MaxoTel and
Microsoft Teams in a Brokerage: What the Integration Gives You

For many brokerages the phone is the tool that still sits outside Microsoft 365. Email, documents, chat and meetings have moved into Teams in a lot of firms. Client calls often have not: they happen in a softphone app with its own login, on a desk handset with its own directory, or on a mobile with none of the brokerage's routing behind it.

That split has a practical cost that shows up in small ways rather than large ones. A broker looking up a colleague's availability checks Teams, then picks up a different device to call them. A client rings during a Teams meeting and the broker has two call windows open at once. New staff learn two contact lists. None of this is dramatic, and brokerages have run this way successfully for years. It is simply friction that no longer has to be there.

MaxoTel's Teams integration closes that gap by letting Teams act as the phone, while the MaxoTel hosted PBX continues to do the work behind it. Calls to and from the outside world run through your existing numbers and your existing call flow, and the broker dials from the app they already have open.

The reason to look at this now is not the convenience. It is that the phone system is where a brokerage's record of client conversations is created, and anything that changes how calls are placed deserves a check on what happens to that record. Brokers who subscribe to the Insurance Brokers Code of Practice commit to standards of professionalism and client care that are far easier to demonstrate when the conversation itself is retrievable. A call that was dialled from a new client, logged in an unexpected place, or not recorded at all because a setting moved during setup is a gap that only becomes visible when someone goes looking for that call months later.

The good news is that the integration is additive rather than substitutive. It changes the dialling surface, not the system of record. Understanding exactly where that line sits is what makes the switch a low-risk one, and it is the main thing this article sets out. If you are setting up a MaxoTel system from scratch rather than extending one, the groundwork for setting up the phone system is covered separately.

The MaxoTel Teams integration comes in two shapes, and which one a brokerage uses determines nearly everything else about the setup.

Hybrid PBX links each Teams user to a MaxoTel PBX extension. The broker's Teams app becomes another device on the hosted PBX, so they can dial internal extensions, sit in queues and ring groups, and take external calls through the brokerage's existing numbers and call flow. This is the mode to look at first where a brokerage already runs a hosted PBX and wants its existing call flow left intact, because it adds Teams as a device rather than replacing anything. Whether it actually fits depends on your call flows, number allocation, licensing and handset requirements.

Direct Routing connects Teams to a SIP trunk instead, and each Teams user is assigned a phone number through MaxoTel's number routing rather than an extension. Direct Routing is Microsoft's own mechanism for connecting an external telephony service to Teams Phone, and it suits organisations that want Teams to be the call platform in its own right. MaxoTel notes that while a SIP trunk is connected to Teams, that trunk cannot be used for any other purpose.

Day to day, the difference the broker notices is simply that the phone is now in Teams. Calls are placed from the Teams app on a computer, mobile or tablet, or from a Teams-certified desk phone that signs in with Microsoft credentials. Transfers work the way Teams does them: blind, where the call goes straight through, or attended, where the broker introduces the caller first. A second call arriving mid-conversation can be answered with the first placed on hold, which is the same behaviour brokers already have on a handset. MaxoTel points users to Microsoft's own calling guide for how the Teams apps themselves behave rather than documenting that separately, so treat native Teams call features as Microsoft's to specify.

The commercial shape is straightforward. MaxoTel prices the Teams integration at $3.95 per month per Microsoft Teams user on top of an existing business plan, and Teams users cannot be run as a standalone product. On the Microsoft side, each user needs appropriate licensing assigned in Microsoft 365, and depending on the plan a brokerage holds, Microsoft may charge extra for a Teams Phone add-on. That second cost is the one most often missed at the quoting stage, because it sits on a different invoice from the phone system.

The choice between the two modes is also a choice about where the record of a client call gets created, and that is the part worth settling first.

MaxoTel documents call recording as a hosted PBX function: when enabled, it records inbound and outbound calls on your PBX. In Hybrid PBX, each Teams user is linked to a PBX extension, so calls continue to run through the PBX and the recording, routing and call history behaviour a brokerage already relies on continues to apply. In that mode the dialling surface changes and the system of record does not.

Direct Routing is set up differently. Calls run over a dedicated SIP trunk and Teams users are assigned phone numbers rather than linked to extensions. MaxoTel states that all of its hosted PBX features can be used with Microsoft Teams Direct Routing. What the published support documentation does not set out is the specific call recording and call history behaviour in that configuration, in enough detail to establish that it works exactly as it does in Hybrid PBX. If recorded calls form part of how your brokerage documents client conversations, confirm the detail with MaxoTel before committing to Direct Routing. Hybrid PBX is the worked example through the rest of this article, because it is the mode the support documentation covers step by step.

The integration is well documented and the setup itself is quick. The difficulties brokerages run into tend to cluster around a few specific points, and all of them are easier to handle before a rollout than after one.

A brokerage running this well ends up with a setup that is easy to describe: brokers call from Teams, while routing, queues, recording and call history continue to run on the hosted PBX. The picture below is drawn from Hybrid PBX, for the documentation reasons set out above.

Callyx.ai works from recorded calls, which is why the device a broker dialled from is not the variable that decides what can be analysed. What decides it is whether the call was recorded and whether the recording lands where it always has. In a Hybrid PBX setup, where Teams users are linked to PBX extensions and recording stays a PBX function, that holds before and after a Teams rollout.

That matters more than it first appears. A brokerage mid-migration may have one team in Teams, another on handsets and a principal on a mobile for a fortnight. An approach that depended on the device would produce three different pictures of the same week. An approach that works from the recording produces one.

Worth confirming rather than assuming: if you are moving to Direct Routing, or your ingestion arrangement was set up some time ago, check the recording and call history detail with both product teams before the migration rather than after it. The architecture makes a smooth transition likely. A ten-minute confirmation makes it certain.

The call record itself is available programmatically as well as through the portal. MaxoTel's Call History API returns call detail records in JSON or CSV for a requested period. The documented fields include the call identifier, time, direction, origin, destination, rate, status, duration, cost and whether a recording exists for that call. That field set is what reporting built directly on the phone system has to work with, and it is unchanged by the Teams integration because it reads from the PBX.

Callyx.ai adds the layer the phone system does not produce: what was actually said. Call records tell you that a 14-minute outbound call to a client occurred on Tuesday. They do not tell you whether the renewal options were explained, whether a disclosure was made, or whether the client raised a concern that needs following up. Callyx.ai automatically monitors 100% of your recorded calls and surfaces that content, which is where the difference between a phone system report and a business picture sits. The boundary between native reporting and what sits outside it is mapped separately.

For a brokerage considering Teams, the practical implication is manageable. The integration is a decision about how brokers work day to day. It does not have to be a decision about what you can see afterwards, provided the mode is chosen with recording in mind and the recordings keep landing where they always have.

The MaxoTel Teams integration gives a brokerage one place to make and take client calls, inside the application brokers already have open all day. It removes a small, constant friction rather than solving a large problem, which is exactly why it is worth doing carefully and not worth over-engineering. Hybrid PBX suits most brokerages already running a hosted PBX. Direct Routing suits those who want Teams to be the call platform in its own right.

In Hybrid PBX, the part that matters most for a brokerage does not change. Routing, queues, recording, retention and call history remain functions of the hosted PBX, and the record of a client conversation keeps being created in the same place it always was. MaxoTel states that its hosted PBX features are also available with Direct Routing, though the published documentation stops short of setting out the recording and call history detail for that mode, so confirm it before choosing it. Settle that question before you move anyone and the integration becomes an operational improvement rather than a change to your evidence base.

Callyx.ai works from that same record, which is why the dialling surface is not the deciding factor in what you can see afterwards. Recorded calls and the call history that accompanies them are the inputs. Get the phone system settings right, confirm your ingestion arrangement before you migrate rather than after, and the layer above keeps doing its job through the change.