Make space; virtual meetings and chats—online calling is coming this year!
Anyone who has a telephone sitting on their desk on campus will be able to make calls in a consistent manner, whether working on campus or at home. Your phone number will remain the same, what will change is how you make and receive phone calls. Instead of using a physical telephone, you do your calls via Teams. It’s called Unified Communications.
Let’s think for a moment about what that means. You have Teams on your desktop computer or laptop, so you’ll be able to go into Teams, click on the Calls feature to make a phone call. If you have Teams on your iPhone or Android, you will be able to receive and make business calls wherever you are!
It’s a game changer.
Unified communications will provide a more agile way of working. No matter where you are. Whatever device you're using. And soooo easy. We’re already using Teams for meetings, using earbuds or a headset. It’s just another functionality that will be available to you in your Teams application. The impact is significant. There are approximately 2000 phones that will be in scope. The other 3000 phones will remain for elevators, emergency phones, podium classrooms, etc.
In the spring, we will gradually start rolling out the added functionality in Teams and get rid of the physical phones. Likely the changes will be deployed sector by sector until the end of the year. If you make or receive phone calls as part of your work, you’ll be getting access to the new functionality in 2023!
Goodbye deskbound phone. Hello convenience!