Microsoft Teams Rooms SIP/H.323 calling

The Pexip Service enables customers who have Microsoft Teams Room devices with Pro licensing to make and receive 1:1 (also referred to as point-to-point) SIP/H.323 video calls with VTCs, and to call into a third-party SIP or H.323 enabled meeting such as Cisco Webex, Zoom, GoTo, and Google Meet.

Teams Room SIP/H.323 calling supports:

  • Dialing from a VTC (internal or external) into a Teams Room.
  • Dialing from a Teams Room to an internal or external VTC.
  • Dialing from a Teams Room into a third-party SIP or H.323 enabled meeting.
  • Dialing via One-Touch Join into meetings with other third-party providers.
  • Bi-directional screensharing (BFCP or H239) between the Teams Room and the VTC.
  • Single and dual screen systems for meetings and content sharing.
  • Sending DTMF tones from a Teams Room.

Note that:

  • Different calling policies can be applied to certain rooms to, for example, not allow incoming SIP/H.323 calls, while other systems are enabled for this functionality depending on your business requirements.
  • When joining a Teams Meeting the full feature set of a Teams Room is available, including participant list and other advanced meeting interaction features. However, this is not a call to a Teams meeting, thus when calling a SIP/H.323 destination many of the standard Teams meeting features (such as call transfer, share whiteboard, and add participant) are not available, as the functionality for 1:1 calls is focused around bidirectional audio/video communication and content sharing.

This article covers:

Licensing requirements

Pexip licensing requirements:

  • Domain Hosting (this is included in Connect Standard)
  • Connect for Teams Rooms license count to match your Microsoft Teams Room Pro license count (contact your Pexip authorized support representative for details)

Microsoft requirements:

  • Teams Room Pro license
  • Windows based device
  • Teams Rooms on Windows v5.2.115.0 or later

Pexip reserves the right to audit the Teams Room Pro license quantity to ensure compliance. Such an audit can consist of requesting a screenshot from the customer's Teams admin center:

Enabling your organization for Teams Room calling

This section describes how to enable your organization and Teams Room systems for SIP/H.323 calling.

Enabling your Teams tenant

The steps involved in enabling your Teams Rooms vary slightly depending upon whether or not you are an existing user of the Pexip CVI service. Expand the relevant section below.

To enable Teams Room calling where you are an existing user of the Pexip CVI service:

  1. Contact your your Pexip authorized support representative and ask them to enable the Teams Room Service for you.

    • In most cases you would use the same Microsoft 365 domain that you currently use for your CVI. Note that if you are a longstanding CVI user then you may not have gone through Pexip's domain verification process — your Pexip authorized support representative can check this, and if necessary you will also have to verify your domain as described in Verifying Microsoft 365 tenant domains.
    • You also have the option of requesting a "rewrite" domain. This is the domain you want to use in the "from address" in calls you make from your Teams Room (instead of your primary Microsoft 365 domain), and thus the address that will be dialed if the recipient places a call back to your Teams Room (e.g. in case of a missed call). For example your primary Microsoft 365 domain might be pexample.com and your rewrite domain could be mtr.pexample.com. If the rewrite domain has not yet been verified you will also need to configure the relevant DNS TXT and DNS SRV SIP records for the domain and go through the verification process for this new calling domain (see Domain hosting DNS records for further instructions).
  2. You receive a Authorize Pexip Connect for Teams Rooms email when your Pexip authorized support representative enables the service. It contains a link to initiate consent to the Pexip app for your Office 365 tenant.
  3. As Teams Room calling uses the same app (and permissions) as your existing CVI service, when you click the link in the email it will immediately inform you that administrator consent was successfully granted.
  4. The page also instructs you to run some PowerShell commands to complete the setup. These commands to enable and configure your calling policy must be performed by a Teams tenant administrator with "Global Admin" access, and are repeated below for your convenience.
  5. You can now make and receive calls.

If you do not currently use the Pexip CVI service you can still enable Teams Room calling:

  1. Contact your your Pexip authorized support representative and ask them to enable the Teams Room Service for you.

    • You need to specify the Microsoft 365 domain you want to use for Teams Room calling.
    • You also have the option of requesting a "rewrite" domain. This is the domain you want to use in the "from address" in calls you make from your Teams Room (instead of your primary Microsoft 365 domain), and thus the address that will be dialed if the recipient places a call back to your Teams Room (e.g. in case of a missed call). For example your primary Microsoft 365 domain might be pexample.com and your rewrite domain could be mtr.pexample.com.

    Your Microsoft 365 domain and, if used, your "rewrite" domain must be verified before you can use them with the Teams Room service. You need to configure the relevant DNS TXT and DNS SRV SIP records for the domain(s) and go through the verification process (see Verifying Microsoft 365 tenant domains and Domain hosting DNS records for further instructions).

  2. After requesting access to the service, you will receive an email asking you to authorize the Pexip application (note that this is the same app that is used by the Pexip CVI service). Click the link Initiate consent for your Tenant link.

  3. This opens a web page where you again need to click on Initiate consent for your Tenant.

    The tenant domain you consent with must be the same Microsoft 365 domain that you have previously verified via a DNS TXT record.

  4. Follow the instructions to log in with your O365 account and then click Accept when prompted.

    1. Sign in.

    2. Accept the request.

      Information about the permissions required by the Pexip CVI app is provided in the following table:

      Permission Details More information
      Read all users' full profiles

      The User.Read.All application permission provides access to properties and permissions for operations listed at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/resources/users?view=graph-rest-1.0, in particular the methods and properties listed at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/resources/user?view=graph-rest-1.0 that require the User.Read.All permission.

      It is used to:

      • Show the user's UPN (user@domain) instead of GUID in logs for an administrator to know which user was in which call.
      • Display the photo of a user if the user has not started their video.
      • Allow point-to-point call capabilities.
      		 Application permissions: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/permissions-reference#application-permissions-38
      Initiate outgoing 1 to 1 calls from the app The Calls.Initiate.All application permission is used to support point-to-point calling scenarios. Calls permissions: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/permissions-reference#calls-permissions
      Initiate outgoing group calls from the app The Calls.InitiateGroupCall.All application permission is not currently used. It may be used in the future for creating ad hoc calls (e.g. to implement point-to-point calling scenarios).
      Join group calls and meetings as an app The Calls.JoinGroupCall.All application permission allows VTC devices to join a Teams meeting as a trusted participant (permits lobby bypass).
      Join group calls and meetings as a guest The Calls.JoinGroupCallAsGuest.All application permission allows VTC devices to join a Teams meeting as a guest/untrusted participant.
      Access media streams in a call as an app The Calls.AccessMedia.All application permission is used to access the media streams of participants that are attending a Teams meeting.
      Read online meeting details The OnlineMeetings.Read.All application permission is used to resolve the VTC meeting coordinate from the invite body into a Teams meeting. Online meetings permissions: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/permissions-reference#online-meetings-permissions
      Sign in and read user profile The User.Read delegated permission is added by default for Microsoft Entra ID tenant apps, but is not used by the Pexip Teams Connector. User permissions: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/permissions-reference#user-permissions
      Any permissions that are not currently used are included in the current consent process as it is not practical to re-consent existing apps as new functionality becomes available via the SDK and/or as we add additional functionality to the Teams Connector itself.
  5. A confirmation page verifies that the consent was successfully provided. The page also instructs you to run some PowerShell commands to complete the setup. These commands to enable and configure your calling policy must be performed by a Teams tenant administrator with "Global Admin" access, and are repeated below for your convenience.
  6. You can now make and receive calls.

Enabling and configuring your Teams calling policy

Your IT administrator must run some Teams PowerShell cmdlets to enable the Teams Room calling policy and give permissions to their VTCs that are to be used for 1:1 calling.

  1. Start a PowerShell session as Administrator.

  2. Run the following commands to sign in to your Teams tenant:

    Import-Module MicrosoftTeams

    Connect-MicrosoftTeams

You can then use the following commands to configure your calling policies.

To get a list of your existing policies, run the following command:

Get-CsTeamsRoomVideoTeleConferencingPolicy

To create a new policy:

New-CsTeamsRoomVideoTeleConferencingPolicy -Identity "MtrSipCallingPolicy" -Enabled $true -AreaCode "923c9f0a-b883-4efe-af73-54810da59f83" -ReceiveExternalCalls "Enabled" -ReceiveInternalCalls "Enabled"

where:

  • the -AreaCode given above is the Pexip Service AppID; this should be used in your own command.
  • "MtrSipCallingPolicy" is the name of the policy being created. You can use any name of your choosing.

Note that ReceiveExternalCalls and ReceiveInternalCalls default to Disabled when not provided. These properties take only two values: Enabled or Disabled. This lets you configure which types of calls (marked as internal and/or externally originating) you can receive.

To grant a particular policy configuration ("MtrSipCallingPolicy" in this example) to all users/rooms:

Grant-CsTeamsRoomVideoTeleConferencingPolicy -PolicyName "MtrSipCallingPolicy" -Global

Other useful commands

To grant a particular policy configuration to a specific user/room ("mtr01@pexample.com" in this example):

Grant-CsTeamsRoomVideoTeleConferencingPolicy -Identity "mtr01@pexample.com" -PolicyName "MtrSipCallingPolicy"

To remove a policy from a specific user/room ("mtr01@pexample.com" in this example):

Grant-CsTeamsRoomVideoTeleConferencingPolicy -Identity "mtr01@pexample.com" -PolicyName $null

To update properties on an existing policy:

Set-CsTeamsRoomVideoTeleConferencingPolicy -Identity "MtrSipCallingPolicy" -ReceiveExternalCalls "Disabled"

The example above disables receiving external calls on the "MtrSipCallingPolicy" policy. Note that the Identity field is mandatory.

To view systems assigned with a policy:

Get-CsOnlineUser -Filter {TeamsRoomVideoTeleConferencingPolicy -eq "MtrSipCallingPolicy"} | Select-Object DisplayName, UserPrincipalName

The example above shows the systems assigned to the "MtrSipCallingPolicy" policy.

To delete a policy:

Remove-CsTeamsRoomVideoTeleConferencingPolicy -Identity "MtrSipCallingPolicy"

The example above deletes the "MtrSipCallingPolicy" policy.

Note that in Set and Remove commands the -Identity switch is the policy name, whereas in Grant commands the -Identity switch is the Teams Room being configured and the -PolicyName switch specifies the policy name.

Enabling calling to meetings hosted on other platforms

Microsoft's "Cross-Platform meetings via SIP join" feature lets you use a Teams Room to join meetings hosted on other meeting platforms as easily as you can join meetings hosted on Microsoft Teams. Note that third-party meeting providers drive the experience of their platform on the Teams Room device.

This feature needs to be enabled per device for each specific meeting type required.

To enable third-party meetings:

  1. From the console, go to More > Settings > Meetings.

  2. Enable the Third-party meetings providers you want to support.

    The device will reboot when you change the settings.

For more information see this Microsoft article on third-party meetings on Teams Rooms.

Placing and receiving calls

You have various options to place a call from the Teams Room console:

  • For One-Touch Join calling into a scheduled meeting via the integrated calendar: select Join for the displayed meeting.

    To use One-Touch Join for guest dialing into a Zoom Meeting, the invitation must be from a Zoom environment that is enabled for either Zoom's CRC (Conference Room Connector) or Zoom's Video Interop for Meetings.

  • For calling by a meeting ID (Teams meetings or meetings with other third-party providers): select Join with an ID, select the meeting provider (for example Teams, Zoom, Cisco Webex, Google Meet), and then enter the meeting ID and passcode.
  • To call a VTC: select Call, then select SIP or H.323 as appropriate, and enter the address of the VTC you want to call.

Note that the Teams Room software is regularly updated, thus some images shown here may not directly match the current appearance and options.

Placing a call

Receiving a call

Entering DTMF tones

Finding the Teams Room "calling URI"

  1. Select the More ellipsis on the room console.
  2. Select Settings.
  3. Enter the password.
  4. Select the Account tab.
  5. The Email address is the Teams Room calling URI to dial from a VTC device.

mtr