Professional collaboration, unimpeded communication, and proficient project management within Microsoft Teams are crucial. To aid this, Microsoft provides a dedicated Health Dashboard for Direct Routing as a part of the Microsoft 365 admin center. This delivers administrators real-time insights into their services’ performance.
Understanding the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing
The Direct Routing Health Dashboard gives useful information about the service’s performance. It comprises analytical views of Trunks, Sessions Border Controllers (SBCs), and carriers’ statuses. This allows admins to anticipate potential issues before they become significant problems.
Below are some key insights that you can get from the Direct Routing Health Dashboard:
- Trunk Name: Represents the unique identifier for a trunk. This might be the FQDN of the SBC or a name that correlates to the pairings of a PSTN gateway and a SIP trunk.
- Session Status: Provides updates on whether the session is active, on hold, or disconnected.
- Call Quality Indicator: Offers insights on the overall quality of all calls on a specific trunk during a particular period.
In addition, several other metrics are provided, including total calls, successful calls, failed calls, average call duration, user call quality, etc.
Identifying Potential Issues Using the Health Dashboard
While the Health Dashboard presents a clear understanding of the ongoing call sessions and their quality, you can delve deeper for detailed troubleshooting. Understanding the metrics and indicators it provides is key for identification and mitigation of possible problems.
Here are some significant components:
- Call Failures: The Call Failures chart is a helpful tool in detecting problems. It identifies the total number of failed calls and helps you identify failure patterns that could indicate more serious issues.
- Poor-Calls Rate: A consistently high value of poor-call rate can suggest potential issues with your system. This could be due to several factors such as declining network conditions or faulty hardware.
- Call Durations: An unusual variation in call duration could signify potential issues. For example, a significant increase might imply a connection problem causing calls to remain connected even if participants have left, while a significant decrease might indicate calls getting prematurely disconnected.
- Quality Impaired User Ratio: This metric reveals the ratio of users experiencing poor call quality, providing a quick view of the overall system health.
Case Study: Troubleshooting Using the Health Dashboard
Consider a case where an admin detects a sudden spike in the ‘Unhealthy Sessions Ratio’ on their Direct Routing Health Dashboard. To investigate, the admin may probe deeper to find more information.
If they see the ‘Reason Code for Unhealthy Sessions’ are largely ‘RtpQuality’, it indicates that the reason for sessions being unhealthy pertained to Real-Time Protocol quality problems. This typically points to an issue with the network.
The administrator goes further into the carrier and SBC’s specific metrics. They discover that the ‘Poor Stream Ratio’ and ‘Unhealthy Stream Ratio’ at the carrier level for a specific SBC are high. This assists the admin in isolating and identifying the problem – it might be related to this particular SBC.
The admin then prioritizes this issue, working on potential solutions, such as evaluating the network performance for this SBC, or involving network engineers to inspect things at a granular level.
Therefore, the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing can be an incredibly powerful tool in the admin’s arsenal – delivering insights, building trends, and enabling them to maintain a healthy and efficient communication system. The key is understanding what the metrics on the dashboard stand for, and using this data to anticipate, identify, troubleshoot, and resolve potential issues before they become disruptive problems for the team.
Practice Test
True or False: The Teams Direct Routing Health Dashboard can be used to identify potential issues with voice routing to Microsoft Teams.
Answer: True.
Explanation: The Health Dashboard is designed to provide insights into potential issues, including those related to Direct Routing.
In the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing, what does a red status indicate?
- a. The system is working fine
- b. There may be a potential issue
- c. The system is not connected
- d. The system needs an update
Answer: b. There may be a potential issue.
Explanation: A red status usually signifies an issue or potential problem that needs to be addressed.
True or False: You can use the Microsoft Teams Direct Routing Health Dashboard to monitor SBCs (Session Border Controllers).
Answer: True
Explanation: One of the key features of the Dashboard is monitoring the health of connected SBCs.
Single Select: The icons for __________ in the Direct Routing Health Dashboard represent the connectivity status of your SBCs.
- a. Teams
- b. Calls
- c. Users
- d. Connections
Answer: d. Connections.
Explanation: The connections icon in the dashboard signifies the connectivity status of SBCs.
Multiple Select: Which of the following user call experiences can be investigated using the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing?
- a. Failed Calls
- b. Poor Quality Calls
- c. Missed Calls
- d. Incoming Calls
Answer: a. Failed Calls, b. Poor Quality Calls.
Explanation: The Health Dashboard provides information about call failures and poor quality calls. The incoming or missed calls may not always reflect potential issues.
True or False: Health Dashboard allows you to view the details of SBCs, including successful call rate and failure cause.
Answer: True.
Explanation: Health Dashboard enables you to investigate the call insights associated with each SBC.
Single Select: The Health Dashboard can help you to identify:
- a. Network connectivity issues
- b. Hardware issues
- c. Software bugs
- d. All of the above
Answer: d. All of the above.
Explanation: Health Dashboard provides insights into different potential issues including networking, hardware, and software related problems.
True or False: The Health Dashboard is used to resolve the issues in Direct Routing.
Answer: False.
Explanation: The Health Dashboard is a diagnostic tool used to identify potential problems, it does not resolve the actual issues.
Multiple Select: Information available on the Dashboard includes:
- a. Successful and failed calls over time
- b. SBC status
- c. Team meeting schedules
- d. Network connectivity status
Answer: a. Successful and failed calls over time, b. SBC status, d. Network connectivity status.
Explanation: The dashboard provides insights into call success and failures, SBC status, and network connectivity. Meeting schedules are not typically included.
True or False: Health Dashboard for Direct Routing requires PowerShell to be accessed and used.
Answer: False.
Explanation: The Health Dashboard for Direct Routing is available through the Teams admin center and does not require PowerShell.
Interview Questions
What is the primary role of the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing in Microsoft Teams?
The Health Dashboard is designed to provide real-time status and health information for Direct Routing, helping to identify potential connectivity or configuration issues in the environments that might affect call quality or availability.
What sort of potential issues can you identify by using the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing?
You can identify issues such as service incidents, faulty configurations, network connectivity or latency issues, and gateway health status.
What does a green checkmark represent on the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing?
A green checkmark on the Health Dashboard indicates that the component or service is functioning normally without any issues.
What does a red exclamation mark represent on the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing?
A red exclamation mark indicates a service disruption or an issue affecting the normal functioning of the service or component.
What details do the summary and details pane provide in the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing?
The summary pane provides an overview of the latest status for each item, while the details pane provides more specific information about an item’s status and how to address it.
Who has access to the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing?
The Health Dashboard for Direct Routing is available to Office 365 global admins, Teams service admins, and Teams communication admins.
How often is the status updated in the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing?
The status in the Health Dashboard is updated in real-time, providing up-to-date information about the health and status of services and components.
How does the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing help in resolving issues?
The Health Dashboard helps in identifying issues and provides guidance on how to resolve them. It also links to related documentation or support pathways for additional assistance.
Can you customize what alerts you receive on the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing?
Yes, you can customize what alerts you receive on the Health Dashboard according to your requirements.
What does “Not monitored” status mean on the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing?
A “Not Monitored” status means that the service or component is not currently being monitored by the Health Dashboard, perhaps due to configuration issues or because it isn’t relevant to Direct Routing.
How can the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing help improve the overall quality of Teams call and meetings?
By providing real-time information on service health and potential issues, the Health Dashboard allows admins to proactively address these issues before they impact call and meeting quality.
Can the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing be accessed on mobile devices?
Yes, the Health Dashboard website is mobile responsive and can be accessed from most mobile devices.
Can the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing report on individual user levels?
No, the Health Dashboard is designed to provide service-level insights, not to diagnose issues on individual user levels.
Why might a service show ‘unknown’ status on the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing?
An ‘unknown’ status usually indicates a communication problem or delay with the telemetry data from that particular service.
Can you resolve an issue directly from the Health Dashboard for Direct Routing?
No, the Health Dashboard does not offer the functionality to directly resolve issues. It provides real-time visibility into which issues are occurring, and then the administrator will have to take the necessary steps for resolution.
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