The deadline to migrate third-party IP phones (3PIP phones) to Microsoft Teams is nearly upon us: July 31, 2023.
Two years ago, Microsoft retired Skype for Business Online (SfBO). As the deadline fast approaches, it is encouraging SfBO users to “make the necessary updates as soon as possible”.
It is providing a solution via SIP Gateway to allow these devices to connect to Teams and function as endpoints.
James Skay, Senior Program Manager in the Teams Partner Engineering group announced Microsoft’s plans to retire SfBO on July 30, 2019. He explained why Microsoft took this decision: “Over the last two years, we’ve worked closely with customers to refine Teams, and we now feel we’re at the point that we can confidently recommend it as an upgrade to all Skype for Business Online customers.
“Customers who have already made the move tell us that Teams not only has helped them improve collaboration generally, it has also provided a rare opportunity to rethink the way work gets done in their organizations.”
Skay continued:
“Teams isn’t just an upgrade for Skype for Business Online, it’s a powerful tool that opens the door to an entirely new way of doing business.”
3PIP Migration Advice
In its latest blog post, reminding customers about the deadline, Microsoft sets out who needs to take action, how to discover existing 3PIP devices within your environment, and how to get help upgrading to SIP Gateway.
If you have compatible 3PIP devices that are connected to Teams via SIP Gateway then you don’t need to do anything.
However, if you have compatible 3PIP devices connecting to Teams but not using Teams SIP Gateway, then your phones will stop working after the deadline.
Finally, if you have incompatible 3PIP devices connecting to Teams then your devices will stop working. You will need to replace these with Teams phone devices or compatible SIP devices.
To discover 3PIP devices within your environment, you can use the Azure AD Admin Center to find recent registration events.
Alternatively, you can use a newly released PowerBI template to summarise 3PIP device locations.
Microsoft recognises that “the upgrade of 3PIP devices to SIP Gateway can be lengthy” so it has provided some resources to support the migration process.
It has created a self-serve playbook, in which it offers a step-by-step guide to the migration.
In May, Microsoft ran a Teams ‘Ask Me Anything’ live event dedicated to maintaining 3PIP phone connectivity.
If you missed that, however, you can still reach out directly to your Microsoft account representative or contact customer support with any questions.
In UC Today’s Microsoft Teams news update for June, Tom Arbuthnot, Microsoft Teams Expert and Co-Founder of Empowering.Cloud, spoke about the upcoming migration deadline for 3PIP phones: “3PIP phones ran through Skype for business online; that Gateway is being turned off.
Arbuthnot added:
“If you are using any phones with Teams that are running in a Skype-like mode, they have to be reflashed… which can be a decent amount of work from a coordination point of view.
“You have got until the 31st of July to do that before the Gateway gets switched off.”
Eric Marsi, UC Engineer at T2M Works, spoke at Commsverse in 2021 about what an “exciting” prospect the end for support for 3PIP phones is, as Microsoft works towards standardising calling, connecting to meetings, and more.
