End to End Visibility for Microsoft Teams with Digital Experience Monitoring

Hybrid collaboration has rewritten the rulebook for IT — and for many organizations the moment of truth has arrived: can IT teams and MSPs restore control over Microsoft Teams, Teams Phone, Teams Rooms and the broader Microsoft 365 stack before user frustration, rising cost, and governance gaps take hold?

Background / Overview​

The hybrid workplace put Microsoft Teams at the center of daily work: chat, meetings, telephony and now AI-driven assistants like Copilot. That centrality makes Teams a mission-critical service — but it also makes troubleshooting exponentially harder. Problems can begin anywhere: an overloaded home router, a misconfigured VPN, ISP routing, a corporate firewall, the Session Border Controller (SBC) used for Direct Routing, or Microsoft’s own infrastructure. Native admin consoles are valuable, but they are often siloed — Call Quality Dashboard (CQD), Call Analytics, Real‑Time telemetry and the Teams Admin Center each expose pieces of the picture rather than a single, correlated view. Microsoft’s own guidance shows the tooling available to admins (CQD, per-user call analytics, and real‑time analytics) but also prescribes complementary practices — QoS, uploading building data, and Power BI reporting — precisely because full, end-to-end visibility is rarely delivered by a single pane of glass.
That gap is the raison d’être for Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM): tools that proactively measure and correlate the full user experience — from the endpoint through the network and into cloud services — to detect, localize and remediate issues before users even open a ticket. Gartner and industry coverage position DEM as a mainstream requirement for 2024–25 IT operations; vendors ranging from Dynatrace and Catchpoint to specialist suppliers now claim DEM capabilities that help IT move from “firefighting” to preventive operations.
Martello’s Vantage DX is a recent entrant positioning itself as a Microsoft‑centric DEM solution built specifically to close the visibility gap for Teams, Teams Phone, Teams Rooms, Microsoft 365 apps and Copilot. The vendor claims end‑to‑end path tracing, synthetic “robot” transactions that continuously emulate user flows, SBC correlation for Teams Phone, and Copilot‑specific monitoring that tracks availability and responsiveness. Independent industry reporting highlights Vantage DX’s approach and the use of virtual robots to emulate Microsoft 365 usage. Those claims demand scrutiny — they are highly promising if true, but they also represent a new layer of operational complexity and vendor reliance that IT leaders must evaluate.

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Step 1: Regain End‑to‑End Visibility — what good looks like​

Visibility isn’t just “is the service up?” — it’s the ability to answer: which path, which device, and which component is causing the degradation right now?

What to demand from a visibility platform​

• Network path tracing: deterministic mapping from the user device (local IP where possible) through Wi‑Fi/AP, edge router, ISP hops and peering points to the nearest Microsoft front end.
• Correlation with native Microsoft telemetry: CQD, per‑user call analytics, and any Microsoft 365 diagnostics should be ingested and shown alongside network and endpoint telemetry so root cause is immediate rather than inferred.
• Endpoint context: client version, OS build, device CPU/memory, microphone/speaker hardware, and whether the client was on VPN or local egress.
• Service coverage: Teams meetings, Teams Phone (PSTN), Teams Rooms, Exchange/Outlook, OneDrive and SharePoint, plus Copilot responsiveness for AI‑driven flows.

Martello’s materials show a purpose-built integration for Teams and Microsoft 365 that emphasizes visual network path tracing and ingestion of Microsoft call/meeting telemetry alongside synthetic agents that run continuous tests. That approach converts a scattered set of consoles and CSV exports into a single troubleshootable event timeline. Independent coverage by industry press confirms the product’s core objectives and highlights the robot-based synthetic testing as a differentiator.

Caveat — what vendors often don’t tell you up front​

• Marketing language that says “the only solution to X” or “industry‑first” are useful attention-grabbers but require validation against other DEM vendors and against your own environment. Those claims should be tested in a pilot that mirrors your typical remote, branch and hybrid footprint.
• Gaps in local IP visibility may persist unless you upload building and endpoint data into Microsoft’s CQD or enable endpoint agents that can capture private addresses; some visibility canvases remain incomplete without tenant-level configuration input.

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Step 2: Monitor proactively, not reactively — the synthetic advantage​

Waiting for a helpdesk ticket is a losing strategy in dispersed environments. Synthetic transactions — automated scripts or “robots” that perform login, join meetings, make test calls, send messages and run Copilot queries — are the cornerstone of proactive monitoring.

• Synthetic tests provide 24/7 checks of availability and performance from representative network egress points (office, home, branch, cloud regions).
• They create baseline SLAs for performance (connect time, join success rate, media QoS metrics) and let you detect degradations before real users are hit.
• In environments where Teams Phone ties into the PSTN, synthetic PSTN calls (robot managers dialing a number) verify not only SIP signaling but media quality across SBCs and trunking routes.

Industry best practice and product docs make synthetic monitoring a non‑controversial staple of modern DEM. Vendors such as Dynatrace, Splunk, Kentik and Netdata document the mechanics and benefits of synthetic transaction monitoring — essentially automated, repeatable user journeys executed from distributed agents to detect issues proactively. Martello explicitly advertises continuous, scheduled robot tests for Teams and for Copilot interactions, along with AI detection of anomalous outages.

Practical tips for synthetic tests​

• Emulate the actual user flows your business needs: webinar presenters, support‑desk conference calls, CRM screen‑sharing, and Copilot prompt/response sequences.
• Deploy synthetic agents from multiple egress points — a cloud region, a representative branch office, and at least one agent behind a typical home gateway/VPN profile.
• Run frequent short tests (e.g., every 5–10 minutes for critical flows) and longer, deeper tests for complex transactions (end-to-end meeting + file share + Copilot summary).
• Use synthetic failures as a trigger to collect full packet captures and native Microsoft diagnostic bundles for expedited RCA.

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Step 3: Oversee Teams, Phone and Rooms for maximum ROI​

Teams now spans conferencing, persistent chat, telephony and meeting‑room systems. Treating these as separate silos wastes money and leaves gaps in user experience.

SBC correlation is a game‑changer — with a health warning​

SBCs (Session Border Controllers) are often the opaque element in call flows for Direct Routing. Manual comparison of CQD call records and SBC logs is laborious and error prone. Martello’s Vantage DX claims one‑click correlation of AudioCodes SBC records with Microsoft call quality data, surfacing congestion, packet loss and SIP signaling anomalies alongside per‑call QoE. That type of correlation can materially shorten mean time to resolution for PSTN quality issues.
However: the claim that any single supplier is the “only” one to provide a given view should be validated. Other monitoring vendors also provide SBC and PSTN correlation or Direct Routing reports via CQD Power BI templates and integrations. Use pilot testing to validate the depth of correlation you need: are timestamps aligned, are SIP traces normalized, and does the vendor support your SBC vendor and version? Microsoft’s CQD and the downloadable Power BI templates already contain Direct Routing and SBC report templates — so a vendor that packages this into a more accessible UI is useful, but not necessarily unique.

Teams Rooms and hybrid meeting parity​

For meeting rooms, you need simultaneous visibility into the in‑room audio/video chain (AV gear, room network), the room controller, and remote participant streams. A consolidated view across endpoints plus synthetic room joins allows IT to detect room hardware misconfigurations, codec mismatches and Wi‑Fi interference before an all‑hands meeting. Martello advertises unified monitoring across in‑room and remote participants; validating that with a pilot that stresses mixed-mode meetings is essential.

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Step 4: Optimise Microsoft 365 and Copilot performance — AI adds new constraints​

Copilot and other near‑real‑time AI features impose new expectations: sub‑second responsiveness for interactive prompts and low latency for rich, contextual sessions. Microsoft’s own deployment guidance for sensitive customers explicitly ties Copilot success to sound network configuration — low round‑trip times to the Microsoft Global Network, avoidance of proxies/packet inspection that introduce latency, and websocket connectivity for web‑grounded experiences. In short: the network footprint and egress behavior matter more, not less, with Copilot.
Martello positions Vantage DX as the first DEM platform to include Copilot‑specific monitoring — measuring availability and responsiveness of Copilot flows, plus network path tracing for the AI traffic. For IT leaders, this is directly relevant: Copilot’s perceived usefulness will collapse if it feels sluggish or times out in the middle of composing content. But two notes of caution:

• Measure what matters: Copilot’s user experience is influenced by prompt size, model response time, Graph lookups (if Graph grounding is enabled), and endpoint CPU/memory. Make sure any monitoring platform captures both network and application latency as separate metrics.
• Governance and privacy: Copilot often requires Graph and tenant content access; verifying telemetry retention, scope of data captured by third‑party DEM tools, and contractual obligations around data residency is a governance must. WindowsForum community guidance underscores the governance work — piloting with controlled groups, sensitivity labelling and legal review — that should accompany any Copilot rollout.

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Step 5: Respond fast with real‑time alerts and integrated workflows​

Detection alone doesn’t fix outages — speed of response and quality of incident context do.

• Configure actionable alerts (not noisy thresholds): only surface incidents with root‑cause context (e.g., “packet loss on path X for calls to region Y correlates with SBC drop rate”) to avoid alert fatigue.
• Integrate with ITSM: automation that creates a ticket, attaches the relevant CQD/packet capture, and assigns the right resolver group shortens resolution time.
• Use automated remediation where safe: bandwidth policy pushes, SD‑WAN re‑routing, or device restart playbooks can be safely automated for common, low‑risk fixes.

Martello advertises AI‑driven early outage detection and customizable thresholds to reduce noise; these features speed escalation into existing ITSM workflows. Make sure the platform you choose supports the toolchain you rely on — ServiceNow, Jira, PagerDuty — and validate the fidelity of auto‑triage rules during the pilot.

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Step 6: Measure, report and improve continuously​

Hybrid environments are dynamic. Routing changes, VPN policies, ISP congestion and feature rollouts (like Copilot updates) constantly shift the baseline.

• Establish a measurement cadence: weekly executive dashboards for SLA adherence, monthly trend reviews for licence optimization, and quarterly reviews for architectural changes.
• Use synthetic baselines to measure the ROI of interventions: did changing an egress point reduce join time by X%? Did a Wi‑Fi upgrade lower packet loss for room devices?
• Tie metrics to procurement: license allocation analytics, underused Teams Premium seats, or costly PSTN plans should be visible as part of the operational dashboard.

Microsoft provides CQD Power BI templates for usage and PSTN reporting; third‑party DEM should complement these with trend analytics and automated SLA reports so you can prove the value of monitoring investments.

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A critical appraisal — strengths, limitations and risks​

Notable strengths of purpose‑built DEM for Teams​

• Faster RCA: Correlation of network path traces, native Microsoft telemetry and endpoint metrics can turn hours of log sifting into minutes of diagnosis.
• Proactive prevention: Synthetic robots and anomaly detection catch regressions before your executives or contact center customers notice.
• PSTN clarity: SBC correlation, when done well, removes a major blind spot in Direct Routing environments and reduces finger‑pointing between carriers, SBC vendors and Microsoft.
• Copilot readiness: Monitoring Copilot responsiveness and availability helps ensure AI features enhance — not hinder — productivity.

Realistic limitations and operational risks​

• Marketing claims need proof: Statements that a vendor is “first” or “only” are marketing frames; validate depth of support for your SBC vendor, for multi‑tenant or sovereign cloud deployments, and for the Copilot scenarios you plan to use. Treat such claims as hypotheses to be tested in a controlled pilot.
• Integration cost and complexity: Adding a DEM platform is not just a software purchase — it requires endpoint agents or synthetic nodes, tenant-level permissioning for Microsoft diagnostics, data retention design and ITSM integrations. Expect a deployment program rather than a plug‑and‑play rollout.
• Data governance: Any third‑party that ingests call records, meeting metadata or tenant content must be scrutinized for data handling, retention, encryption and contractual liability — especially in regulated industries.
• Vendor lock‑in vs. multi‑tool strategy: Some organizations may prefer a best‑of‑breed DEM combined with internal automation; others will value a single pane of glass. Choose based on operational runway and vendor openness (APIs, export formats).

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Practical, sequential plan for IT leaders (a 90‑day playbook)​

• Inventory and prioritize
• Map Teams users by location, meeting rooms, call centers and telephony dependencies.
• Identify high‑value processes (sales demos, contact center, executive meetings, Copilot‑heavy teams).
• Pilot selection (Weeks 1–4)
• Choose 3–5 representative sites and a cross‑section of home/office/branch profiles.
• Run Vantage DX (or the chosen DEM) alongside native Microsoft tooling for parity testing.
• Validate key scenarios (Weeks 2–6)
• Synthetic meeting joins, Copilot prompt/response, PSTN outbound/inbound robot calls, Teams Room joins.
• Verify SBC correlation with your SBC vendor logs and CQD records.
• Governance and security (Weeks 2–8)
• Confirm telemetry flows, encryption, retention, and contractual terms for data handling.
• Engage Legal and Security for any Copilot or meeting transcript exposures.
• Integrate workflows (Weeks 4–10)
• Configure alert thresholds and ITSM integrations.
• Build at least three runbooks: PSTN degradation, widespread join failures, Copilot slowness.
• Scale and measure (Weeks 8–12+)
• Expand monitoring to more sites, add license and adoption analytics to regular reports.
• Compute ROI: reduced incident MTTR, fewer helpdesk tickets, avoided meeting failures.

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Final assessment — from firefighting to futureproofing​

Hybrid collaboration demands operational maturity. The shift is from owning a few centralized networks to orchestrating thousands of distributed egresses and devices. That complexity makes DEM not just a convenience but a risk‑mitigation necessity. Martello’s Vantage DX addresses many of the practical gaps that IT teams complain about — unified visibility, synthetic transaction testing, SBC correlation for Teams Phone, and Copilot‑specific monitoring — and industry reporting recognizes the value of purpose‑built DEM for Microsoft workloads.
At the same time, IT leaders must avoid uncritical vendor acceptance. Verify claims in your environment, confirm contractual and regulatory protections for telemetry and tenant data, and plan for an operational deployment that includes governance, automation and continuous measurement. The right outcome is not “one more tool,” it’s a measurable shift: fewer reactive firefights, shorter incident lifecycles, higher adoption of Teams and Copilot, and demonstrable ROI for licensing and infrastructure investments. Practical pilots and tight governance will let organizations move from uncertainty to confidence — and give Teams the reliability the hybrid era demands.

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Executive checklist — what to do this week​

• Approve a 90‑day pilot budget and pick representative sites and user cohorts.
• Require the vendor to validate SBC correlation with your SBC vendor/version as part of the pilot scope.
• Insist on a clear data handling addendum that explains what telemetry is collected, how long it’s kept, and where it’s stored.
• Run Copilot‑specific synthetic scripts from your typical egress points and require performance baselines and alerting thresholds.
• Integrate a feedback step with helpdesk so synthetic failures generate concrete, actionable tickets with attached diagnostics.

The opportunity is clear: with the right DEM approach, Teams stops being a mystery box and becomes a reliably managed service — even across the messy, beautiful chaos of hybrid work.

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Source: UC Today Mastering Microsoft Teams Management: How IT Leaders Can Regain Control Step By Step