Free audio conferencing for 12 months

Date Published: 11th February 2021

Free Audio Conferencing for 12 months

We all know what Audio Conferencing is now with COVID forcing it upon us! People can call in to Teams meetings using a phone instead of using the Teams app on their mobile device or from their computer, and it’s currently FREE!

If you’re an SME with up to 300 users and you currently don’t have any Audio Conferencing licenses, you can get Audio Conferencing free for one year! Reach out to us if you want to know more.

The Audio Conferencing add-on license can be applied to users who have Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, Enterprise E1, or Enterprise E3 licenses.

You only need to set up Audio Conferencing for people who plan to schedule or lead meetings. Meeting attendees who call in to meetings don’t need licenses or other setup. So, if you did want to continue past the initial free 12-month period then don’t think of it as a per employee cost.

Step 1: Get Audio Conferencing licenses

Get one Audio Conferencing license for each person who will lead meetings. Use the Microsoft 365 admin center to do this.

Go to the 365 admin center, Billing > Purchase services, and then at the bottom of the page, select Add-ons.
Select Microsoft 365 Audio Conferencing Adoption Promo > Details, and then select Get now adding the number of licenses you want (remember you only need one per conference organiser)

Step 2: Assign licenses

Assign a license to conference organisers.

Schedule Teams meetings in Outlook

When you schedule a meeting in Outlook and select ‘Teams’ as the location, your dedicated number will be available on the invite.

Audio Conferencing phone numbers

There are two types of numbers that you can use for your conferencing bridge. You can use either shared numbers (as in the Set up Audio Conferencing section earlier in this article) or dedicated numbers. Here’s more information about each.

Shared numbers

A shared number is a number that’s shared across all businesses. Shared numbers are toll numbers and are automatically assigned when you set up Audio Conferencing.

To see the default number that’s assigned to your conferencing bridge, in the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Meetings > Conference bridges, and then find the number for the location that’s nearest to you.

Dedicated numbers

A dedicated number is a number that’s available only to your users. To use a dedicated number, you’ll have to first get the number, assign it to your conferencing bridge, and then assign the number to each person who will lead meetings.

There are a couple ways to get a dedicated number. You can get a number from Microsoft or transfer (port) an existing number from your current service provider to Microsoft. Reach out to Penntech IT Solutions to learn more how to do this.