Audience: Teams Phone Administrators, Engineers and Architects
Whilst it has always been possible to manage Calling Plan and Operator Connect telephone numbers in Teams Admin Center, Direct Routing numbers have required other number management methods. This is usually a spreadsheet, SharePoint list or a 3rd party application.
On 22nd January 2025 Microsoft Posted the following in Message Centre: MC985472
(Updated) General Availability of Direct Routing Phone Number Inventory
Summary
Direct Routing Phone Number Inventory is now generally available for Microsoft Teams Phone customers, allowing management of assigned and unassigned numbers. The feature is accessible via Teams PowerShell cmdlets and will be in Teams Admin Center preview, with full release expected mid-February 2025.
Whilst this is not fully available in TAC yet, you can add your Direct Routing number ranges via PowerShell. This is a long awaited feature for Teams Direct Routing telephone numbers.
Prerequisites
- Teams PowerShell Module 6.7.1 or later
At the time of writing 6.7.1 is still in Preview. You can check your Teams PowerShell module version by running:
Import-Module MicrosoftTeams
Get-Module
As per the screenshot above, the current Teams PowerShell is only 6.7.0. To install 6.7.1 you need to run:
Install-Module MicrosoftTeams -AllowPrerelease -Force
If the -AllowPrerelease parameter is not found you need to update PowerShell Get first.
Install-Module PowerShellGet -Force
Check the New-CsOnlineDirectRoutingTelephoneNumberUploadOrder command now exists
Get-Command New-CsOnlineDirectRoutingTelephoneNumberUploadOrder
Add numbers
Adding number ranges requires 3 key pieces of information:
- Starting Number
- Ending Number
- Description
It would be recommended to use a naming convention for the description (i.e. Country-City-Location)
New-CsOnlineDirectRoutingTelephoneNumberUploadOrder -StartingNumber +441617150000 -EndingNumber +441617150099 -Description "UK-Manchester-CoronationStreet"
Once the command has been ran an order will appear in TAC.
Once the order status is successful, the numbers will be available. However, during our testing we noticed that the Direct Routing numbers would not appear unless we searched for them. Our assumption is this is part of the TAC update Microsoft referenced in Message Centre due to be completed Feb 2025.
One key point to be aware of in Microsoft Message Center:
“When unassigned, a Direct Routing phone number will no longer be removed from the Teams telephone number management storage. If for any reason you do not wish to keep the Direct Routing phone numbers in Microsoft’s Teams telephone number management storage, please use New-CsOnlineTelephoneNumberReleaseOrder to release the unassigned Direct Routing phone numbers.”
This is relevant if you have imported a Number Range into Teams, but some of those numbers are routed to services outside Teams. I.e. if you have a “Connect” Teams certified Contact Centre or another PBX attached to the Direct Routing Session Border controllers. You need to exclude these numbers or you may have difficulty calling them from Teams. You can easily remove a single number by running:
#Single number:
New-CsOnlineTelephoneNumberReleaseOrder -TelephoneNumber +441617150005
#Range:
New-CsOnlineTelephoneNumberReleaseOrder -StartingNumber +441617158015 -EndingNumber +441617158019
Managing telephone numbers has always been a headache with Microsoft UC products so it’s great to see this feature come to Teams Admin Center. Whilst very basic, it at least should allow everyone to move away from Spreadsheets. If you require more functionality then there are 3rd party software products out there that provide many more features than just number management.