Forum Discussion
Outlook and Teams with PSTN calling in work profile
Hi
today we raised a case with Microsoft for a specific work profile issue with their current Outlook and MS Teams implementation. I wanted to share this here, maybe there are some other customers/admins facing this issue. Our org started to move from Cisco to MS Teams PSTN calling some month ago and everything was fine, but I assume an update to either Outlook or Teams app was published and the issue started.
Scenario:
COPE or BYOD
MS Teams and MS Outlook in work profile
MS Teams has a PSTN line configured (either mobile or landline)
Open Outlook, search for any contact and try to start a call to a mobile or desk number. The OS does not ask whether you like to use the phone on personal profile (as it did the last couple of years 😅) - it will hand over the call request to MS teams! You cannot decide to make the phone call with your Phone app :-(
This breaks almost all use cases for our users.
Even worse: A phone number like +49 123 828282 is transfered to MS teams app in a broken format and the call is made to +492492012320828282 💥😔
Compared to Google contacts in the work profile: The app is always handling the call request to the phone app on the personal profile and incorporate the MS Teams app. 🤔
Anyone else here in the community experiencing this issue?
Thanks!
Daniel
Microsoft confirmed that the Teams app will include a fix with an update in February, early March. This update will only focus on the phone number normalization bug (+49 2756 26767 is becoming +492027562026767).
Still having discussions with MS support on the call handling to hand over calls to the personal caller app on Android Enterprise devices.
9 Replies
Hello,
did you manage to resolve this issue? We are experincing exactly the same problem and were not able to find some solution or workaround
Thank you
Roman
Hi!
We are also seeing this issue in our environment. Our current workaround is to deploy a dialer app into the work profile via Intune.
What we've observed is when a user goes into the Outlook app and taps on a phone number in a contact card, nothing happens. This only happens when both Outlook and Teams are installed. When Outlook is installed by itself, it routes to the native dialer. We have also seen seen numbers transferred to Teams appear in a broken format with additional numbers.
Have you heard anything back from Microsoft?Thank you!
Hello weberda​, FromsoftNovice​ and dwad80​
Just a quick question from me: have you tried checking with your EMM/InTune yet?
If so, could you let me know what they said?
I'll ask our team to look into this as well :)
Hi Emilie! We don't really have anyone in EMM/Intune, it's mostly just me who pokes around in it. I did a few tests with a dummy Android App Protection Policy I created for troubleshooting but the results were the same.
- Setting "Send org data to other apps" as "policy managed apps" and setting transfer telecommunications data to "any dialer app."
- Setting "Send org data to other apps" as "All Apps."
- Setting "Send org data to other apps" as "policy managed apps" and setting transfer telecommunications data to "A specific dialer app" and configuring Microsoft Teams.
Unfortunately, they all yield the same result if a) Microsoft Teams is installed and b) no other dialers have been pushed as a policy managed app.
Once I uninstall Microsoft Teams and try to make a phone call from Outlook (either through a contact card or from a signature block), my native dialer opens with the message, "You're using this app outside of your work profile" and I am able to make the call.
If I add a dialer and try to make a call from Outlook, I am prompted to either user the policy managed dialer app or use Microsoft Teams. If I select Microsoft Teams, Teams then adds additional numbers at random in the middle of the actual phone number (e.g., +1312202913602).
I haven't heard back from the team yet but, hopefully, they'll be able to come up with a fix for this issue.
In the meantime, if your playing around gives any result, please let us know 😉
Hi everyone
Just today I had a longer discussion with a senior escalation engineer from the Microsoft Outlook team. We did not figure out a bug or an Android Enterprise system behavior yet but so far:
I have to split my single support case to work on both topics explicitly: Outlook call "routing" in the work profile and Teams handling the phone number formatting.
We discussed mainly on the first topic and as far as we understood so far is the following: Outlook uses a protocol intent within their App (using "tel:"). As soon as MS Teams has a PTSN number configured the MS Teams app get's the system intent call and as it is the only App "answering" in the system request the OS decides to hand over the intent to Teams app. If the MS Teams app does not answer on the tel intent. The system will search the personal profile and requests the call from the system app.
Can the others confirm that the behavior is different between PTSN number configured in teams and no PTSN number ?
I don't know why there is a difference between URI intent and the native code implementation. This can maybe answered by the teams from Google ?
I will try to configure some app protection policies for Outlook and test whether this changes the behavior. There are some policies to only allow specific dialers etc. Due to holidays we paused the case with that agreement and will resume after 7th January.
Hi weberda​
Thank you for letting us know how your conversation with Microsoft went down. I believe this will be helpful for other members experiencing something similar.
I've raised your question about the difference between URI intent and native code implementation and I will keep you posted as soon as I get their reply (bear in mind this could take longer than usual due to the festive period)!
Chat soon,
Emilie
Microsoft confirmed that the Teams app will include a fix with an update in February, early March. This update will only focus on the phone number normalization bug (+49 2756 26767 is becoming +492027562026767).
Still having discussions with MS support on the call handling to hand over calls to the personal caller app on Android Enterprise devices.
Thank you so much for sharing this update, weberda​ - I will mark it as solution for now so that it sits on top of the thread and is visible for everyone 😊
