Overview of the Ooma Teams Portal's Interface

Description: The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive overview of the Ooma Team Portal's interface.

The Ooma Teams Portal serves as a digital platform for customers, enabling them to manage MS Teams services, phone numbers, and users.

How To Log in the Portal

There are two ways of getting access to the Ooma Teams Portal: 

• Direct access to the Ooma Teams Portal.
• Via the Ooma Enterprise Admin Portal.

Let’s examine each method separately.

Direct access to the Ooma Teams Portal

To log in the Ooma Teams Portal, use this link. As you go through the login procedure, Microsoft will prompt you to choose the relevant account you use for admin access. Use your Ooma corporate account for this purpose.

Additionally, the system might request that you download the official Microsoft "Authenticator" app for identity verification, secure credential storage, and to streamline future login attempts by sending push notifications.

Upon the completion of the login process, you will gain access to the Ooma Teams Portal.

Accessing the Ooma Teams Portal via the OE Admin Portal

You can also access the Ooma Teams Portal via the Ooma Enterprise Admin portal. To do so, simply log in to the Ooma Enterprise Admin portal using this link. 

Next, on the top horizontal menu of the portal, locate and select the "Apps" button.

This will redirect you to a page where you will find a list of available apps for the portal. Locate and choose the Microsoft Teams App.

Upon clicking on its icon, you will gain access to the Ooma Teams Portal. 

Overview of the Portal's Interface

Once you have accessed the Ooma Teams Portal, you will be presented with an interface that bears a resemblance to the screenshot depicted below. 

Essentially, the page is separated into three sections: the top horizontal panel (highlighted with a yellow box), the main space of the app (highlighted with a red box), and the left-hand menu (highlighted with a blue box).

Let's examine all these sections in details.

• Top horizontal panel: the primary function of this panel is to offer the "Logout" button and display the basic information about your account.

The basic information about your account follows this formula: 

ClientName@TenantName.onmicrosoft.com.

Here, "ClientName" refers to the name registered by your admin, while "TenantName" is a unique identifier assigned to your company.

• Main space of the app: this section of the Ooma Teams Portal is dedicated to presenting information, with the content being dynamically determined by the active tab. 

By default, upon logging into the Ooma Teams Portal, the Setup tab will be launched within the main space of the app. This will occur every time you access the Ooma Teams Portal. 

• Left-hand menu: within this area, you will find the tabs that you can switch between and a language selector.

There are three tabs available here:

• Setup Tab: here, you can configure basic service parameters of your customer account.

For the first entry, your account will be inactive, and you will notice the "Activate" button instead of an "Active" status. Pressing this button initialize the automatic account activation procedure.

To gain a better understanding of the process for activating accounts, please refer to the "The activation process of the account" article accessible through this link.

There is only one optional parameter on this tab that you can configure:

• Allow Carrier to co-manage Your Service: enabling this toggle switch allows Ooma to co-manage your service. This means that Ooma’s representatives can assist you with assigning numbers to users on your behalf and supporting you with any issue.

The decision to enable this option depends on your company's policies.

In the lower half of the page, within the Advanced Options section, you will find the "Manual Activation" toggle switch, by enabling which you will initialize the manual account activation procedure.

Enabling this toggle switch allows you to manually set domain verification codes and complete the activation process with no need to consent to additional permission. This toggle switch can only be activated before initiating the account activation procedure. To finalize the manual activation, you will require additional information regarding Domains/PSTN Gateways, which is also available on this tab. 

The subject of account activation is extensive, and it cannot be fully addressed in this article. Therefore, you can find detailed information in the associated article titled "The activation process of the account" through this link.

• Phone Numbers Tab: this tab is used for purchasing and assigning phone numbers to users.
  

For the initial entry, your account will not have any registered phone numbers, so the table of purchased phone numbers will be empty. You will also find four action buttons along with a Search Bar that you can use to manage the purchased phone numbers. These action buttons are:

• Buy: by pressing this button, you will initiate the phone number buying procedure.
• Download CSV: by pressing this button, you will download the CSV file that you can use to bulk upload or editing phone numbers and users.

A detailed overview of the CSV file will be presented in the relevant section of this user guide.

• Upload: by pressing this button, you can upload a CSV file that you created by populating the CSV file downloaded earlier with the required data.
• Delete: if you have acquired one or more phone numbers, you can choose a specific one from the list and click the "Delete" button to terminate the purchase agreement.

The procedure for buying a phone number is as follows.

Upon clicking the "Buy" button, a pop-up window will appear, allowing you to input your desired area code and prefix. 

After clicking the "Search" button, the system will present you with a list of phone numbers that match the area code and prefix criteria you have specified. 

You can then select one or more phone numbers from this list and press the "Buy" button to initiate the purchase. 

Following a brief processing period, if the chosen phone numbers are still available for acquisition, they will be purchased, and you will find them listed in the table of purchased phone numbers.

• Users Tab: within this tab, you will find the table of existing users that may have been pre-populated by administrators when your customer account was established on behalf of your organization.

You will also find two action buttons along with a Search Bar that you can use to manage the users. These action buttons are:

• Download CSV: by pressing this button, you will download the CSV file that you can use to bulk upload or editing phone numbers and users.
• Upload: by pressing this button, you can upload a CSV file that you created by populating the CSV file downloaded earlier with the required data.

When you click on a user, a pop-up form will appear on the right-hand side of the window, allowing you to configure the parameters for the selected 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.
• 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.

Upon clicking the "Update" button, you will see all the changes reflected in the respective columns of the table of existing users.

These changes will also be visible in the table of purchased phone numbers within the Phone Numbers Tab.

When you click on a user in the table of existing users or a phone number in the table of purchased phone numbers, you will enter the edit mode for the chosen entity. If the selected user has an assigned phone number, or vice versa, you will notice an additional button labeled "Show Recent Calls" on the pop-up form that will appear on the right-hand side of the window.

Upon clicking this button, you will be directed to the "Calls from/to PhoneNumber" page, where PhoneNumber is the selected or assigned phone number. 

On this page, you will find a list of calls received and made by the selected phone number.

It is important to note that this page can only be accessed by using the mentioned button that appears in the edit mode and is not accessible through any other means.

CSV File

By pressing the "Download CSV" button within the Phone Number or Users Tabs, you will initiate the download of the CSV file, which is the recommended format for bulk upload or editing phone numbers and users. 

The CSV file you download is not blank. It contains user data, such as users and their associated phone numbers, available spare numbers and users without assigned numbers. As an admin, you are able to assign available numbers to users, update number assignments, and upload the modified file. This process is ideal in scenarios involving large number of accounts, as it simplifies the assignment process with no manual phone-to-account assignment.

When you open the CSV file in any editing application (specifically, Microsoft Excel in our case), it will have the following appearance:

As you can see from the file, no user in the list has a phone number linked to them. If you assign a phone number to an user, the record in the CSV file will appear as follows.

The "Ratecenter" parameter is automatically calculated by the system based on the area code or prefix of the assigned phone number.