Tom Arbuthnot: Hi, and welcome back to the podcast. This week we are talking physical desk phones, what their place is in Teams, how there's continuing demand for them, and also what the opportunities are with physical desk phones and AI and Copilot. Really interesting conversation with Prashi, who looks after Teams Phone devices at Microsoft.

We get a little bit on her background and what her role is and then dive into what's happening with Teams phones, and also some items from the roadmap. Thanks to Prashi for joining the podcast and many thanks to Ribbon who are the sponsor of this podcast. Really appreciate all their support on with the show.

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Uh, exciting one. This week we're getting into devices, but we talk a lot about rooms on the podcast, but we don't talk quite so much about physical phones, desk phones. And, uh, I'm excited to get into the weeds on Teams Phones and, and all the new things that are coming in Teams Phone devices as well.

Uh, Prashi, first time on the podcast for you. Welcome to the pod. 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah, it is, it is the first time. Indeed. Thanks so much for, for having me, Tom. Super excited. 

Tom Arbuthnot: No, really excited, excited. Really excited to have you on. It's, uh, it's a great, great topic and, uh, one that's kind of close to my heart as well. So, um mm-hmm.

Could you just give us a little bit of introduction to, uh, you and, and your role? 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah, would love to. Um, so I have been in Microsoft for roughly like three years. And, um, I've been in Teams for all that long. Um, currently I look at, uh. Teams, phone devices. So I, and uh, so I own all of the user experiences.

Um, but at the same time, I also work with different teams and different partner teams, uh, whether it's deployment in management, you know, because that's another important part of the story. Um, and prior to this, I was looking at bookable desks. Uh, which was also like an amazing teams patch that we did, uh, not so long ago, um, in, in the hybrid workspace.

And, uh, we had a great partnership with, with a team for Places, um, in terms of qualification so I studied science and then did my MBA. Um, and I also had a very brief stint in Samsung career. Um, started. In the corporate strategy, then moved out of product management and since then, um, kind of have not looked back.

Tom Arbuthnot: Ah, that's great. It is. It was a good time to join Teams. It's been on such a tear and there's been so much development in that space. I, I imagine it's been quite a ride over the last few years. 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah, I think when I joined in 2022, um. There was so much like hockey stick kind of growth we were seeing for devices and Teams in general.

And that still continues by the way. Mm-hmm which was, uh, probably driven by COVID, but also like, you know, um, a lot of remote work and now return to office because, you know, there's still a lot of, uh, pain points around that. And Teams has come really around, uh, looking at it at a a holistic way and then, you know, solving for it.

Tom Arbuthnot: So physical phones, obviously the motion in our space has been typically kind of knowledge workers going towards headsets. Um, but there's still really a, an important place for physical phones. It's interesting to see. I, I've been in UC since the OCS days. There was a lot of, like, phones are going away, phones are going away, and, and here we are in 2025 and, and there are still new phones coming out.

Um, what's your perspective on, on that? 'cause you obviously see the, see the numbers and work with the partners. 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah. Um, my perspective is that even in 2035 when we have this conversation, I think they will still be around. Yeah. Um, but jokes aside, I feel like, um. Obviously team stakes, a very use case.

Different approach to to this, right? So we have desktop and mobile endpoints, which like a lot of desk workers use, but on the other hand, uh, there are receptionists, there are call center agents. There's also frontline workers who, who actually prefer desk phones because they are in a rush and they need all these tactile buttons.

They need instant functionality. Um, at the same time they have very high call volumes. So if you, if you, if you typically transfer a call, maybe, I don't know, like maybe 30 times an hour, you, you definitely need something that's very efficient. Hmm. Um, something like line keys has been like a godsend for people like that.

Um, and then you are right in call center. If you think about call center scenarios, there's a lot of headsets, but at the same time, we've also seen people use headsets with, with our phone devices. Because it's, it helps them with like consistent audio. There's no popups, there's fewer distractions. And then, you know.

It helps them in, in the, in productivity. Um, and then based on what I've seen, there are some industries such as, uh, you know, finance or healthcare, even emergency services. Like if you walk up to a fire station near you, there will be a device because they need something that works like 24/7. They need dedicated lines.

Um, so I feel like, I feel like this is something that's more like a companion and not like a replacement. For, for soft clients. And I think our customers also view it as that because I have come across a lot of customers who use, you know, desktop, mobile for certain use cases, but at the same time they do have devices.

Tom Arbuthnot: Totally. And I think it's about completing the story and completing the journey as well. Even if you are entirely knowledge worker, you're going to have, as you say, those reception, common area, like emergency phones, safety phones, like there's, there's use cases where those physical devices come into play.

And it's funny you mention tactile buttons, 'cause that's another one I've heard a lot. Is like, actually the first gen of Teams phones were mostly touch. There was, seems like there was a big demand for a simple physical buttons use case as well. 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah, and I would also give like huge props to our OEM partners who, who've been driving like this continuous innovation in terms of, you know, hardware quality that has kept up, you know, the interest in demand from customers.

Tom Arbuthnot: And the Teams phone model is very like the, sorry, the teams phone model is very like the rooms model, isn't it? So it's, uh, Microsoft doing the, the software components and having reference designs and then OEM partners taking that building certifying with Microsoft. 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah, it's pretty much the same. So we, we own the software side as partners who own the firmware and hardware and.

We work very closely together to make sure, uh, you know, customers receive updates at the right time and uh, the phones work together, the hardware and software kind of works together. Yeah, 

Tom Arbuthnot: that's great. And there's been quite a lot going on in devices and phones and even. AI features coming into physical phone queues, app, coming to physical phone, like it feels like there's a, a good amount of investment there to give a, give a good experience is are there certain features there that you've been, uh, you're particularly involved in or particularly interested in?

Prashi Badkur: Yeah. Um, you're, you're absolutely right. We're kind of entering the next phase of telephony. So like, if you think about it, we, we evolved from on-prem to cloud, and now we're looking at it from an AI perspective. So this approach of using AI to enhance. Any core job to be done, you know, to boost like user productivity.

So one of the features we released is basically using Copilot to create a summary and transfer it to the next person. So who receives the transfer call and, you know, and giving them the context instantly. Now think about all of these customer calls you've been at and, uh, you've had to explain so many times.

So that's something that we definitely released. Very excited about that. Um, 

Tom Arbuthnot: it's lovely to have that on the physical phone as well because that's, that's a scenario where like, I'm picking up a, a common area phone, now I wanna pass it on. Actually, I can do that all on the, on the IP phone, not just the, the desktop client.

So that, that, uh, physical phone users not getting left behind with the AI smarts. 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah, I think it's a great example of adding AI and intelligence to something that's very manual. Um, and what we are on the lookout for is use cases like this, which, which really use the technology we had and marries it with the use case to ultimately, you know, improve productivity and make lives of people who use our phones, you know, uh, a better.

And then specifically for, for phone devices. Um, we're also looking at. How can we improve this experience of using a phone, using voice? Now these are devices that could be very small screen devices, like you've seen some of them. So how can you use voice to like search for things instead of typing it? Um, and if I have to, for example, forward the call to someone, can it be just like a voice?

Uh, you know, uh, command in a way. Yeah. But also very rich in context, so it knows who I want to transfer to or forward to. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Um, that, that's really, that's really interesting, the idea of having voice commands 'cause that's exactly the use case. Uh, we, we did a webinar a few days ago actually, and we, we piped in, uh, Copilot on voice mode into the webinar and, and suddenly those voice models are getting so good that it's definitely conceptually plausible. I think if you go back a few years, the, the speech wreck was still pretty variable, but now it's getting amazing. So I can definitely see a, a potential e even if you had to kind of hit a button to summon, Copilot to then ask it to do something, that would be really interesting.

Prashi Badkur: Yeah. And then, you know, so there are also like, you're absolutely right, so, so it's also to perform certain actions, but also like things like. If you want to, you know, navigate a product, like for example, you, you're using the phone for the first time, can it actually help you? Um, can it help you discover features?

Uh, so all those things are something that we're constantly thinking about. Um, and obviously there's, there's the traditional Copilot features, which is around if someone is logging in at the beginning of a day on their device, um, can it help with a catch up or recap? Of whatever went on and, and you know, they can, they can get a head start to the day.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. That's interesting. And how do you balance, like product priorities? It's interesting with physical phones as well. There's like, there's a. Um, multi-decade legacy of features that people want as mainly, I guess, line keys, provisioning, that kind of thing. So I'm sure you've got a, a, a list of very kind of traditional asks, and then you've got this exciting new world of, of AI on the devices as well.

How, how do you deal with the kind of feedback and, and what gets prioritized? 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah, that's, that's a very interesting question and that's actually something we think about internally a lot. Um, so when we think about the priorities in terms of the roadmap through mainly three, um, one is, uh, the fundamentals, which is reliability, performance, you know, anything related to touch responsiveness.

The second is, is this part that you talked about, which is how can we bridge the telephony gaps? So if we don't, uh, provide a certain feature, what's the best way to, uh, you know, unblock customers? And the third one is, um, intelligence and basically AI. Uh, it's a, it's a tough balance actually. We need to think about, obviously, like I said, the use case, uh, whether it adds productivity in as far as AI is concerned, as far as code telephony.

The impact basically for, for the customer. And, uh, uh, what is it that's, you know, um, in a way precluding them from doing if, if you basically don't, don't do that. So that's an ongoing process and something that we fine tune, um, not just every six months or a year, but pretty much like, you know, I would say it could be every month or even more.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: It was interesting to see Queues app coming to physical phones as well. Like, I guess there's a use case there where people are, again, they're possibly heavy phone users, so having those capabilities on the, on the IP phone is interesting. 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah. Uh, Queues app, uh, as, as you would know, is, is a, is basically Microsoft Teams take on, um.

A lot of agent and supervisor scenarios. So for devices specifically, uh, we, we've thought about, you know, who, who basically uses our device and what are the use cases, right? So we went ahead with releasing something which is very specific to agents because a lot of our devices are used by agents. There is a Queues app, and as an agent, uh, if you want to opt into the different queues that you're part of, you could do that.

So you could opt in, opt out. Uh, there's also, uh, you know, you can, you can see the call history. Um, there's stuff that. That would be, you know, coming in the future. Um, but it's actually a very good, like, better together story with, with also like the desktop experience, uh, which is more tailored to like both agent and supervisor.

So if you want to, like, for example, view analytics and other data, you could, you know, uh, definitely log in as a supervisor, um, on desktop. But if it's an agent, definitely recommend, um, you 

Tom Arbuthnot: know, and that, and that feels like the use case, right? I can definitely see, like, for example. Uh, a phone sitting on a, a security desk or reception desk and wanting to come in and out of certain queue scenarios and, and there, being able to just do it from the physical phone makes a lot of sense.

But if you are, if you're a, a supervisor, you probably want the, the, the bigger screen and the analytics would you say? 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah. Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And I can't remember it came up. It's relatively recent, isn't it? Assignment of line keys and being able to assign those remotely from Teams Admin Center as well. 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah, yeah.

Line keys has been in a very important, um, investment area for us. Um, and, um, something that's, we, we started on this journey of, you know. Basically releasing some capabilities last year, and we have continued till now and then, you know, we're still working through it. So, uh, today online keys, you could, you know, assign speed dials.

So we'll do like an outgoing call. Um, there's also shared line that you could basically assign to a line key. So for example, if I have a shared line assigned, I can see who, who the boss is. I can see the other delegates. Uh, on the shared line, uh, we have very amazing like LED capabilities that we've designed.

So if, if the boss is available, you see a green, if there's an incoming call, there's a different LED and you could pick up. You know, the call on behalf of them. So if, if they're getting a call, if the boss gets busy, they need to move on to another call, uh, you know, they could put it on hold and, you know, one of the other delegates can basically just resume the call simply by, you know, just pressing that line key.

Um. Then besides this, we've also started looking at how can I make some of these call controls, uh, more accessible through line key. So if I have a transfer line key, so if I have a line key assigned to just transfer to someone. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Oh, that's interesting. Like a feature speed button, essentially. 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah, exactly.

So if I get a call from you, Tom, and, and I realize I need to, you know, transfer it to someone, I would just press that line key and uh, you know, the call would be transferred. Again, like, well, there,

Tom Arbuthnot: there's our, there's our, there's our Copilot key right there. Right. We've already got, you've already got half the feature. Just, just gotta do that a bit. 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Um. Yeah. And then there's also like, you know, uh, like if you, if you have for example, two stores, two stores assigned as a shared line and you wanna know which one is ringing without even looking at the site car, or you know, the phone, there's now something that we're rolling out which will have a different ringtone.

Um, so you could, like, for store one, you could have, you know, one ringtone in store two, you could have another ringtone. Oh, great. Um, and then that really helps with, you know, again, making things very efficient for you. 'cause you, you hear this ring door? Okay. Yeah. This is the call, please take it or someone else can take it.

Um. So we're constantly thinking about like, you know, um, how we can leverage line keys again to improve the, the experience. Um, and you're right. So there is another thing that's come up, which is how can I configure this from Teams Admin Center? Um, and this is very crucial, especially for admins who manage a lot of these devices or we even look at common area phones.

Um. Because for them it's a little bit of a hassle to go and, you know, assign nine key on the device. And that's a lot of phones, like magic. Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Global deployment and uh, you need to configure them or you don't necessarily wanna go to every single site. 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah, exactly. So this is more about deployment of this and uh, making it easier.

So, uh, we're rolling out something in preview where. You know, you could have device templates, for example. So if you know you have a CCX 400, you know, these are the number of line keys and you assign the first one to a speed dial, you assign the second one to a shared line and then, you know, you apply it and it all works.

That's great. And, um, yeah, so that's something that's, that's, that's gonna be in preview and, you know, very, very soon, generally available. Um, yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Nice. And how's it work from a. Hardware perspective. So you've got multiple OEM partners. Is it broadly, there's kind of the non-touch phones, the touch phones, and the sidecar.

Are those the three kind of hardware categories or are they more subcategories by like screen size or capabilities? 

Prashi Badkur: No, you're, you're absolutely right. So when we think about the different kind of models, obviously we have different OEMs, but uh, there is such devices, uh, which are. Mostly like slightly, slightly, you know, bigger in screen size.

Uh, there is non-touch and you, you use like, for example, the T9 keyboard or you know, hard buttons. Um, and then you also have a sidecar, which you could add if you want, the line key experience there. And traditionally, like for sidecars, we had contact syncing automatically, but now you have, you can customize that using like line keys like.

If you don't want speed dials to sync, uh, you could unsign them and just assign whatever you like it to basically do. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, that's the use case. I've definitely seen, I, I spent a lot of my, um, early career taking people off of, uh, Cisco call manager onto Teams, and it was always one of those things is sidecar with, with custom custom line keys and knowing what the LEDs do and things was, uh, it's nice to have that option to, to customize that scenario.

Prashi Badkur: Yeah. And, and even today we hear so much like interesting stuff our customers still wanna do with line keys and, uh, like, especially in retail, right? Like they have very difference in it. Like they want, one of the customers, for example, wants something like, uh, you know, any of the multiple like calls that you get, each one gets a line key and you just pick up whichever you want to.

Um, so we are, we are learning every day. We are retreating, but um, it's something that's definitely been received. Uh. Fairly well. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Nice and interestingly, phones have been one of the earlier devices on the, uh, MDEP train as well. So ye Link, I think were the first with physical phones with MDEP. I know AudioCodes have some, some plans as well.

How's that affected kind of, uh, how phones work? 

Prashi Badkur: Um, so MDEP Yeah, right. So MDEP is something that's, uh, very new. I think it's, it's something that, uh, like you're right, like Yealink. Phones are, uh, definitely, uh, supporting MDEP. Um, it's something that, it's more of. It's, it's more of a tool for us, um, along with like the OEMs, you know, um, for, for a lot of like benefits basically.

So there's a lot of like, you know, enhanced security and compliance. 'cause this is an OS that. In a way, it's part of the Microsoft security stack. Right. Um, and also we, we see a lot of benefits in the future as far as the management and provisioning goes. I feel like it's, it will simplify, um, a lot of the, the, you know, provisioning, um, side of devices.

Tom Arbuthnot: It's interesting. We've had obviously on the physic, on the classic SIP phones, we've had things like, um, drop shipping them and MAC lookups and things like that, which I know is, is tough in a Microsoft world where it's um, security first initiative and everything else. But there's definitely some interesting opportunities to kind of streamline that process potentially.

Prashi Badkur: Yeah, you're, you're absolutely right. And then there's also a lot of, uh, you know, um, services, which, which might be AI based, that we can build on top of it. And like, think about use cases like, uh, translation or speech through text. And if you're doing it natively on the device, I think the experience expected is much better 'cause it helps with the latency.

So it also gives us a huge, like canvas to, to build on top of on, on top of it. And, uh, the stuff that, like I said about security, that that's also like, uh, very cool. And then ultimately it's like a win-win because like I said, even for it admins and simplify stuff significantly, 

Tom Arbuthnot: security's a big conversation.

Like, like, uh, you know, classically, those are the kind of devices that were not frequently updated on the classic on-prem PBX days, but now of course they're a, they're an IP end point, like any IP endpoint, they've got a processor, they've got Android, they're making sure they're locked, locked down, and, and regularly updated and everything else obviously is critically important.

Yep. Awesome. Well, as we wrap up, is there anything particular on the, on the kind of roadmap or future directions that you are particularly excited about? I know I guess the semester planning's all done now, so you've probably got some things, you obviously can't share everything, but it'd be interesting to hear what you are excited about.

Prashi Badkur: Yeah, definitely. So we'd love to. So there's, there's some things that we're continuously working on and fine tuning, and one of them is like, improvement in the user experience. So the idea is to make, like, call management as easy and intuitive. Um, we've done like a lot of efforts in the past to like redesign Dialpad, make the UI more responsive.

Um, there's also efforts being done too. To make sure a user doesn't need to navigate so many menus that could use the clicks, make it easier to view and manage, you know, contacts information generally. Help them with that. Um, there's, there's another thing that I'm sure you're aware of, which is, uh, the contact management part for common area phones, which is, uh, we got, we were in preview.

We got really good feedback. We got dressed it, and now we're finally closer to, you know. Hopefully making it available soon. So essentially the use case is that if you have an Admin and you want, you want your, like, for example, reception to access like emergency contacts very quickly. In your, in a dedicated folder.

Um, you could do that through TAC now, which, which internally we, we call like, you know, contact management for common area phones. And it's just basically like preloaded speed dials. And before this feature, like an Admin had to really go and, you know, um, sign in, add contact. I think this really streamlines it.

For a lot of our customers, so really excited about this one. And, and how that's 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, that's a, that's a big one for common area phones. It's very common to have like the internal security number, for example, or the front desk for that building as a, as a, a speed dial on those phones. 

Prashi Badkur: Yeah. And, um, there's also like a lot of things we're doing for accessibility for, for instance, I, I know you were talking about it, so, uh, there's real times text, which is now supported on devices and it's, I think, a very good feature for someone who has like, you know, speech disabilities for instance.

And, and, um. That's something that, you know, I feel like would be very good from an accessibility perspective. Um, there's also stuff that we talked about, which is, uh, you know, using speech to text or voice in any way to, you know, um, make sure you're able to use the device properly instead of just, you know, typing.

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome. Quite, quite a lot. Then it's nice to hear that, uh, yeah, physical desk phones are, uh, alive and well and that there's quite a lot of innovation coming in with AI Mm-hmm. So I'm really excited to see that over the coming year. Um, thanks so much for jumping on the podcast. Now you've, now you've done one, we'll have to have your back when we've got some of those, uh, AI features coming down the pipe and maybe you can, uh, give us a bit more insight, uh, as those features come along.

Prashi Badkur: I would love to. Sign me up for it. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Thanks so much. 

Prashi Badkur: Thank you, Tom.