Retired course

This course has been retired and is no longer supported.

About this lesson

Teams makes it easy to connect with others using voice over IP or dialing a phone number when a calling plan is enabled. In this lesson, you'll see how to start a call from a contact card, find a user in your contacts list, view and listen to voicemails, add others to a call, place a call on hold or transfer a call, and view your call history.

Quick reference

Calling with Teams

You can easily make voice-over-IP phone calls from Teams to other members of your organization.

When to use

Use calls to launch into a voice or video call whenever it's easier and faster to communicate directly.

Instructions

Using the Calls application on the left sidebar in Teams allows you to search for a colleague by name and then initiate a phone call. If they don't answer, the call will usually route to voicemail. In companies who have purchased a dialing plan or connected teams to their in-office telephones, you can dial phone numbers from teams, otherwise, you make Teams calls similar to making a Skype call. Once in the call, you can start video, record the call, place the call on hold, transfer, or share content. You can also open the chat sidebar where you can transfer files or post links to content under discussion. In addition, clicking Show participants lets you see not only whose in the call, but allows you to invite others. 

The contact card in Teams is available anytime you see a user icon in Teams posts, Outlook, meetings and many other places in Microsoft or Office 365. By hovering over the user, you can quickly start chat and then easily escalate into a call.

Hints & tips

  • Online status tells you if people are available for a call. A person that appears "away" may be at their desk, but has not been recently active on their keyboard.
  • Take advantage of the ability to transfer files and post URLS in chat when on a phone call. It's frequently very useful.
  • If you don't want to receive calls, set your status to do not disturb.
Login to download
  • 00:04 Working in teams, it's easy to connect with other people using voice over IP.
  • 00:09 You simply hover over the profile pictures to pop up the contact card, and
  • 00:12 then you can click the phone icon.
  • 00:14 You can also of course, click the Camera icon to start a video call.
  • 00:18 In this case, we'll click audio call, so that Megan can connect to Irvin.
  • 00:22 Irvin can select to answer the call with video,
  • 00:25 to answer the call with audio or to hang up, if he doesn't answer at all.
  • 00:30 >> Irvin is currently unavailable.
  • 00:33 >> the call gets forwarded to voicemail.
  • 00:34 >> Please leave a message after the tone.
  • 00:36 >> And we will now, hang up, so what happens to this voicemail.
  • 00:40 Well, if she goes to if Megan goes to calls,
  • 00:43 and then clicks the voicemail option, she'll see her recorded voicemails.
  • 00:48 Clicking on a voicemail will allow you to play the voicemail or to read
  • 00:53 the voicemail, because teams conveniently transcribes the voicemail onto text.
  • 00:58 This is very handy, so you can read a voicemail whenever you're not in
  • 01:02 a situation where audio is convenient.
  • 01:05 In the calls feature, you have several other functions.
  • 01:08 Speed down is useful in situation where you can actually dial phone numbers,
  • 01:12 which you'll be able to do if you have the team's calling add in.
  • 01:16 If that's the case, you'll have a touchtone pad here that looks similar to
  • 01:20 the screen that you're seeing.
  • 01:23 In this way, you can actually dial actual phone numbers directly from teams and
  • 01:27 the call will be routed over the internet using Team Services or
  • 01:30 using your company's phone service if that's connected.
  • 01:32 Without that capability, you can't dial a phone number using teams.
  • 01:36 Another useful feature here is contacts.
  • 01:39 In contacts, you can see everybody that is part of your Microsoft or
  • 01:42 Office 365 organization.
  • 01:45 You can click on them to pop up their contact card,
  • 01:48 started chat or start a call.
  • 01:51 Using the search bar at the top of the screen, you can search for a name and this
  • 01:55 makes it easy to locate anyone in your organization that you want to connect to.
  • 02:00 Before you place a call,
  • 02:01 be sure to check the online status to make sure that they're available.
  • 02:04 And remember, you can control the appearance of your online status by
  • 02:07 clicking on your profile picture.
  • 02:09 And then changing the status,
  • 02:11 and then also by hovering over the team's icon in the taskbar.
  • 02:14 Let's call Irvin again, okay,
  • 02:20 so now, we're in the phone call with Irvin.
  • 02:26 Let's take a look at what choices we have when we're in the call.
  • 02:30 When you click on More Actions, you're able to do so
  • 02:32 much interesting things that you could only do when you're in a call,
  • 02:35 such as put the call on hold or even transfer the call to another user.
  • 02:40 Here's an interesting one, consult, then transfer, you click on this and
  • 02:44 you can say, hey, let me check to see if Alex is available.
  • 02:47 I'm going to consult with him, type in to see if he is available and
  • 02:50 willing to take the call, and
  • 02:52 then transfer the call to the work phone number or the work voicemail.
  • 02:56 This is a great way to hand off calls.
  • 03:00 Now, you can see we're on hold and we simply click resume.
  • 03:04 You also have a keypad for responding to prompts,
  • 03:07 this is particularly useful when working with voicemail.
  • 03:10 Finally, sometimes you're going to want to add people to a call.
  • 03:14 In this case, we've Megan and Irvin in the call.
  • 03:17 Let's say, we wanted to add Isaiah, so we type in Isaiah's name.
  • 03:23 And it turns out Isaiah is not available, but he could have joined the call and
  • 03:26 then we'd have a three person call.
  • 03:28 When you're in a call,
  • 03:29 it's kind of like a team's meeting in the sense that you can share your desktop.
  • 03:33 You can also record the call just like you could have meetings.
  • 03:36 This is a great way to record important conversations for later reference.
  • 03:40 And, of course, and in the call with hang up.
  • 03:43 Finally, there is a call history.
  • 03:46 This will show you who you talk to or who called you,
  • 03:48 as well as whether it's incoming or outgoing, the duration and the date.
  • 03:54 Let's review making calls with teams.
  • 03:56 You can initiate a call from teams anywhere you can find a contact card or
  • 04:00 by searching for your contact in the calls contact list.
  • 04:05 Be sure to check the online status of whoever you're calling and
  • 04:08 also remember, you can control your own online status.
  • 04:12 Calls when they're not answered will go to voicemail.
  • 04:14 You can listen to or read voicemails left for you in Calls, Voicemail.
  • 04:19 When configured,
  • 04:20 you can dial phone numbers from teams using the dial pad in Calls.
  • 04:25 When in a call, you can add others, transfer, record, or put a call on hold
  • 04:31 and a call history is available to you in Calls >History.
  • 04:35 In our next lesson, we'll talk about using the Teams mobile client.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Gift this course