I was asked if we can text from Microsoft Teams. Apparently, our outside staffing agency has brought this up because we don’t always get an answer from job candidates. We’ve used email and tried calling them but sometimes they don’t respond. Personally, I don’t think we’ll always get 100% response because that’s just the way it is. We have “Microsoft 365 Business Standard” licenses, and I am the admin.
What I’ve tried is starting a new chat and entered my cell number. My cell gets a text but then it says I need to install Teams on my phone and create an account. This is all free, but management doesn’t think people would want to go through all that (I agree).
My question is how can this be done? Do I need to enable a third-party app so that the person receiving the text doesn’t need to install Teams and set up an account? I see there are a bunch when I search for “text” within Teams. Would I need to use one of those?
If so, are there any that are free for use?
How does this get set up? What are the steps for this?
Have you had any luck getting responses if you’ve implemented this?
What phone number gets used, if any? Do we use a current employee’s (Manager’s)?
I probably have more questions that I can’t think of right now. I appreciate any and all help with this.
Thank you!
4 Spice ups
benoitt
(BenoitT)
2
I’m pretty sure that’s a solid NO. I can see how Teams lets you originate a request to join Teams via an SMS/MMS message, but that’s the extend of that service.
You can probably find an app to add to Teams, but it would be for the purpose of a separate communication, not to integrate Teams within an SMS/MMS chat group.
SMS/MMS is not a secured communication protocol, so the odds of seeing it integrated within any other chat system, is unlikely. SMS/MMS is also a highly praised target for hackers / spammers / phreakers, so there’s a lot of limits in place, to prevent it from being used in a way that would be considered improper.
There’s usually a corresponding email address, to an SMS/MMS user, but it can be awkward to use.
Teams, on the other hand, is a highly secured integrated multipurpose communication platform.
(someone slap me; I think I just praised a Microsoft product)
dzee
(DZee)
3
We’ve been using Teams for years, and while I haven’t done any explicit research on your particular issue, during my administrative tasks I’ve never seen any options for text integration with carrier networks.
For a cell carrier to respond, they’d have to inject a chat message into your tenant. What is the phone number they’re sending to? How does it go to the right user if not every single user of Teams has a unique phone number in the system? What are the security ramifications of anyone being able to text into your tenant?
There may be more options if you actually have VoIP phone integrated on M365, or perhaps using a plug-in, but if you have neither of those, you’re left with texting them from a smartphone.
Most carriers have a way to text from email. For example, @txt.att.net but you have to know the carrier of the target. As I recall, this is not a two-way street, but acts more like a pager. Still, you could ask them to review/respond to an email or call you back.
I have to ask whomever wants this ability: If you’re not getting a response from applicants when you’re potentially making a job offer, how good do you think their communication will be once they’re hired? My unsolicited advice is take the hint. If they’re not responding move on.
1 Spice up
it looks like you can send a text from Teams (from the non-exhaustive research I’ve done). There needs to be a phone number tied to the tenant I believe. What we did was just get a prepaid phone to use. We are NOT going to text from Teams as the receiving person will need to have Teams on their phone. I was told that the people we are hiring most likely won’t have Teams as they are shop people.
Just like all of our “innovative” ideas, I’m sure this will get forgotten about as well. But that might just be my 20 yrs here talking…
