Contents
Introduction
Due to the imminent PSTN switch off, as well as the fact that we got 1gbps fibre to the house, I was looking for a solution to retain our BT landline number and use a VOIP service. I already have a Teams phone in the Office (a Yealink MP54 – a great Teams phone by the way), but an office desk phone isn’t suitable for the home, it’s too big and not portable.
So I had a look at the Yealink DECT phones, which have a small base station and can have multiple handsets. These aren’t Teams phones, but they are SIP compatible VOIP phones and if compatible with Teams SIP gateway, should be a neat option. This turned out to be a great solution, and whilst Teams phone licenses and call plans are not that cheap, it’s a lot cheaper than paying BT for expensive line rental on a legacy service which is due to be decommissioned anyway.
Functionality is not the full Teams experience, but you will be able to make a receive calls as easily as a landline, as well as checking Teams voicemail. You will not be able to make native Teams calls, i.e. you will have to dial a PSTN number and not select someone from the address list like you can with a proper Teams phone.
Requirements
Teams
You will need a Microsoft 365 (business) subscription, along with required licenses, admin rights, and knowledge of Teams administration. Teams personal will not work.
Also as per https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/enable-core-microsoft-teams-calling-functionality-on-compatible/ba-p/3030196, you need the following licenses:
- Users must be licensed for Teams Phone (via any Office 365 E5, Microsoft 365 license that includes Teams Phone, or as a standalone license)
- PSTN enablement (i.e., phone number assigned) via a Microsoft Teams Calling Plan, Direct Routing, or Operator Connect
- Common area devices require a Common Area Phone license
Handsets and base station
You need one of the following compatible Yealink base stations:
- W70B
- W80B/W80DM
- W90B/W90DB
Noe that the W60B base station is not compatible.
And one or more compatible handsets:
- W56H
- W57R
- W59R
- W73H
- W78H
Yealink have listed these here: https://support.yealink.com/en/portal/knowledge/show?id=6458b6edb1fa936c57b56d12
I purchased the W70B base station with the W73H handset from https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/43018-yealink-w73p/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw0bunBhD9ARIsAAZl0E2siEfHgnt2RKLdRL0ssFb2qD185okEJuWWeE1d85_yJZ82bMrr-90aAmA-EALw_wcB. The handset is great, small and sleek and looks smart enough for the home.
Phone number porting
You will also need at least one phone number in Teams. You can use any provider for this, or get a free number with Microsoft a calling plan. I ported in my BT landline to use with a Microsoft calling plan, that took about 10 days – just initiate the port in the Teams admin centre and Microsoft do the rest. Your BT landline will automatically cease, along with any other services such as DSL, so be careful if you are still in a contract as they may be an exit fee.
Once ported, assign the number to a person or resource account as required, again it is assumed that you know what you are doing here.
Enabling the SIP Gateway
Luckily this is both free and very easy, being a single checkbox.
In the Teams Admin Center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/, open Calling policies, edit your policy, and enable SIP devices can be used for calls.
Then you can manage SIP devices under Teams devices to manage your SIP phones connected to Teams.
Configure handsets
Now that Teams is ready, connect the W70B gateway to Power and ethernet, or just use PoE. I’m using a Unifi PoE switch in my office, so easily able to identify on the network (although it incorrectly showed as a W60P, it says W70B on the base station):
Now, connect to the web interface, in this case at https://192.168.3.117, and login with the default admin/admin.
Update firmware
Both the base station and handset need the SIP gateway compatible firmware. Download the Base-EMEA firmware from https://support.yealink.com/en/portal/docList?archiveType=software&productCode=2f0b614fff41468f
Extract the ZIP file, you can see this is for different base station models:
Click Settings > Upgrade and select the W70B firmware and upgrade. The lights will flash whilst it is updating.
Once finished, check if the handset is registered in the web interface under Status > Handset & Voip, if not register it as per https://support.yealink.com/en/portal/knowledge/show?id=6458b6edb1fa936c57b56d12 (press and hold the register button on the base station, then press Reg softkey on the handset). Register all the handsets first.
Then again, click Settings > Upgrade and select the W73H firmware and upgrade, then click Upgrade All
Sign In to Microsoft Teams on the handset
After converting to the SIP Gateway version, you can use the compatible DECT devices to sign in to Microsoft Teams.
- Select the Sign In Button and the handsets will present the Sign In address and Device Code.
- Logged in as the (Teams) user, go to https://aka.ms/siplogin and enter the code. Teams users must have a phone number with PSTN calling enabled to use SIP Gateway.
- On a successful sign-in, the DECT handsets will display the phone number and user name.
- To get voicemail, set your own number in the voicemail settings on the handset.
That should be it!
Finally, if you have more than one handset, you can configure them on Number assignment on the base station Number Assignment page to assign all handsets to one user, or to different users, so the same base station can have multiple accounts registered:
Hi Hal!
Thanks a lot for sharing your experience with this article that explains very well the different steps to connect a Yealink DECT phone to the MS Teams SIP Gateway.
I did go through all these steps, unfortunately I never get the sign-in button displayed on the Handset.
Could you please let me know what I may have missed?
I did also try to populate the Server URL field in the Auto Provision section of the W70B with the following URL: http://emea.ipp.sdg.teams.microsoft.com – it does not help
I am running the correct firmware version on both the base and the handset and the user I’m testing it with does work with SIP Gateway registration on a Cisco Phone.
Thank you for your help!
Cheers
Yann
Hi Yann, that’s odd, I didn’t have to do anything for sign in to appear. What model of handset do you have? What shows on the left soft button on the handset if not Sign in?
Hi Hal,
Thank you for your reply! I am using a W70B base station running firmware version 146.85.5.2 and a W73H handset with the firmware version 116.85.0.49 that I downloaded from the Yealink website.
Could you please tell me what’s the hardware id of your handset? (you can find it from in the Info menu on the handset)
Yann
Exactly the same version, I am on hardware version 146.0.0.0.2.0.0. I assume that the handsets are registered to the base?
Also in Settings > Shortcut on the handset you can set the left soft button function, I just changed mine to something else and then sign in/out was gone and I was unable to get it back.However going to Settings > System Settings > Handset Reset made Sign in appear on the left soft button again, have you tried that?
Interesting, if I go to Status – Handset I have Hardware version 116.0.0.11. Could it be they have different hardware versions and some do not support the MS Teams SIP Gateway registration?
I tried to change the left soft button to something else and then did a Handset Reset but I had again History under this button.
I will try to contact the Yealink to see what they say about this.
Thank you so much for your help and your time!
Cheers.
Yann
Sorry that was the base hardware version, my handsets are both 116.85.0.49. So yes different handset hardware, seems strange if they support the firmware but give them a call. I did order mine new recently.
Hi Hal,
Just a little email to let you know that I was finally able to register the Yealink phone with the MS Teams SIP Gateway. After spending hours on this, I connected the device to an Internet connection without any Firewall restrictions (although I never saw any traffic being dropped by our firewall) and did a factory reset of the W70B base station, then re-registered the W73H handset and at the end I finally got the sign-in button on the handset.
I’m still trying to figure out what caused all these issues but I’m happy I finally got it registered with the SIP Gateway.
Cheers.
Yann
Great! thanks for the update, glad you got it working 🙂
Just set this combo up for some testing. Just wanted to say thankyou, the guide was perfect and easy to follow – one thing I would point out to people is to NOT ignore the Base-EMEA firmware just because the Yealink site versions already match up on the model specific webpage. If you don’t install Base-EMEA firmware you simply aren’t getting the Sign In button.
I was a bit disappointed that the exit/back button is the same as Sign Out and there is no confirmation for the Sign Out so it is very easy to accidentally Sign Out – I did this almost immediately after I first signed in during testing.
Was a bit disappointed with the lack of Team Address Book availability too (I wasn’t really sure what to expect) – I can see there is some support for import/export via CSV/XML and you can host a Yealink XML file as a Remote Directory too. I guess if I had to I could write something to export data from AAD and push to an XML file but that’s time probably better spent elsewhere.
Just wondered whether you’d ran into these problems too and had tackled/ignored?
Thanks for this guide. I set this up a couple of months ago without any major incident.
However, one query I have is if you’ve attempted to run this with alternate VoIP providers? Initially, I set this up using my Teams work number, and signed in successfully.
I then added my home number which is hosted by an alternate VoIP provider (and much simpler for setup). This worked fine for a day or two, but then at some point afterwards, the Teams Auto Provision server broke my home number by modifying lots of the account settings – the autoprovision seems to apply to all accounts rather than just a specific account.
I was tempted to disable the auto provision setting after getting the Teams line running, and then add my home number, but to be honest, I just left it to handle my home number only, and use the Teams app on my mobile.
Any thoughts/suggestions would be gratefully received.
Thanks.