This article provides guidance on the licensing requirements for NHSmail Teams Phone System. For general information on the NHSmail Teams Phone System, please review this article.
Licensing requirements will differ depending on your organisation/s chosen external Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) connection strategy: either Calling Plans or Direct Routing.
The purchase options for the required licences should be discussed with your trusted licensing advisor or licensing reseller.
Organisations are responsible for the procurement, onboarding, and assignment of the licences to users via the NHSmail portal. Organisations are responsible for ensuring that they have enough licences to cover every individual administrator and user who will be using NHSmail Teams Phone System.
For more guidance on this, please visit the following articles:
Important Note: Licences must be assigned to the specific ODS code of the organisation that will be onboarded to use the NHSmail Teams Phone System capability.
Important Note: It is recommended that organisations assign licences to users at least 24 hours ahead of needing to assign the phone numbers to prevent any delays.
This article will provide information on:
- Licensing for Microsoft Calling Plans
- Microsoft Calling Plans Options
- Licensing for Direct Routing
- NHSmail Teams Phone System Power App licensing for Administrators
Licensing (Calling Plans)
To enable Microsoft Calling Plans on the NHSmail tenant, administrators, and users with F3 or E3 base licenses are also required to have:
- A Teams Phone System add-on license
AND
- A Calling Plan license
Administrators and users with O365 E5 and M365 E5 licenses are also required to have:
- A Calling Plan license
| Base License Plan (NHSmail supported) | Phone System License | Calling Plan License |
| Office 365 Enterprise E1 | Not included, Phone System add-on licence required | Calling Plan licences required |
| Microsoft 365 F3 | Not included, Phone System add-on license required | Calling Plan licenses required |
| Microsoft 365 E3 | Not included, Phone System add-on license required | Calling Plan licenses required |
| F3/E3 + Teams Phone with Calling Plan | Included, Phone System add-on license not required | Included (Domestic) |
| Office 365 Enterprise E5 | Included, Phone System add-on license not required | Calling Plan licenses required |
| Microsoft 365 E5 | Included, Phone System add-on license not required | Calling Plan licenses required |
Only the base license plans listed in the table above are supported for Phone System.
Currently, we are aware of a known issue with the Microsoft 365 E5 license being utilised for the Phone System functionality, for further information please reference the Portal Known Issues & Guidance page here.
Microsoft Calling Plans – Options
Domestic Calling Plans
This calling plan enables licensed users to call numbers located in the country/region where they are assigned in Microsoft 365.
Important Note: For the NHSmail platform, only the UK region is supported.
There are two domestic calling plan options available, with each licence providing a certain number of calling minutes to individual users each calendar month:
- 120 minute Domestic Calling Plan
- 3000 minute Domestic Calling Plan
Domestic and International Calling Plans
This calling plan enables licensed users to call numbers located in the country/region where their Microsoft 365 licence is assigned to the user based on the user’s location and to international numbers in 196 countries/regions. This licence provides the following number of calling minutes to individual users each calendar month:
- 3000 Domestic minutes and 600 International minutes
Microsoft 365 Teams Phone with Calling Plan Bundle
Microsoft 365 Phone System and Calling Plan (bundle) add-on licence is an easy to manage bundle which includes both Microsoft Phone System and Calling Plan licence of 3000 Domestic calling minutes.
NHSmail organisations can have Microsoft 365 bundle licences, instead of procuring Phone System and Calling plan add-on licences separately.
The bundle includes both a Phone System licence and Calling Plan licence:
- Teams Phone with Calling Plan (Zone 1 – UK/Canada)
For more information on types of Calling Plans, please visit this Microsoft guidance.
To create a policy with an E5 base licence and a Microsoft Bundle licence you must first create the policy before assigning users. Attempting to create and assign users in one action will cause the create to fail. Future edits and updates to the policy will work as expected.
Licensing for Direct Routing
To enable Direct Routing on the NHSmail central tenant, administrators, and users with F3 or E3 licenses are also required to have:
- A Teams Phone System add-on licence
Administrators and users with O365 E5 or M365 E5 are not required to have any add-on licenses to use NHSmail Teams Phone System.
|
Base License Plan (NHSmail supported) |
Phone System License |
| Office 365 Enterprise E1 | Not included, Phone System add-on license required |
| Microsoft 365 F3 | Not included, Phone System add-on license required |
| Microsoft 365 E3 | Not included, Phone System add-on license required |
| Office 365 Enterprise E5 | Included, Phone System add-on license not required |
| Microsoft 365 E5 | Included, Phone System add-on license not required |
For more information on how to onboard to NHSmail Teams Phone System please visit the following articles:
NHSmail Teams Phone System Power Apps Licensing for Administrators
In addition to licensing required to use the NHSmail Teams Phone System platform, Phone System Admins will also need 2 additional licences; 1 for the Phone System Power App and 1 to access the reporting capability within the Phone System Power App.
Important Note: A link to access the NHSmail Teams Phone System Power App will be provided to Phone System Admins once their organisation has been onboarded.
Both the Power Apps Per App and Power BI licences are free for onboarded organisations.
| Access Type | Licences Type | Quantity |
| Phone System Power Apps | Power Apps Per-App | Up to 5 Phone System Admins per onboarded NHSmail organisation |
| Phone System Reporting | PowerBI Free | PowerBI Free is available to all organisations via Portal. |
Power Apps Per-App Licences: The Power Apps Per-App licence needs to be assigned to the Power Apps environment. This will be done automatically for your organisation as part of the onboarding process
NHSmail organisations with Power Apps per user licences (BYOL model) can manage their licences via the NHSmail Portal.
Power BI Free Licences: Teams Phone System Power BI workspace will be configured with a Power BI Premium subscription. To access the embedded report via Power Apps, Local Administrators will need to assign a Power BI free licence to themselves and/or any other Phone System Admins at their organisation via NHSmail Portal user policies.
For further details on the reporting capabilities available for NHSmail Teams Phone System, please see these articles: Reporting (Calling Plans) and Reporting (Direct Routing).
Licence Updates
Important Note:
Calling Plans – If you need to remove a Calling Plan licence from a user, please be aware that as per standard Microsoft processes and best practice, unless you assign a new Calling Plan licence to that user in the same request, the user’s number will be removed from them. You will be required to reassign a number (same number or a different number) when the user is re-licenced to allow them to make and receive calls.
Important Note:
Direct Routing – If you need to remove Phone System licence from a user, please be aware that as per standard Microsoft processes and best practice, unless you assign a new Phone System licence to that user in the same request, the user’s number will be removed from them. You will be required to reassign a number (same number or a different number) when the user is re-licenced to allow them to make and receive calls.
| Last Reviewed Date | 05/03/2024 |
