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Set up Microsoft Teams Direct Routing

Connect your Microsoft Teams tenant to Phonovo, so Teams users can make and take calls on your Phonovo phone numbers.

This is the account-level setup, done once. Once it's finished you link individual extensions to Teams users — see Connect an extension to Microsoft Teams.

Who this is for: admins, working with your Microsoft 365 administrator

Start early — one step can take 24 hours

Step 3 requires Microsoft to provision a domain, which can take up to 24 hours. Nothing else can be completed until it finishes. If you have a deadline, do steps 1–3 first and leave the rest until they're done.

Before you start

  • A Microsoft 365 subscription with a Teams Phone licence (included in E5, or an add-on for E1/E3)
  • Access to both the Microsoft 365 admin centre and the Teams admin centre
  • Someone comfortable with PowerShell — parts of the Teams setup can only be done there
  • Your Phonovo phone numbers already provisioned, in E.164 format (e.g. +441234567890)

How the connection is named

Your tenant connects to Phonovo through a name unique to you, for example contoso.phonovo.com. Phonovo allocates it and tells you what it is.

Every customer gets their own. This isn't a preference — Microsoft allows a domain to be verified in only one Microsoft 365 tenant, so a shared name could serve only one customer. Yours is verified in your tenant, and Phonovo publishes the DNS record proving ownership, because Phonovo controls that domain.

Steps

1. Ask Phonovo to enable Direct Routing

Contact Phonovo support or your account manager. They will allocate your name (e.g. contoso.phonovo.com), create the DNS record, and enable Teams on your account.

2. Add the name as a domain in your Microsoft 365 tenant

  1. Open the Microsoft 365 admin centre → Settings → Domains → Add domain
  2. Enter the name Phonovo gave you
  3. Choose TXT record verification. Microsoft shows a value like MS=ms12345678
  4. Send that value to Phonovo. They publish it for you — you can't, because you don't control that domain
  5. When Phonovo confirms it's live, select Verify
  6. When asked which services to use the domain for, choose none

3. Create a user in the new domain, then wait

Microsoft won't finish preparing the domain until a licensed user exists in it.

  1. Create a user whose sign-in name uses the new domain, e.g. sbc@contoso.phonovo.com. It never signs in and needs no mailbox
  2. Give that user a Teams licence
  3. Wait — Microsoft says this can take up to 24 hours

This is the step people get caught by

Until it finishes, adding the connection in step 4 fails with "Can't use the … domain as it wasn't configured for this tenant" — even though the admin centre shows the domain as Verified. The message is misleading. Nothing is wrong; it just isn't ready yet. Waiting is the fix.

4. Add the connection in the Teams admin centre

  1. Open the Teams admin centre → Voice → Direct Routing → SBCs → Add
  2. Enter the name Phonovo gave you as the FQDN
  3. Set SIP signalling port to 5061
  4. Turn on Enabled, Forward call history and Forward P-Asserted-Identity
  5. Select Save

Microsoft then starts health-checking the connection. It can take up to 30 minutes to show as healthy.

5. Set up call routing

In PowerShell, connected with Connect-MicrosoftTeams:

Set-CsOnlinePstnUsage -Identity Global -Usage @{Add="Phonovo-Usage"}

New-CsOnlineVoiceRoute -Identity "Phonovo-Route" `
  -NumberPattern ".*" `
  -OnlinePstnGatewayList "contoso.phonovo.com" `
  -OnlinePstnUsages "Phonovo-Usage" `
  -Priority 1

New-CsOnlineVoiceRoutingPolicy -Identity "Phonovo-Policy" `
  -OnlinePstnUsages "Phonovo-Usage"

Replace contoso.phonovo.com with the name Phonovo gave you.

6. Give a user a phone number

For each Teams user who should make and take calls:

Set-CsPhoneNumberAssignment -Identity "alice@contoso.com" `
  -PhoneNumber "+441234567890" -PhoneNumberType DirectRouting

Grant-CsOnlineVoiceRoutingPolicy -Identity "alice@contoso.com" `
  -PolicyName "Phonovo-Policy"

Set-CsPhoneNumberAssignment -Identity "alice@contoso.com" `
  -EnterpriseVoiceEnabled $true

Numbers must be E.164 with the + prefix, and must exactly match the numbers on your Phonovo account.

7. Test

Open Teams and check the user has a dial pad under Calls. Make a call out and take one in, and check you can hear each other both ways.

No dial pad?

Policy changes can take 15–30 minutes to reach the client, occasionally longer. Sign out of Teams and back in before assuming something is wrong.

If something doesn't work

What you see What it usually means
"Can't use the … domain as it wasn't configured for this tenant" Step 3 hasn't finished. Wait — the domain showing as Verified isn't enough on its own
The connection never becomes healthy Usually DNS or domain verification. Contact Phonovo
No dial pad in Teams Teams Phone licence not assigned, or step 6 not completed for that user
Calls fail immediately The voice routing policy isn't assigned to that user (step 6)
Call connects but no audio, or only one way A media problem — contact Phonovo, and mention it connects but has no audio

Raise Direct Routing problems with Phonovo, not Microsoft

Phonovo's connection isn't one of the devices on Microsoft's certified list, so Microsoft may close a ticket raised directly with them on that basis. Phonovo can investigate and escalate properly if needed. Contact Phonovo first — it's usually much quicker.

When contacting Phonovo, include the name allocated to you, the affected user's email, the phone number, and the time of the call with timezone.

Ask Olivia

You can also ask Olivia, the in-portal assistant, about Teams setup.