Make and receive calls in Teams

Place calls, answer them, use voicemail and forward calls in Teams, and fix a missing dial pad.

Who this is for: people who make and take calls in Teams with a work or school account, and the Microsoft 365 administrators who set up their calling.

This guide covers the Teams desktop app. Calls to other people in your organisation work in any Teams account; calls to phone numbers also need Teams Phone, which your administrator sets up.

Before you start

To call a phone number, you need a Teams Phone licence and one of these phone services: Microsoft Calling Plan, Operator Connect, Teams Phone Mobile, Direct Routing or Shared Calling. Without them there is no dial pad, but you can still call people in Teams.
Emergency calls from Teams need an internet connection.
Call forwarding works only for one-to-one calls.

Make a call

Call a phone number

Select Calls on the left side of Teams.
Enter the phone number with the dial pad or your keyboard.
Select Call. The call starts and the call controls open.

Call a person by name

Select Calls.
In the dial pad, start typing the person's name.
Select the person from the list that appears.
Select Call.

Note On a laptop touch screen, typing a name does not show the list of people. Use the keyboard instead.

Call from a chat

Select Chat on the left side of Teams.
Open the chat with the person, or the group, you want to call.
Select Audio call or Video call at the top of the chat.

Answer or decline a call

When a call comes in, Teams shows a notification with three buttons:

Accept with audio answers with your microphone only.
Accept with video answers and turns your camera on.
Decline call refuses the call.

On Windows you can also press Alt+R to answer and Alt+Shift+R to decline.

End a call

In the call controls at the top of the call window, select Hang up, the red button.
Check that the call window closes. On Windows, Ctrl+Shift+H also ends the call.

Check your voicemail

Select Calls, then History.
Select the Voicemail tab.
Select a voicemail. Its details open on the right side of Teams.
Use the playback controls at the bottom of that pane to listen. A summary and a transcript show there when they are available.

To call the person back, point at the voicemail and select Call, or select More actions and then Call back.

Record your voicemail greeting

Select Settings and more next to your profile picture at the top of Teams.
Select Settings, then Calls.
Under Manage voicemail, go to Voicemail greeting and select Record a greeting.
Follow the instructions to record your message. Your greeting plays the next time a call goes to your voicemail.

Forward your calls

Select Settings and more, then Settings, then Calls.
Under Call handling and forwarding, use the toggle to set one rule for all calls, or set a different rule for each case.
Choose where calls go: voicemail, a new number, a contact, a call group or your delegates.
Check the forwarding status at the bottom of the Calls app. It shows the rule you set, for example a forwarding number instead of Don't forward.

Important If you do not see these options, your account does not have the voice licence yet. A new licence can take up to 24 hours to show in Teams.

When it goes wrong

Problem	Likely cause	What to do
There is no dial pad, or you cannot call phone numbers.	Teams Phone is not fully set up for the account.	An administrator checks the four requirements below, then the person restarts Teams. New settings can take a few hours to reach the app.
The forwarding options are missing.	The account has no Enterprise Voice or Business Voice licence, or it was assigned recently.	Assign the licence and allow up to 24 hours.
A voicemail will not play in Teams.	Voicemail protected by Rights Management Services does not play in Teams.	Open the voicemail in Outlook instead.

For administrators: the dial pad requirements

Run these in Teams PowerShell, where $user is the person's sign-in address.

Licence: run (Get-CsOnlineUser -Identity $user).AssignedPlan. A line with Capability starting MCOEV must show CapabilityStatus Enabled.
Online account: run Get-CsOnlineUser -Identity $user | Select RegistrarPool, HostingProvider. RegistrarPool must have a value and HostingProvider must start with sipfed.online.
Enterprise Voice: run Get-CsOnlineUser -Identity $user | Select EnterpriseVoiceEnabled. If it shows False, in the Teams admin centre go to Users > Manage users, select the person, and under Account > Assigned phone number turn Enterprise Voice on and select Save.
Calling policy: the person's calling policy must have Make private calls turned on (AllowPrivateCalling True). People without a custom policy get the global policy, where it is on by default.
If the dial pad is still missing, run Get-CsOnlineUser -Identity $user | Select UserValidationErrors to see provisioning errors. After 24 hours, contact Microsoft support.