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Try or purchase Audio Conferencing in Microsoft 365 or Office 365 for Skype for Business Online

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Skype for Business

Important

Skype for Business Online operated by 21Vianet in China will be retired on October 1, 2023. If you haven't upgraded your Skype for Business Online users yet, they will be automatically scheduled for an assisted upgrade. If you want to upgrade your organization to Teams yourself, we strongly recommend that you begin planning your upgrade path today. Remember that a successful upgrade aligns technical and user readiness, so be sure to leverage our upgrade guidance as you navigate your journey to Teams.

Skype for Business Online, excluding the service operated by 21Vianet in China, was retired on July 31, 2021.

Note

For information about Audio Conferencing in Microsoft Teams, see Try or purchase Audio Conferencing in Microsoft 365 or Office 365 for Skype for Microsoft Teams.

Sometimes people in your organization will need to use a phone to call in to a meeting. Skype for Business includes the Audio Conferencing feature for just this situation! People can call into Skype for Business meetings using a phone, instead of using the Skype for Business app on a mobile device or PC.

You only need to set up audio conferencing for people who plan to schedule or lead meetings. Meeting attendees who call in to the meeting don't need any licenses assigned to them and don't need other setup.

For pricing info, see audio conferencing.

Step 1: Buy and assign Audio Conferencing licenses

You must be an admin to perform these steps. See About admin roles for more information.

To buy and assign user Audio Conferencing licenses:

  1. Find out if Audio Conferencing is available in your country/region. Countries and region availability for Audio Conferencing and Calling Plans.

  2. Get your Audio Conferencing licenses. If you want to:

  3. Assign or remove licenses for Microsoft 365 Apps for business you purchased to the people in your organization who are going to schedule or lead meetings.

  4. If you purchased audio conferencing add-on licenses and Communications Credits licenses, assign them too. For instructions, see Assign Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams licenses.

To buy and assign pay-per-minute Audio Conferencing licenses:

If you're a Volume and Licensing customer, you can get pay-per-minute Audio Conferencing licenses. For additional information on pay-per-minute Audio Conferencing licenses, see Audio Conferencing pay-per-minute.

  1. Find out if Audio Conferencing is available in your country/region. Country and region availability for Audio Conferencing and Calling Plans.

  2. Get your Audio Conferencing licenses. To acquire pay-per-minute licenses, please contact your account representative.

  3. Set up Communications Credits for your organization for your organization. To set up Communications Credits, see What are Communications Credits?

    Important

    If Communications Credits haven't been set up, Audio Conferencing won't work for any users with pay-per-minute licenses. Also, if you have Audio Conferencing pay-per-minute licenses, you don't have to assign Communications Credits licenses separately to each user specifically for Audio Conferencing usage but you might still need to assign them for another service.

  4. Assign or remove licenses for Microsoft 365 Apps for business you purchased to the people in your organization who are going to schedule or lead meetings.

Step 2: Set the audio conferencing provider for people who lead or schedule meetings

When you assign an Audio Conferencing license to people in your organization who lead or schedule meetings, they are all set up and ready to go! (You don't have to set their audio conferencing provider.)

Step 3: Other admin tasks

The following steps are optional, but a lot of admins like to do them:

  1. Customize meeting invitations. The dial-in numbers that are set for the user will be automatically added to the meeting invitations that are sent to attendees. However, you can add your own help and legal links, a text message, and small company graphic.

  2. Set the phone numbers included on invites. This is the phone number that will show up in the meeting that is scheduled by a user.

  3. Set auto attendant languages for Audio Conferencing that the Audio Conferencing auto attendant uses to greet a caller when they dial in to an audio conferencing phone number. This step only applies if you're using Microsoft as your audio conferencing provider.

  4. Set the length of the PIN for Audio Conferencing meetings.

Note

This feature is not yet available to customers using Microsoft 365 or Office 365 operated by 21Vianet in China. To learn more, see Learn about Microsoft 365 or Office 365 operated by 21Vianet.

Set up Skype for Business Online

Phone numbers for Audio Conferencing

Set options for online meetings and conference calls