Microsoft is adding a "private line" feature to Teams that bypasses all organisational policies for calling.
The feature will be generally available in November and allows users to set up a private number to their Teams account that can be made available to a select group of colleagues who can then call the user directly.
Calling the private line number bypasses all organisational policies, which include delegates, admins, or assistants. Additionally, Teams will introduce a distinct ringtone and notification to alert the user that they're being explicitly called by the private number. It will, for now, only support incoming calls and will not be usable for contacting others.
Microsoft's roadmap entry for the feature reads:
With private line, users will be able to have a private second phone number that they can make available to a select set of callers to call them directly, bypassing delegates, admins, or assistants. Inbound calls to the private line will be distinguished by a unique notification and ringtone. The private line will support incoming calls only."
The private line number will allow users to protect sensitive information that might need to be protected from coworkers within the organisation.
The feature will be available on the Desktop Teams app for GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC, and DoD customers. The roadmap contains no information on whether a private line for the Teams mobile app might be developed at some stage.
Teams' October
Last week, Teams introduced automated monitoring to alert users about any significant meeting quality issues.
Consequently, admins can more efficiently monitor audio, video, and application sharing quality for upcoming meetings of certain users via telemetry parameters, such as latency, jitter, and hardware failures. When a quality problem is detected, admins are notified of the issue through channels or webhook notifications, which then produce further details.
