How to create and configure a Resource Account in MS Teams?

Description: The main purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive user guide on creating and configuring Resource Accounts in Microsoft Teams.

Resource accounts are identical to user accounts but lack assigned users. They serve the purpose of representing system resources. After you create a Resource Account, you can assign it to voice features, such as Call Queues or Auto Attendants.

To set up a resource account, go to Microsoft Teams admin center. Locate and select the "Voice" option in the left-hand menu of the page to expand it.

Once the content is displayed, choose the "Resource Accounts" option.

After that, you will be taken to the "Resource Accounts" page, which displays a table of existing resource accounts. For the first entry, the table will be empty. Additionally, you will find the search bar and the action buttons that enable you to add, edit, and assign/unassign new resource accounts to phone numbers. 

To create a new Resource Account, simply click the "Add" button.

Upon clicking the "Add" button, a pop-up form will appear in the right-hand side of the window where you can set up a new resource account. 

There are four fields that you can manage on this form:

• Display name: here, you can assign a custom name that serves as the identifier for a resource account within the system. This display name will be used to represent the configured resource account in the table of existing accounts and throughout the entire system.
• Username: here, you can set a custom username for the configured resource account.
• Domain: within this field, you will find a drop-down list of domain choices that pertain to all Microsoft 365 Tenant names associated with your Microsoft account.

For additional information regarding Microsoft 365 Tenant names, you can access a relevant article through this link.

• Resource account type: when you click on this field, a drop-down menu will appear, presenting you with two resource account type options.

Choose the option that aligns with the functionality you intend for the configured resource account. 

Once you click the "Save" button, the new resource account with the specified settings will be created and added in the table of existing resource accounts.

Next, you must assign a Microsoft Teams Phone Resource Account license to the recently created resource account. 

For comprehensive details on these free add-on licenses and the procedures for acquiring them, refer to the official Microsoft article accessible through this link.

To assign the license, access the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal by clicking the nine-dot icon in the upper-left corner of the MS Teams Admin Portal and choosing the "Admin" option from the menu that appears.

Alternatively, you can simply use this link leading directly to the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal.

Upon entering the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal, select the "Users" option on the left-hand menu to expand it. 

From there, find and click on the "Active users" option within the expanded menu.

On the displayed page, you will encounter a table of existing active users. Locate the newly created resource account within this table by its display name, and proceed to click on it.

After performing this action, a new pop-up window will appear on the right-hand side of your screen. Navigate to the "Licenses and apps" tab within this window to access the section where you can assign licenses to the selected active user (resource) account.

The available licenses in the list may vary based on your initial access level in your Microsoft account. Nonetheless, choose the relevant license from the list (as shown in the screenshot, in the depicted case, it's the Microsoft Teams Phone Resource Account licenses), and then click the "Save changes" button.

Upon returning to the MS Teams Admin Portal, you will notice that the table of existing resource accounts now shows the recently created resource account as having a valid license.

Next, you need to assign a phone number to the active user account, which is now licensed with the Teams Phone license. To do so, log in the Ooma Teams Portal by using this link. Upon the completion of the login process, you will gain access to the Ooma Teams Portal. Once you have accessed the Ooma Teams Portal, you will be presented with an interface that bears a resemblance to the screenshot depicted below. 

Upon accessing the app, the Setup Tab will be automatically displayed. Then, navigate to the left-hand menu and choose the Users Tab.

Within this tab, you will find the table of existing users that may have been pre-populated by other administrators when your Ooma Teams account was established within the system.

Use the Search Bar to find the active user by entering their Username / Office 365 Tenant Name.

Upon locating the account, select it in the table of existing customers by clicking on its Display Name. Upon doing so, a pop-up form will appear on the right-hand side of the window, allowing you to configure the parameters for the selected active user.

There are four parameters that you can set here:

• Assigned phone number: clicking on this field will reveal a drop-down list containing all the available phone numbers.

After gaining access to this list, you can easily differentiate between assigned and unassigned phone numbers by the value given in the square brackets. Choose the phone number you wish to assign to the selected active user.

If there are no available phone numbers for the assignment, go to the Phone Numbers tab of Portal and purchase one or more spare numbers. For detailed instructions, refer to the relevant article titled "Overview of the Ooma Teams Portal's Interface" accessible through this link.

• Only show unassigned numbers: if you activate this option, all the assigned phone numbers will be removed from the drop-down list in the previous field.
• Clear old phone number failover number: this feature becomes available when you initially add a failover phone number and subsequently attempt to modify your primary assigned number. In this scenario, if a failover number is present and you attempt to change your assigned number, the system will provide you with the option to enable or disable this toggle.
• Failover phone number: here, you can assign a failover phone number to the configured user. 

A failover number is the designated phone number to which all incoming calls will be redirected if Microsoft Teams is unavailable.

It could be any phone number, even a personal one. This field becomes active only when you assign the primary phone number to the configured user.    

After choosing a phone number to assign to the active user and clicking the "Update" button, you will see all the changes reflected in the respective columns of the table of existing users.