboration. That’s why integrating both of them is the best solution for seamless internal and external communication flow.

RingCentral allows you to make calls, start video and conference meetings, and send SMS messages without leaving Microsoft Teams. Not only that, but it also improves your security by creating auto-generated meeting passwords and preventing users from joining before the host by default. This integration also comes with a RingCentral native bot for Microsoft Teams that lets you make calls and start video meetings through written commands. For example, you can type ‘@RingCentral Call: X’, and RingCentral will automatically dial the respective number.

How to install RingCentral for Microsoft Teams

The very first thing you need to do is grant admin consent for the RingCentral app to access Microsoft Teams contacts. You can do this by either accessing the Azure AD Admin Center and giving permission through the ‘Enterprise Applications’ tab, or launching Microsoft Teams itself and going to the ‘Apps’ tab. If you have several employees, the former solution is faster, as the latter makes you go to each user’s account and give access to the RingCentral plugin individually.