Plan - Overview of Teams Phone Agent, Auto Attendant, and Call Queue

  • Gælder for: Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business

Note

Teams Phone Agent is currently only available to customers in the Frontier Public Preview program.

This Planning and design series of articles is for IT pros and Teams administrators who want to learn about Teams voice applications, including Teams Phone Agent, Auto Attendant, and Call Queue.

This Overview article explains the basics of each of these voice applications. Other articles in the series cover specific features within these voice applications.

If you`re new to Teams Phone Agent, Auto Attendant, and Call Queue, review the articles in the order they appear.

By the end of this series, you learn what Teams voice applications are, the features they offer, and what you need to configure them to create the right call routing experience.

Teams Phone Agent

Teams Phone Agents extend auto attendants with AI-driven, human-like conversations that screen calls, answer questions, manage appointments, and route callers without fixed menus.

Teams Phone Agent automates workflows for answering common questions and managing appointments to enable callers to self-service and deflect calls, allowing your people to focus on their tasks at hand.

Teams Phone Agent seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Copilot Studio (MCS), to handle specialized workflows like billing, order status, or inventory checks. This unlocks deeper automation, tailored experiences, and extensibility across business scenarios.

Together, Teams Phone Agent and MCS offer a scalable, customizable voice solution that reduces operational overhead, improves customer experience, and supports end-to-end task completion across Teams Phone System.

Auto Attendant

The primary purpose of an Auto Attendant is to direct a caller to an appropriate person or department based on the caller's input to the provided menu options. Callers can be directed to:

  • Specific people within your organization.
  • Call queues where they wait to talk to the next available representative.
  • External phone numbers.
  • Other Auto attendants.
  • Shared or personal voicemail.

Different call routing options can be specified for business hours, after hours, and holidays.

Menu prompts can be created by using text-to-speech (system-generated prompts) or by uploading a recorded audio file. Speech recognition accepts voice commands for hands-free navigation, but people calling in can also use the phone keypad to navigate menus.

Each auto attendant has a specific language and time zone. If you do business in multiple languages or multiple parts of the world, you can create as many different auto attendants as you need to accommodate your callers.

For each auto attendant, you can configure an operator. While you can configure operator calls to go to various destinations, the operator feature is designed to allow callers to talk to a specific person in your organization who can help them.

Auto Attendants can be configured to allow callers to search your organization's directory, either by name or by extension number. In an auto attendant, you can choose which users show up in the directory by selecting which groups to include or leave out by setting the dial scope.

Internal callers, using their Teams client, can reach an auto attendant by calling the resource account assigned to the auto attendant. External callers can reach an auto attendant by dialing the phone number assigned to the resource account or via the web if click-to-call is configured.

Call Queue

A Call Queue is analogous to a waiting room in a physical building. Callers wait on hold while calls are routed to the representatives in the queue. Call queues are commonly used for sales and service functions. However, call queues can be used for any situation where the number of calls exceeds your internal capacity, such as a receptionist in a busy facility.

Call queue exception handling allows you to redirect calls to specific people, voicemail, other Call Queues, Auto Attendants, or Teams Phone Agents in the following situations:

  • There are no agents logged
  • The total number of callers waiting in queue exceeds the limit that you specify
  • The caller's wait time in queue exceeds the limit that you specify

Like Auto Attendants, Call Queues each have a language setting. You can use different call queues if you do business in multiple languages. Representatives can be members of more than one queue if they're multi-lingual.

For each call queue, you can choose whether representatives can opt out of calls and whether routing uses their Teams presence status.

Internal callers, using their Teams client, can reach a call queue by calling the resource account assigned to the call queue. External callers can reach a call queue by dialing the phone number assigned to the resource account or via the web if click-to-call is configured.

Call queues don't provide separate call routing for off hours and holidays. Even if your call queue is staffed 24/7, we recommend using an auto attendant to direct calls to the call queue.

Summary

Use Teams Phone Agent to provide a conversational, multi-lingual experience that lets callers get answers, book appointments, find people, manage hours, and interact with workflows using Microsoft Copilot Studio (MCS). It can transfer callers to call queues or people when needed.

Use Auto Attendants to allow callers to select the service they need, to find users in your organization and to control hours of operation. Callers interact with auto attendants by pressing keys on their telephone or through a set of predetermined basic voice commands that you can configure.

Use Call Queues when you have callers who need to hold for one or more representatives to answer their calls.

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