Working from home is now a mandate for a significant number of employees around the globe, and has forced companies to quickly ramp up their remote working capabilities. One tool that many companies are embracing for this new normal is Microsoft Teams.

Teams, which is an evolution of Microsoft’s Unified Communications platform Skype for Business that combines workplace chat, video and audio meetings, file sharing, application integration and other collaboration and productivity tools.

A critical part of the Teams offering is Microsoft Phone System Direct Routing, which enables users to make and receive calls from any phone no matter where they are. Ribbon is one of only a few technology providers that are certified to deliver Phone System Direct Routing in Microsoft Teams, enabling Microsoft customers to leverage their legacy phone system or SIP Trunks for carrier-grade voice calling in the Teams client interface natively, and helping to deliver a more complete UC&C (unified communications and collaboration) platform.

The COVID-19 Global Pandemic has sent shockwaves throughout the world and impacted every business, with many of them suddenly having to go from traditional centrally located offices and campuses where employees gather and work to having to have most employees work from home. Many of these businesses have little or no previous experience in providing communications and collaboration capabilities for a remote workforce.

Ribbon has rolled out its Work@Home offer to help support these companies as they transition to a distributed remote working model, and part of this offering is our support for Microsoft Teams Phone System with Direct Routing. Ribbon’s advanced support for Direct Routing allows remote workers to leverage their phone system in the Microsoft Teams client without having to bring home burdensome communications equipment from the office, ship a phone or learn a new client. Now Microsoft Teams users can collaborate at home exactly as they would in an office. Calls can be made from any Smartphone, PC, MAC or Linux device with the Teams client.

Additionally, our Work@Home offering, powered by our Kandy Communications Platform as a Service, includes UC&C and remote contact center solutions, helping businesses seamlessly transition their operations to a remote or distributed workforce model.

Contact center operators can get an omnichannel contact center operational in under 30 minutes with our Live Support capabilities. Agents just need a browser and password to start taking calls, chats, video and screenshare from anywhere.

Our goal with Work@Home is to ensure that remote workers are as productive as possible and have the same great communications capabilities that they have in the office. Additionally, during this unprecedented period of uncertainty we want to do our part to ensure that the impact on businesses, regardless of where you are based, is mitigated and that we all try to operate as closely as possible to business as usual.

For more on Ribbon’s Work@Home offering visit info.rbbn.com/work-at-home/