Audio Conferencing

Overview

When you set up a Teams Meeting you typically send a meeting request which includes a link to join the meeting via the Teams app. If you want people to be able to join a meeting from a traditional telephone then you need to provide a dial-in number, which may be a toll or toll-free number, as shown below:

Licensing

Meeting organizers who want to provide these dial-in details in their meeting requests need to be licensed for Audio Conferencing. A full Audio Conferencing license is included for users licensed for Office 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5/E7. Alternatively, there’s a $0 Audio Conferencing license which may be acquired for users licensed with one of the following:

• Teams Enterprise/EEA
• Microsoft 365 Business Basic/Standard/Premium
• Office 365 E1/E3 or F3
• Microsoft 365 E3 or F1/F3

If you want to acquire a toll-free number (below) then you need to make sure that overage is enabled. This means that anyone using the toll-free number dialing into the meeting won’t be charged, but the organization that owns the meeting will be charged on a Pay-As-You-Go basis.

Phone numbers

Depending on the specific availability of Audio Conferencing and Calling Plans in a particular country, shared dial-in numbers for major cities are available, and you just need to select the one you want as the default to appear in meeting requests. If you want a dedicated dial-in number or a toll-free number, then you place an order for the numbers in the Teams Admin Center, as shown below:

Dial-out

Today there’s a full Audio Conferencing experience and a $0 license which adds Audio Conferencing capabilities. What’s the difference? It’s all about the “dial-out” capabilities that are included. Dial-out is when the meeting places an outbound PSTN call – perhaps you realize that you need someone else in the meeting and you use their phone number to add them to the meeting. Or, if you’ve enabled the Call Me feature, a user can join a meeting and choose this option, and then the meeting will dial out to add them to the conference.

The full Audio Conferencing experience includes 60 minutes per user per month for dial-out calls to non-premium numbers in a Zone A country. The full name of the $0 license is actually “Microsoft Teams Audio Conferencing with dial-out to USA/CAN” and, while not exactly snappy, describes its capabilities – you only get 60 minutes of dial-out to US or Canadian numbers. If you want to dial out to a non-included country, then you need overage enabled and you’ll be charged on a Pay-As-You-Go basis for these calls.

While the minutes pools of both types of licenses are pooled (separately), note that the minutes pool you get with the free licenses is based on the licenses assigned to users, rather than the number of licenses that you’ve acquired. For both types of licenses, if you run out of included minutes, then you need overage enabled to carry on using the dial-out capabilities on a Pay-As-You-Go basis.

History

December 2015: PSTN Conferencing was launched under the Skype for Business Online brand. This was arguably rather a good name because it described exactly what it did – allowed you to join a conference using the PSTN.

October 2017: PSTN Conferencing was renamed to Audio Conferencing.

March 2022: The $0 Audio Conferencing license was made available.