Using 3PIP Phones with Skype for Business Online or Microsoft Teams? Read This.

Waaaaaay back in April this year, Microsoft announced that they were changing the way Skype for Business Certified IP Phones (or 3PIP devices, more on that shortly) are approved for sign in against Office 365. Today, something called an Application ID (or App ID for short) is shared across all devices that have approved 3PIP devices (from Polycom, Yealink, Crestron and AudioCodes). Moving forward, Microsoft is revoking support for the existing Azure application ID used by all third party device vendors, and instead will require a partner specific application ID. This change will come into effect from January 15th 2020.

Aside: What’s 3PIP?

If the term “3PIP” is new to you, here’s a section I pulled from an earlier blog I’d written about devices for Microsoft Teams:

“3PIP, or Third Party Interoperability Program, was a way for Microsoft to relinquish responsibility for the development of software for endpoint devices. With the 3PIP model, partners (such as Polycom, AudioCodes and Yealink) could develop devices based on their own software base that would register to Lync and Skype for Business environments, whilst still supporting a broader feature set as was being requested by customers.”

These phones included Polycom’s VVX and Trio lines, AudioCodes’ HD series as well as a number of Yealink offerings. For a full list of 3PIP devices, check out Microsoft’s published list of supported 3PIP phones.

Keep in mind that Native Microsoft Teams phones are not 3PIP devices, thus are not affected by this change.

What do I need to do?

In summary, if your organisation is:

Using 3PIP devices with Skype for Business Online
Using 3PIP devices with Microsoft Teams via Microsoft’s 3PIP device interop gateway

There are a couple of things you need to do before January 15^th 2020:

Approve each vendor in use in your organisation for sign in to Office 365
Roll out updated firmware as it becomes available

At time of writing, both Polycom (VVX, Trio), Yealink (All 3PIP Devices) and AudioCodes have firmware available that has the App ID baked in, still waiting on Crestron. Hopefully they release updates with plenty of time before the January 2020 cut off. Also note that approval must be completed prior to rolling out updated firmware: You can do that today!

In order to approve each vendor, a Tenant admin must do the following: