Teams call quality monitoring means measuring, continuously, how calls and meetings perform for each user, and why. The Teams admin center already shows live data for each participant in a running meeting. Continuous monitoring adds every call as it runs, the device, Wi-Fi, ISP and VPN around it, the media relay path, history, alerts by site, and Zoom.
A choppy call is one of the most visible IT problems. Everyone in the meeting notices, nobody knows whose fault it is, and by the time a ticket arrives the call is long over. Finding the cause after the fact is where teams often lose time. This guide covers what Microsoft gives you, what to add, and how we approach Teams calls and meetings quality.
What do the Teams admin center and Call Quality Dashboard show?
More than many admins think. The Teams admin center has user, meeting and participant views, with real-time telemetry for meetings in progress, as Microsoft's guide to monitoring and troubleshooting Teams meetings and calls explains. That real-time detail stays available for seven days after the meeting with Teams Premium or Teams Rooms Pro, and only while the meeting runs otherwise. Aggregated call data covers the last 30 days.
Call Quality Dashboard (CQD) shows call and meeting quality trends across the organisation, by network, building and site. It is built for organisation-wide trends rather than for one person's meeting, and its data usually arrives within 30 minutes of the end of a call.
Use both. They are the right starting point for any Teams call investigation.
Can you troubleshoot a Teams call while it is running?
Yes for meetings and events, straight from the Teams admin center. Meetings and events can be examined while they run, and the meeting view refreshes every minute. One-to-one and PSTN calls appear once they have ended: their telemetry can take from 30 minutes to two hours to be processed. Microsoft documents this experience for calls and meetings on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and the web.
With Teams Premium, the admin center can also warn you during a meeting. Its alert rules watch audio, video and screen sharing quality in running meetings, for the users you choose, with thresholds you set, and post to a Teams channel or a webhook. The participants they watch need Teams Premium or Teams Rooms Pro.
What continuous monitoring adds is coverage and context around that live data:
- Every call, as it happens. Each call is followed while it runs, one-to-one, group and PSTN calls included, on Windows and macOS, with fresh figures every 30 seconds.
- The context of the call. Device load, headset, Wi-Fi, VPN and ISP are recorded with the call, so the same detail is there live and days later.
- History. Call history is kept for up to six months, long enough to check whether a fix held.
What we see in the field. IT teams have asked for live Teams troubleshooting for two or three years, and the views and alerts above answer part of that request. When a senior manager's meeting degrades and the helpdesk gets the call, the data usually exists. The hard part is using it in time: knowing which meeting to open, opening it at the right moment and reading it before people give up. Without the full path around the call and the user's usual figures, the fallback is often to restart Teams and rejoin, which costs every participant more time.
What does Teams call quality monitoring add?
The built-in views describe the call. The hard part is often what happened around it:
- Before and between meetings. Poor calls often follow a network that was already struggling. Continuous tests can show, for example, that the problem started at 9:00, not at the 10:30 meeting.
- The full path. Device, Wi-Fi, ISP, VPN and corporate network, measured at the moment of the call, so you can tell a tired home router from an overloaded VPN.
- History for trend reviews. Months of data show whether a fix worked, or whether the same ISP keeps coming back.
- Alerts by site and ISP. On top of the meeting alerts available with Teams Premium, the right team hears that call quality is dropping at a site or for an ISP, instead of waiting for tickets.
- Other apps on the same devices. When Teams is poor, Outlook and SharePoint often are too. Seeing them together points to the network rather than to Teams.
- Zoom. Many organisations use Teams internally and Zoom with some customers or partners. Measuring both from the same devices shows whether the problem is the tool or the connection.
Built-in views and continuous monitoring, side by side
| Question | Teams admin center and CQD | Continuous monitoring |
|---|---|---|
| Can I follow it while it runs? | Meetings and events, refreshed every minute; one-to-one and PSTN calls once they have ended. Quality alerts on running meetings with Teams Premium. | Every call while it runs, one-to-one, group and PSTN included, with the device and network around it. |
| Was this call poor, and for whom? | Participant view, with real-time telemetry during meetings. | The same answer, with the state of the device and the network at that moment. |
| Was it the Wi-Fi, the ISP or the VPN? | Call details for each participant, and trends by network, building and site in CQD. | Each step of the path, measured before, during and after the call, up to the Teams media relay. |
| Is it getting better or worse? | Trends across the organisation in CQD. | Trends by user, site, ISP and device, kept for up to six months. |
| Does it cover Zoom? | Teams only. | Teams and Zoom from the same devices, alongside the other Microsoft 365 apps. |
Why does the Teams media path matter?
Because every call depends on the route its audio and video take. Teams sends audio and video straight to the other party when it can, and through a Microsoft relay when it cannot, as the Teams call flows page describes. Microsoft recommends keeping Teams media out of the VPN tunnel, with split tunnelling, so that media takes the most direct path possible.
The case to look for is a device that reaches a distant relay. DNS, VPN or proxy settings can send a device to a relay far from where the user sits, and calls from that device that need a relay then take the long way round.
From every monitored device, we check which Teams media relay a call would use right now, and how long it takes to reach it. Every hop from the device to Microsoft's network is measured, with 90 days of history, including whether the VPN split tunnel works as intended. A distant relay then shows up before the next meeting rather than in a ticket. See how we check the Teams media path and relays.
How do you troubleshoot a poor call, step by step?
- Find the call in the Teams admin center and open the participant who reported it. A running meeting is in the in-progress list; a one-to-one or PSTN call appears once it has ended and been processed. Note the time and what was affected: audio, video or screen sharing.
- Check whether others in the same meeting had problems. One participant points to their device or connection. Everyone points to the meeting or the service.
- Look at the network path for that user at that moment: Wi-Fi quality, packet loss on the home router, ISP latency, the VPN and the Teams media relay the device reaches.
- Compare with the user's own baseline. Was this a bad day, or is it always like this?
- Check Service health for any incident Microsoft was working on for your tenant at that time. Our guide to Microsoft 365 service health covers what it tells you.
- Fix the cause, then watch the trend for that user or site over the following weeks.
Steps 3 and 4 are where continuous monitoring saves the most time. Without it, the answer is often "it seems fine now".
What about Zoom?
The same logic applies. A Zoom meeting crosses the same laptop, the same Wi-Fi, the same ISP and the same VPN as a Teams call. When both are measured from the same devices, a problem that hits Teams and Zoom at the same time usually points to the connection, while a problem that hits only one points to that service or its settings.
This matters when Teams is used internally and Zoom with customers, or the other way round. It also stops two teams arguing about whose tool is at fault.
How Neptune helps
Neptune selects and implements the call quality monitoring that fits your devices and sites, for Teams and, where you use it, Zoom. We agree thresholds and alert recipients with your helpdesk, unified communications and network teams or your NOC, train them on the method above, and review the trend with you during the project, before a customer success manager follows up. See Teams calls and meetings quality in our monitoring approach, read about SharePoint Online monitoring, or see what to measure for digital employee experience.
Sources
- Monitor and troubleshoot Teams meetings and calls (Microsoft Learn)
- What is Call Quality Dashboard (Microsoft Learn)
- Microsoft Teams monitoring and alerting (Microsoft Learn)
- Alerts for in-progress meeting audio quality issues (Microsoft Learn)
- Microsoft Teams call flows (Microsoft Learn)
- Implementing VPN split tunnelling for Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Learn)
- How to check Microsoft 365 service health (Microsoft Learn)
