Central Government using ANTENNA picks up Microsoft Teams

Background

The ANTENNA service, developed in partnership with leading central government departments, has lowered the cost of ICT across government. With 33 departments on the highly-secure, cloud-based technology and communications platform, collaborative working capability has soared. The tools required to connect employees and enable collaboration on documents are available via one seamless, mobile first interface.

However, our client wanted to go further, leveraging the flexibility of Microsoft Teams to enable simultaneous cross-departmental co-authoring of documents and integrate Teams voice calls and conferencing via the ANTENNA platform. With award-winning FourNet’s innovative design, the high-functioning solution has proved extremely cost-effective.

Solution

Inbound and outbound calls via Teams through the ANTENNA platform, mean that Direct Dialling In (DDI) calls will ring on a deskphone, as well as on Teams client on the user’s desktop or mobile phone, and can be answered wherever the user chooses to take the call. Similarly, outbound calls can be made on Teams, via ANTENNA, whether the recipient has Teams client or not. The fully integrated service works on legacy secure networks and high-security phones. The FourNet Teams’ design, using media bypass, means that bandwidth is not affected by call volume and missed call notifications only appear if the call is legitimately missed. With the FourNet licence, UK landline and mobile calls are included in the tariff and there are significant telephony cost savings for government departments which use Teams via ANTENNA, since there is no cost for short-dial inter-departmental calls. Full benefits of ANTENNA telephony tools inbuilt – including voice recording facilities. With FourNet’s dedicated, security accredited engineering team, the integrated Teams telephony service was scaled up in just three weeks.