Phone Transition to Microsoft Teams

Project Status

Estimated project completion: see Projects

Executive Summary

McLennan Community College (MCC) will migrate employee telephony from its on-premises Cisco Unified Communications environment to Microsoft Teams Phone (Teams) with CallTower public switched telephone network (PSTN) connectivity and CallTower Ascent contact-center services. The project adopts a softphone first standard: Teams will be the primary employee communication and calling client, with physical phones reserved for approved business requirements.

Based on current (September 2, 2026) staffing, MCC employees will be migrated in eight waves; 24 ISS pilot users, 642 employees in six equal production waves of 107, and 17 Campus Police users tracked separately for voice-recorder requirements. Production migrations will occur one wave per week, Sunday night into early Monday morning, while preserving whole departments within a wave. Help Desk and technical staff will provide all-hands support each migration Monday. Customer Support Services (CSS) will recover Cisco desk phones from migrated offices Wednesday through Friday of the same week.

The project is expected to save MCC more than $500,000 over five years by reducing Cisco licensing, support, infrastructure, endpoint, and operational costs. It directly supports MCC's 2025–2030 strategic focus area Advance Resource Support and Development, especially the published initiatives to improve processes and efficiencies, invest in modern infrastructure, and foster employee excellence through innovation and professional development ( MCC 2025–2030 Strategic Plan).

Business Need & Background

The current Cisco environment requires on-premises servers, licensing, upgrades, security certificate and software maintenance, backups, physical endpoints, and specialized administration. MCC's current Finesse contact center (UCCX) licensing expires September 20, 2026, and broader Cisco licensing/support expires November 15, 2026. MCC must maintain inbound service, emergency calling, four-digit dialing, departmental call flows, and contact-center continuity throughout the transition.

Project Description & Scope

This project will: 

• Save more than $500,000 during the first five years.
• Consolidate employee calling, chat, meetings, presence, file sharing, collaboration in Teams.
• Improve service continuity and location flexibility through cloud-delivered voice.
• Reduce physical endpoint inventory and on-premises technical debt.
• Prepare employees to use Teams for calling, meetings, chat, collaboration, and other available features.
• Strengthen Help Desk readiness, user adoption, and repeatable migration controls.

Scope:

• Project governance, schedule, communications, risk/issue/change control, and acceptance.
• Reconciliation of the migration workbook against active employees, assigned numbers, CallTower inventory, and retained-device requirements.
• Teams Phone tenant configuration, policies, resource accounts, number assignment, voicemail, delegation, call queues, auto attendants, caller ID, business hours, and emergency calling.
• CallTower PSTN routing and coexistence with retained Cisco endpoints.
• CallTower Ascent migration for the current 30 concurrent licensed contact-center users in ISS Help Desk, Financial Aid, Records & Registration, and Student Accounts Receivable.
• ISS pilot, six department-based employee waves, validation, rollback readiness, and hypercare.
• Training, Help Desk knowledge transfer, canned replies, quick-reference materials, IT Hub articles, recordings, and support scripts.
• Establish Teams as the primary communication and meeting platform for MCC
• Recovery, cable-path remediation, inventory, palletization, and recycling preparation for removed Cisco phones.
• Phase-Two planning for approximately 447 classroom/common-area and tenant organization Cisco phones retained temporarily

Project Schedule (Original)

New schedule is being built.

Project Management & Governance (Original)

Documentation

• Phone Transition Project Charter

Last updated: 9/22/2026