Teams Common Area Phones

A Common Area Phone (CAP) in Microsoft Teams is a shared, non-personal phone — a reception desk handset, a warehouse phone, a meeting room phone — that doesn't belong to one specific user. Teams Phone supports CAPs as a distinct licence and configuration model from regular user phones.

What a CAP is

A CAP is a Teams-certified IP phone (Yealink, Poly, AudioCodes, others, mostly Android-based) signed in with a resource account rather than a user identity. The phone shows a simple dial pad, perhaps recent calls, a directory if configured — no user-specific features (no inbox, no meetings, no personal contacts).

Use cases:

• Reception desks in offices, hotels, clinics.
• Warehouse and shop floors where workers need an internal extension.
• Common areas like break rooms or lobbies.
• Phone-only kiosks at airports, hospitals, retail counters.

Licensing

CAPs use the Common Area Phone licence, a low-cost SKU that includes Teams Phone Standard for the resource account. Calling plan minutes (if outbound calling to PSTN is needed) require an additional Calling Plan or Operator Connect arrangement.

A typical reception phone:

• CAP licence for the resource account.
• Calling Plan or direct routing for outbound PSTN calls.
• Phone number assigned to the resource account.

For inbound-only use cases (extension dialling within the company), no calling plan is needed.

Configuration

Standard sequence:

1. Create a resource account in Entra ID with the Common Area Phone licence.
2. Assign a phone number in the Teams admin center if needed.
3. Configure a Common Area Phone policy in the Teams admin center — what features the phone has access to (call park, hot desking, meeting join, voicemail).
4. Sign the phone in with the resource account credentials. Modern CAP-certified phones support QR-code or device-code sign-in for easier deployment.
5. Test calls in and out.

Hot desking

A CAP can be configured for hot desking — a user signs into the phone with their own Entra ID for the duration of their visit, getting their personal contacts, voicemail, and Teams presence. When they sign out (or after a timeout), the phone reverts to its CAP identity. Useful for shared offices where the same physical phone is used by different people across the day.

Operational considerations

• Resource accounts don't expire — Microsoft 365 lifecycle policies that disable inactive users can break CAPs if not exempted.
• Phone firmware updates are managed in the Teams admin center; keep on the latest firmware.
• Reset to factory if a CAP is repurposed for a different room — the old resource account stays on the phone otherwise.

For organisations rolling out Teams Phone alongside Calling Plans / Operator Connect / Direct Routing, CAPs handle the shared-phone scenarios that personal user licences don't fit.