July 2023 comes with new preview version of Microsoft Teams PowerShell module. Its number is 5.3.1. It introduces one new policy and a not-too-well documented parameter for phone assignment. Let's find out what we can discover about these two.

Virtual appointment policy

The entire set of cmdlets for virtual appointment policy has been released. The cmdlets are:

• Get-CsTeamsVirtualAppointmentsPolicy
• Grant-CsTeamsVirtualAppointmentsPolicy
• New-CsTeamsVirtualAppointmentsPolicy
• Remove-CsTeamsVirtualAppointmentsPolicy
• Set-CsTeamsVirtualAppointmentsPolicy

The Get- cmdlet returns the identity and one meaningful parameter: EnableSmsNotifications. The parameter is related with Roadmap entry 127901: Microsoft Teams: SMS Notifications in Virtual Appointments Template (Premium). The entry says:

External guest users will receive SMS text notifications about their appointment, including appointment details and the meeting join link so they can join directly from mobile. Text notifications are sent for appointment confirmation, updates, and a reminder 15 minutes before the appointment begins. This is available in US only at this time.

Rollout of this feature is scheduled for August 2023.

What's interesting about these cmdlet is that my developer tenant is the only one where they work. For all the other tenants I checked they return: Type TeamsVirtualAppointmentsPolicy is not currently enabled in flighting Please refer to documentation.

The parameter EnableSmsNotifications is currently settable for the tenants where the cmdlet is working.

The Grant- cmdlet contains -Group and -Rank which might suggest that admins will be able to assign policies on a per-group basis.

Assignment category

Get-CsPhoneNumberAssignment and Set-CsPhoneNumberAssignment have a new parameter: AssignmentCategory. It's mentioned in 5.3.1 Release Notes, but without any explanation. I found no mention of it in existing documentation.

The parameter accepts string and there's no predefined set of values you can submit to it. While digging into API responses from Teams Admin Center I only found some numbers with AssignmentCategory equal to Primary.

Summary

This preview release introduces no very important changes. For Premium subscribers the ability to control virtual appointment seems promising. Let's monitor and see whether any new parameters are added in the future.