I built PhoneDesk because I was tired of going back through the same steps in the Teams admin centre.
I would assign a licence and configure a call queue, then realise I had missed a step. So I would go back, fix it and try again. Sometimes I had mixed up a setting. Sometimes I was still trying to understand what Microsoft called the thing I needed.
The repetition was frustrating. I wanted a way to follow the setup without having to keep the whole sequence in my head.
The back-and-forth adds up
A Teams Phone setup involves resource accounts, licences, call queues and auto attendants. Those names describe different parts of the system, but they were not always clear to me while I was trying to get a task done.
An error meant another round of checking. Had I missed a step? Had I changed the wrong setting? I would go back through the setup to work out what needed fixing.
Holidays made the difference
Swiss holidays were one reason I wanted a better workflow. Configuring them in the Teams admin centre meant repeatedly clicking through settings.
In PhoneDesk, I implemented Gauss’s Easter algorithm to calculate Easter and the holidays whose dates depend on it. The app generates the holiday dates automatically, so I can select the holidays for a canton and deploy them to Teams Phone.
Easier holiday configuration was the first improvement that felt especially useful in my own work.
Putting the workflow in one application
PhoneDesk brings Teams Phone administration into a desktop application. It includes guided setup, call queues, auto attendants and holiday settings. Microsoft Graph and PowerShell handle the administration behind the interface.
My reason for building it was practical: I wanted the steps to be easier to follow. An interface should help me understand what I am configuring and what comes next.
The application supports English and German. That also makes the wording part of the work: a label needs to make sense to the person configuring the system.
You can explore the application and its source in the PhoneDesk repository.