I recently
released a tool for configuring Direct Routing within an Office 365 tenant. Its
name is the imaginative Microsoft Teams Direct Routing Tool.
This tool, whilst allowing you to configure all your PSTN Gateways and Routing, did not allow you to configure the normalisation of numbers that users dial
prior to being routed. This step in the process is very important because nearly
all users are not going to dial phone numbers in E.164 format. As a result,
prior to getting to the E.164 based routing rules we need to do some work to
ensure that the numbers dialed have been converted into the right format. The
number normalisation in O365 is done by the Tenant Dial Plan policies, which
contain normalisation rules. The configuration of these are done using the Skype
for Business Online module and bunch of pretty complicated PowerShell that
really shouldn’t be inflicted on a regular human being. So to try and avoid
this pain, I decided to make a sister tool to my Direct Routing Tool that will
allow for simple configuration and editing of these Tenant Dial Plans. This
time, in order to ensure that I came up with the most imaginative name possible
for the tool, I trekked into the deepest jungles of Peru on a vision quest where
after drinking several litres of Ayahuasca came up with the name “Teams Tenant
Dial Plan Tool”. Enjoy…
Teams Tenant Dial Plan Tool
The Tenant Dial Plan Tool is a PowerShell based tool that allows you to configure and edit Tenant Dial Plans within Office 365 for use with Microsoft Teams Direct Routing and Calling Plans. This tool is a sister tool to my Microsoft Teams Direct Routing Tool that allows you to configure all the routing for Direct Routing within Office 365. To use the tool, simply open it with PowerShell (with the Skype for Business Online Module installed) and you will be presented with the following GUI and features:
Tool Features
- Log into O365 using the Connect SfBO button in the top left of the tool. Note: the Skype for Business Online PowerShell module needs to be installed on the PC that you are connecting from. You can get the module from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39366
- Create/Edit and Remove Tenant Dial Plan policies using the New.., Edit.. and Remove buttons.
- Copy existing Tenant Dial Plans and all their Normalisation rules to a new Tenant Dial Plan.
- Add/Edit Tenant Dial Plan normalisation rules. If the rule you are setting has a name that matches an existing rule, then the existing rule will be edited. If the rule’s name does not match an existing rule then it will be added as a new rule to the list.
- Delete one or all normalisation rules from a Tenant Dial Plan policy.
- Easily change the priority of normalisation rules with the UP and DOWN buttons.
- Test the normalisation rules! Teams currently (at the time of writing this) doesn’t have any normalisation rule testing capabilities. So I wrote a custom testing engine into the tool providing this feature. By entering a number into the Test textbox and pressing the Test Number button, the tool will highlight all of the rules in the Dial Plan that match in blue. The rule that has the highest priority and matches the tested number will be highlighted in green. The pattern and translation of the highest priority match (the one highlighted in green) will be used to do the translation on the Test Number and the resultant translated number will be displayed in the Test Result.
Updates:
Initial Release 1.00
Version 1.01
- The Skype for Business PowerShell module is being deprecated and the Teams Module is finally good enough to use with this tool. As a result, this tool has now been updated for use with the Microsoft Teams PowerShell Module version 2.3.1 or above.
Note: the Skype for Business Online PowerShell module needs to be installed on the PC that you are connecting from. You can get the module from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39366
Download
from GitHub:
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the deal with the OptimizeDeviceDialing setting - I can't edit it?
In order to use the Access Prefix value that you can enter when creating a policy in the tool, a setting in the background called OptimizeDeviceDialing must also be turned on (for more details about what an Access Prefix is, refer to Ken Lasko's post about how they work in Lync). In addition to this, there is some weirdness in the PowerShell commands, which means that after you have set an Access Prefix for a policy you cannot then delete this value. You can only overwrite an existing Access Prefix with another number. When you delete the Access Prefix in the Edit dialog of the tool it will set the OptimizeDeviceDialing setting to FALSE (and leave the existing Access Prefix because it can't delete it). For example, if you already have an Access Prefix configured (as say "0") on a policy and then open the Edit dialog and remove the Access Prefix value like shown in the image below:
... then the result will show as the Access Prefix still being "0" in the main window (due to it not being able to be deleted by PowerShell) but it will update the OptimizedDeviceDialing setting to FALSE so the Access Policy is not used:
The Wrap Up
Well that
was one hell of a ride. I think the Ayahuasca has nearly worn off and it's time for
me to lie down. Enjoy the tool and remember, kids, don’t drink weird potions in
the jungle…
