You can then choose to upgrade to Teams Premium. Here you get some extra detail:

• Audio quality alerts: get proactively notified when quality dips.
• Call Quality Dashboard: shows call and meeting quality at an org-wide level.
• Call analytics: shows information about devices, networks, connectivity, and call quality.
• Real-time analytics: time-based metrics for meetings and calls, with a 30-minute delay.

As you can see, the focus of native Teams call reporting is very much per call usage and whether the audio quality is hitting the expected service levels.

This is fine if that’s all you’re looking for in a call reporting suite. However, it’s only the tip of the iceberg when you explore what’s possible with third party applications.

If you’re looking for:

• Real-time dashboards and wallboards
• Average call volumes
• Average handle time
• Abandoned call recovery
• ACD/DND activity logs
• Call abandonment rate
• Occupancy rate
• Trend analysis
• Proactive suggestions for workforce management

Then these call quality reports don’t even scratch the surface.

What about the Graph API?

If you’re not familiar with the Graph API, it’s Microsoft’s public-facing API tool that provides access to data stored across Microsoft 365 services. Custom applications can use the Microsoft Graph API to connect to data and use it in custom apps.

The Graph API is great for many things:

• Automating user and group management
• Creating custom Teams integrations
• Managing SharePoint and OneDrive files
• Customizing Microsoft 365 groups
• Retrieving user analytics and insights

It’s the latter that appeals the most when exploring extra reporting capabilities. Yet, one of the biggest use cases is identifying things like trending documents, communication patterns, and collaboration statistics. Call reporting in Teams often gets left behind.

Sure, there are many businesses who simply don’t use traditional voice calls as much these days. They might not need genuine call reporting. But that doesn’t mean you, a company that thrives on data, predictable outcomes, and proactive monitoring, should miss out

There are still many limitations when it comes to using the Graph API for reporting and analytics in Teams. 

For example, you need to have a solid understanding of coding and working with Graph API. It’s not as simple as plug, play, and work your way around a nice user interface. Instead, you must work with HTTP requests, headers, and function parameters. 

If you’re a call center manager or someone tasked with working out when people are busy versus free, you likely don’t have these skills—nor the time to learn them.

And there’s no stock report you can dig into with Graph either. You can pull information to create a wallboard, but that information goes out of date quickly. A near-real-time wallboard has never been on anyone’s list of requirements when the option of real-time is simple to implement.

The API access from Microsoft is designed so you can create your own level of customization. By taking snippets of information and pulling them into custom-built data houses, it’s down to you to receive, translate, and present your findings.

A readymade, real-time, purpose-built dashboard is what you’re really after. And you’re not alone.

As a value-added reseller or service provider, if you don’t have real-time analytics, your total addressable market shrinks.

Migrating from Cisco CUCM to Teams shouldn’t mean you lose all sight of your analytics. But, if that’s the reality when customers discover they won’t get the basic reporting they’ve relied on for the past decade. 

Whether customers are operating an on-premises Mitel system or an AI-packed Dialpad UCaaS solution, when they make the decision to go all-in on Teams, it really needs to mean all-in. All but your call reporting and contact center analytics isn’t enough.

So migrating from these means the bar is set. You must provide a solution to replace (and improve) the existing reporting suite.

To win new customers and drive revenue, you must provide options like:

• Real-time call analytics for users, queues, and groups
• At-a-glance intuitive business insights
• A succinct view of the life of a call
• Advanced call reporting and analytics included in your total monthly costs

You’ve got several options here:

• Out of the box
• Graph API in-house
• Graph API external support
• Third-party analytics

Out of the box, we’ve covered the limitation of Teams call reporting. If call quality is your only concern, you’re catered for. For anything else, you’ll need to delve into the Graph API or a third-party provider.

If you have the expertise in-house, using the Graph API to create your own reports isn’t the worst idea in the world. However, it is time-consuming and you are reliant on Microsoft leaving the access open forever. This, itself, poses a considerable threat. In June 2023, Microsoft announced it was doubling the cost of objects copied through Microsoft Graph Data Connect from $0.375 cents to $0.75 cents per 1,000 objects copied.

You could go down the route of employing a part-time consultant to create and run your Graph API call reports. You’ll be able to be prescriptive with your requirements, but this will come with significant costs. Compared to a third-party analytics suite, your upfront and ongoing costs aren’t comparable.

A third-party analytics suite, like that provided by Akixi, provides all the call reporting and call center analytics you need when using Teams as your phone system. What’s even more impressive is that you can optimize the end user experience by delivering an analytics service consumed entirely via the Microsoft Teams native app.

In May 2024, we announced the general availability of CX Analytics for Microsoft Teams. 

Delivered via a single cloud platform, CX Analytics for Microsoft Teams includes several industry firsts:

• Akixi Bot Engine to provide deep real-time visibility of Teams calls and queues.
• Large-scale onboarding automation to rapidly deploy large numbers of business users within a multi-tier channel environment.
• Consistent reporting between a range of cloud platforms for hybrid use cases.

Built for service providers, rather than end users, expect to benefit from multi-tenancy, low touchpoints, and instant replication of real-time Teams call data in wallboards. 

You get a 100% cloud-based analytics platform that means your customers can migrate to Teams, keep their existing call reports, and bolster the insights available through trend and pattern analysis.

Wait, what about historical data?

With access to the very core of a Teams PSTN call, Akixi enables enriched historical data. This means taking basic call information like duration and destination and doing tons more with it.

You can chop up calls segment by call segment, for example. When reviewing what happened during a call and how it was handled, you get thorough insight without having to extract information and spend time on data analysis.

Our goal is to provide more correlation on complex call scenarios to make that more valuable to your end users.

Get insights like:

• Call path
• Resources used
• Periods of high call abandonment
• What call outcomes means for your bottom line

Delivering an extra $1 to $8 per seat per month, voice analytics stands out as the most obvious option to add to your Teams portfolio. 

Customers need it. 

You can provide it. 

It really is as simple as that.

Ready to monetize services attached to Teams Phone?