Deep Dive into Teams Calling and Audio-Conferencing Capabilities & Communication Credits

by Contributed | Nov 28, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Microsoft Teams has been in extensive use for collaboration features such as IM, Teams meetings, 1:1 or group calls, files collaboration, etc., and has been explored by all organizations without any additional financial costs with existing Microsoft 365 licenses. This has been a boon to organizations for increasing productivity. However, one of the added functionalities of Microsoft Teams, which comes in handy, is to replace traditional telephone systems by enabling the Teams integrated Cloud telephone system that includes Calling Plans and PSTN Audio conferencing options for dial out and dial in capabilities—all without any additional on-premises PSTN infrastructure set up.

The Catch with Microsoft Teams Audio Conferencing Features

Availability across a given tenant is based on the initial data residence location (or organization billing address), and it must align with Microsoft 365 calling and conferencing features available for the given region. For Example, any M365 tenant initially set up with a billing address in India or China is devoid of Audio-conferencing Capabilities by design.

For a complete list of the latest M365 Audio Conferencing and Calling Plans region-wide availability, please Click here. This link is handy for all architect professionals while setting up new tenants to decide on an initial data residence location and to check on available MS Teams audio conferencing features. Owing to taxation regulations and compliance, the M365 tenant’s initial or billing location cannot be updated later, and the given tenant is devoid of the required features.

Microsoft Teams PSTN/calling and conferencing features can be categorized as follows:

• Dial out to domestic/telephone numbers for users enabled with the respective calling plans.


• Dial out from an Audio-Conferencing meeting to add someone else from anywhere in the world.


• Dial out from an Audio-Conferencing meeting to your mobile/office phone with the user logged into Microsoft Teams app.


• Dial in (Toll/Toll Free Numbers) and dial out capabilities to MS Teams meetings.


• Dial into a meeting using the service numbers or Toll-Free numbers enabled for given tenant.

Audio conferencing features for given users are based upon enablement of the given Audio-Conferencing licenses: as a part of Microsoft Business Voice, Microsoft Teams Phone standard, MS Teams phone with Calling, E5 license, or as an M365 Add-on license.

For leveraging and billing purposes of calling features across MS Teams, Microsoft has categorized all countries across the globe into two zones which is Zone A and another zone for rest of the countries not included in the aforementioned. For example, Albania, Argentina, Cayman Islands, Dubai, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Israel and many more. To access the update list of M365 Zone A countries please click here.

Microsoft Teams Audio conferencing licenses can be categorized in to 2 types:

• Pay per minute.


• Standard subscription per user

Audio conferencing pay per minute, which is only available as part of volume licensing, allows organizations to pay for all the Audio-Conferencing usage on a per-minute basis. All the inbound and outbound calls are charged based upon the standard pay per minute charges.

On the other end, Audio conferencing standard subscription license enables free dial in capabilities for toll numbers and 60 minutes per user a month for dial out to non-premium numbers in ANY of the Zone A countries. Thus, this license does not enable licensed users to place calls to any other non-Zone A countries within the pooled minutes. Those calls are separate, and any charges are counted against communication credits.

Minutes are pooled against an office 365 subscription are calculated at tenant-level and can be leveraged and shared by all the licensed users in the tenant. If a customer has purchased subscriptions for 500 Audio Conferencing licenses—with 400 users in the United States, 50 users in Australia, and 50 users in Dubai, then all 500 users share a pool of Audio-conferencing minutes. This is calculated as 500 users x 60 min = 30,000 minutes for conferencing dial-out minutes per calendar month. This may be used to place outbound calls to non-premium numbers in any of the Zone A countries. The minutes pooled for an Audio-Conferencing tenant is always based upon the licenses assigned to a user rather than total licenses available across the given tenant. 

Call Charges are Calculated Against the Call Destination

The organizer’s country of residence, and the participant initiating the call, do not change the calling charges. Furthermore, calls placed between Zone A: non-Zone A and between non-Zone A: non-Zone A, they are always charged on a per minute basis against the Communication Credits rather than a minute pool for the tenant’s Audio-Conferencing.

To ease the burden of carrier calling charges and facilitate users struggling with internet connectivity, MS Teams Toll free conference number bridges the cost to the organization rather than the caller. All Toll-free conference calls are billed on a per minute basis in tenant Communication Credits and are never calculated against Audio-Conferencing minutes.

Communications Credits: Convenience to Pay for Audio-Conferencing and Calling Plan minutes

In laymen terms, these are a prepaid top-up amount across the tenant to be used for calls not included in Audio conferencing options.

Communication Credits Help Organizations Ensure Users Are Never Caught Without the Ability to:

• Add toll-free numbers to Audio-Conferencing meetings, auto attendants, call queues. (Toll Free Numbers are charged on a minute basis.)


• Dial out from an Audio-Conference meeting to add someone else from anywhere in the world or add your mobile or office phone in non-Zone A countries.


• Dial any international phone number when enabled only with Domestic Calling Plan subscriptions.


• Dial international phone numbers beyond what is included in a Domestic and International Calling Plan subscription.


• Dial out and pay per minute once the monthly minute allotment is exhausted.


• Dial out and pay per minute for all outgoing calls if you have a Pay-As-You-Go Calling Plan.

Communication Credits are specifically utilized for the below scenarios.

• Tenants enabled with Audio-Conferencing pay-per-minute.


• Enabling Toll-free Bridges across a given tenant, billed per minute.


• Dial-out calls exceeding Audio-Conferencing minutes per calendar month are billed per minute using Communications Credits at published rates to that destination.


• Dial-out calls to destinations not in the Zone A countries list are billed per minute using Communications Credits at the published rates to that given destination.

For users to leverage the Communication Credits across given Tenant, they are required to be assigned with Communication Credit license, which grant them access to the balance. The minimum amount of Communication Credit balance can be a minimum of $50. Setting up a toll-free number across a given tenant does require a positive Communication Credit.

Below is a quick reference diagram to understand the various types of meeting participant types and how the MS Teams calling charges are applied.

With a subscription to pay per license, Audio-Conferencing Dial-in capabilities are considered free of cost with Toll number. Zone A dial out users are considered with Tenant pool minutes. Non-Zone A Dial out users and users with toll free dial in are charged per minute from Communication Credits.

With only Audio-Conferencing pay-per-minute licenses enabled, the dial in calls with a toll conference bridge and Zone A dial out users are charged against Communication Credits (owing to non-availability of any polled minutes). Toll free dial in users and Non-Zone A dial out users total against Communication Credits.

In conclusion, Toll Free and Calling capabilities to Non-Zone A countries can come with a hefty financial consideration; hence, proper planning and stringent controls in place are required for tracking MS Teams calling budgets to ensure a seamless experience for the required users. 

Bio:

Sanjay Kumar Pendyala has a decade plus of experience across architecting, operations, and maintenance of Microsoft collaboration and cloud Technologies. Currently serving as an Infrastructure Architect with Cognizant Technology Solutions, Sanjay Kumar has a technical expertise across architecting and administration of SharePoint On-premises, Azure IAAS/PAAS, Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Teams, Azure AD, Yammer, Power Automate platform, Graph API automation), and he has been working for a few fortune 500 clients. 

Image as choice in Microsoft Forms

by Contributed | Nov 27, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Inserting image as choices is a long expected feature from forms and quizzes users. Today, we are excited to share you can now add image as answers in Microsoft Forms. Starting from December, it will be gradually rolling out globally, hope you can explore these new updates when it’s available to you. 

Images as answer is supported in both forms and quiz. We understand that visualization is critically important in teaching and learning to assist students digest context easier and create connection with knowledge faster, especially for young kids when they are still growing language skills. 

How to insert image

You can insert images in multiple choice question with following methods. Let’s walk you through each of them in details.

• bulk import


• drag and drop


• copy and paste

1) Bulk import are supported in both desktop and mobile, with 5MB size limit per image. Images from OneDrive, local or Bing search are all accessible. You could bulk select 5 images each batch and continue to add another batch if needed.

2) Drag & drop images directly is also enabled if you need to quickly grab an image from your desktop, local folders or somewhere handy.

3) Copy-and-paste is enabled if you would like to save time storing images here or there, you can simply paste the image from somewhere or just pull a screenshot even faster. 

Image customization

Last but not least, image resizing is enabled for further customization if needed. On default status, uploaded images will be auto center-cropped fitting to the predefine border. If that is not yet best fitting what you expected, you can zoom in/out to resize image or drag the images to change focus through the image editor.

Data visualization

Images will be displayed when users create & preview the survey in design time, when responders fill the survey or when the owner wants to check details in individual result page. The rest of other cases (such as analysis view in response tab or data in Excel worksheet), there is only text showing up as representations of these choices.

Feedback

We want to hear from you! To send your feedback, you can leave message below or go to the upper right corner of Forms design page and select Settings (…) > Feedback. Thank you.

How to build Power Apps Custom Controls using TypeScript

by Contributed | Nov 26, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

I recently learned about 2 exciting ways that you can use your coding skills to extend the functionality of the Power Platform. The 2 ways:

• Using your experience of working with APIs to build custom connectors that allow Low Code Applications to connect to external and your favorite data sources

Tools & Concepts: VS Code, Power Platform CLI (pac), Postman, GitHub, APIs

• [Focus for this blog] Bringing in your coding skills to build custom controls that will be deployed to the Dataverse to be accessed by citizen developers as drag-and-drop controls for their applications. Learn why you should build custom controls in this 2-minute video:

Tools & Concepts: VS Code, Power Platform CLI (pac), PowerApps Component Framework (PCF), TypeScript, Browser-debugging, Power Platform Tools Extension

Steps to get you started

Good News! Join our LinkedIn community for frequent updates on different ways to use your developer experience & skills to improve the Power Platform.

1. Get yourself a free M365 Developer Account

To access an environment on Power Platform for you to deploy your control, you would need to sign in using a work account. If you already have one, drop to step 2, but if not, click join now on the M365 Developer Program page to create a free E5 Developer Subscription, which will allow you to create your own sandbox and you will forever be able to develop solutions for the Power Platform
Step-by-step to create a free work account

2. Initialize a Custom control

Just like any other developer project, you need to initialize the control-project and you will use the power platform CLI directly on your VS Code terminal, i.e.

pac pcf init --name Control'sName --namespace NameSpace --template TemplateType

Testing will be done on the PowerApps Component Framework Test Environment rendered on your browser, and you can use available browser-debugging tools as well

3. Walkthrough sample TypeScript Code to implement a simple control

Implement your control’s functionality by adding TypeScript code. Watch this short video as I briefly take you through the code that renders a simple Hi [UserName] control. Depending on your skill-level, you can build simple controls such as this one, or more complex ones

4. Deploy Control or Submit it as an Open-Source Sample

Option 1: If you would like to use the control in your own Power App, or perhaps you built the control for a specific organization to utilize for their solutions, you would ideally deploy it to the organization’s environment. Note that every developer with access to that environment will be able to use your control. Watch this short video as it shows how to deploy your control to a specific Dataverse environment.

Option 2: You can build custom controls and submit them to the PCF Gallery. This way, citizen developers from across the world can find your control and import it to use in their solutions.

Resources you should check out

1. 
   

   Check out the Build a Power Apps Component module to learn more on these concepts.

   
   


2. 
   

   Microsoft Power Platform Developer Documentation

   
   


3. 
   

   Power Apps Component Framework Documentation

   
   


4. 
   

   Power Apps for developers documentation

   
   

Error during enabling CDC on an Azure SQL DB- 'Msg 22830, Level 16, State 1, Line 274'

by Contributed | Nov 24, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Issue

An issue was noticed recently while enabling CDC on an azure SQL DB that is restored from a copy of another DB. The command that was executed was ‘EXEC sys.sp_cdc_enable_db’. You may receive an error as shown below:

Error

In addition to the error above- here is the error text : MESSAGE

‘Msg 22830, Level 16, State 1, Line 274

Could not update the metadata that indicates database db is enabled for Change Data Capture. The failure occurred when executing the command ‘SetCDCTracked(Value = 1)’. The error returned was 15517: ‘Cannot execute as the database principal because the principal ”dbo” does not exist, this type of principal cannot be impersonated, or you do not have permission.’. Use the action and error to determine the cause of the failure and resubmit the request.’

Workaround/Fix

If you create a database in Azure SQL Database as a Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) user and enable change data capture (CDC) on it, a SQL user (for example, even sysadmin role) won’t be able to disable/make changes to CDC artifacts. However, another Azure AD user will be able to enable/disable CDC on the same database.

Similarly, if you create an Azure SQL Database as a SQL user, enabling/disabling change data capture as an Azure AD user won’t work.

Also Enabling CDC will fail if you create a database in Azure SQL Database as a Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) user and don’t enable CDC, then restore the database and enable CDC on the restored database.

To resolve this issue, execute this:

• Login as Azure AD admin of the server


• Run ALTER AUTHORIZATION command on the database:

• ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON DATABASE::[<db_name_on_which_failure_occurred>] to [<aad_admin_login_name>];


• exec sp_cdc_enable_db

Please note that while trying this, the person logging in with his Azure AD login can bump up his own permissions as well.

References

What is change data capture (CDC)? – SQL Server | Microsoft Learn