Last Updated on February 5, 2022 by GrahamWalsh
Tom Arbuthnot and Mark Vale decided to start a monthly chat session where it will be a mix of speakers and Q&A session. It will be on the 1st Thursday of each month. Full info here and register to get reminded of the upcoming session. The speaker sessions will be recorded and posted, whereas the Q&A will be open chat.
I was honoured to be asked to present on the opening show, talking all about the new features coming to Microsoft Teams Rooms this year, or well at least what is public knowledge. See below for the session I presented. However, there was some great Q&A in the chat too, so I have captured that below.
YouTube Video
Q. What form does the check-in come in? Via mobile, Teams app, the panel, or in room console?
A. Check in button is on the Teams Panel outside the room
Q. Can you check in from inside the room as well as outside?
A. No, Check In is only displayed on the Teams Panel
Q. Teams meeting in progress should = check in in my opinion
A. That could fail in certain scenarios as people take rooms without booking them.
Q. If the room is cancelled / not checked in, does the meeting invite get updated for all invitees, to reflect that the location is no longer that room?
A. The Resource Account is not removed from the invite but shows that it has declined the meeting if not checked in.
Q. Any idea on power consumption of those devices ??I tend to prefer this type of screen (eInk) because of energy savings www.roomz.io roomz displays do integrate seamlessly into exchange (on premise and/or online) also you can combine with IR sensors to avoid ghost meetings
A. Each Teams Panel manufacture will list their specs on their website. Usually, POE or POE+
Q. Are Microsoft planning to support any other CA policy settings outside of Named Locations?
A. I understand that full Conditional Access Polices will be possible.
Q. How many cameras can you connect?
A. Jason at Crestron has tested up to 8 and it worked, but the naming is just the camera name so its tricky to know which camera is which.
Q. What is the benefit of having both call and meet function?
A. Meet button creates a Meet Now experience just like the desktop client. Call brings up the dial pad to make a PSTN call.
Q. How long before front row and casting for MTRoA
A. Casting is available now on MTRoA. Front Row is meant to be available later this year.
Q. When you Pin / Spotlight people – does it impact everyone’s view?
A. Spotlight is for everyone in the meeting. When you Pin users, that is just for your client/room view.
Q. Any idea about 4K display support? The docs still say 1080p
A. MTRs are still at 1080p resolution. Support for 4K will come at a later date, I’m sure.
Q. Can you set up the breakout rooms from the room or only participate?
A. You will only be able to participate in the breakout room.
Q. I know MTRoW devices restart nightly at 2am? Does anyone know MTRoA devices do the same thing?
A1. Each vendor might have it’s own update cycle, but for example, Neat MTRoA devices do a check for Neat firmware nightly. This can be disabled and just managed via TAC.
A2. They don’t. But some vendors can do automatic updates from their cloud. If an update is installed, it could restart as part of the process
A3. Yealink doesn’t offer managed updates from its own library. Best to wait for an update to show up in TAC and you can schedule it or manually push it to update. Or if you get the update file from YL, you can manually install in Web UI or YMCS
Q. Can the Teams Board be managed in Intune? What type of licensing does it require in O365?
A1. Neat Board can only be managed via Intune/Teams Admin Center. As for licensing, you can use a Microsoft Standard Meeting Room license or a personal license.
A2. There are some API endpoints in Graph for managing these devices as well. Very new and only in beta right now, but might be useful
Q. Who’s betting MTRoW will go EOL in the next 2 years?
A. Ilya reckons MTRoW is going nowhere…… Can’t imagine why you’d want to keep two code bases if when feature parity is available. But hey ho
Q. MTR Premium doesn’t seem to allow collection of logs in the way that you can in Teams TAC. There’s a button for it but it doesn’t work. Any idea when that might be looked at?
A1. Not sure why this happening. I would recommend joining the Office Hours call that the MTRP host every Wednesday and ask your questions to them that way.
A2. Didn’t catch who asked the question about getting logs … but (big disclaimer, not tested this), this API endpoint looks like it might kick off generating logs for a device: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/teamworkdevice-rundiagnostics?view=graph-rest-beta&tabs=http
Q. Should we look at single or dual screen deployments from now on, especially considering Front Row is here?
A1. I think now is the time to start considering dual screen. Dual screen dynamic layouts with stretched gallery, Front Row and other enhancements make it a great solution
A2. Agree unless the room will be used for a lot of Direct Guest Join in addition to Teams meetings. The single screen in those rooms solves a lot of help desk calls
A3. We have been doing video walls as well. You could do one exceptionally large display made up of multiple, 4×2 for instance, displays on a matrix. Or split it so you have let’s say 2×2 as screen one and 2×2 as screen two
Q. What are people’s thoughts on Projectors?
A. The projectors are almost impossible to keep aligned once running due to thermal expansion in the mounts. If you remember the bad old days, you’ll also remember you have to really control the amount of ambient light in the room, especially in the summer and with the fashion for whole wall windows.
Q. Graham Walsh – what are you most excited about seeing/using in real world?
A. I’m looking forward to seeing Front Row and Intelligent Cameras coming out. It will change the view of hybrid working and make it equal wherever you attend from.
Q. Where can we see these device vendors?
A. If you’d like to see Neat and all the other device vendors and get hands on then don’t forget to register for this year’s Commsverse www.commsverse.com
Q. Is the basic MTR alerting from TAC going to get any better? If not, is MTR Premium the best/only way to go?
A. I guess it will get better over time. Obviously MTRP is the better offering today. However, each OEM also have their monitoring/management platforms.
Q. Don’t think Poly have any centralised management/alerting of their MTRoW (e.g., Lens) or am I missing something? Know Crestron do a better job here, but we have Poly kit.
A. Poly Lens can’t manage MTRoW as far as I know
Q. What licenses are required for Teams Panels?
A. Teams panel shares the same license as device inside
Q. Do you think Microsoft will be doing more advanced Room Booking e.g., catering? We want to drop Condeco.
A1. This could be done with Line of Business applications that you can build in say PowerApps
A2. Yes. We’re looking at moving to Teams Panels for sure, but being able to deliver hospitality would be especially useful
A3. I’m not sure I see them tacking the wider space of room bookings, catering, kit etc natively
A4. I think they will look to partners to do it. Lots you can do quite quickly with Power Apps – Graham Walsh has some good blog examples I think
A5. If I made a JustEat panel LOB application, would anyone use it?!
A6. I think things like catering are especially useful. But normally they do it from a room booking system. Catering on the panel would be useful
A7. Just don’t leave your Just Eat account signed in 🙂
Q. Is there is a Teams conference solution device that support Teams meeting in addition to zoom meeting or can i achieve this by Enabling Teams Room devices to join third-party meetings?
A1. Guest join on Teams Rooms is what you are looking for https://www.graham-walsh.com/microsoft-teams-room-guest-join-access-for-zoom/
A2. Rolled this out over about 80 meeting rooms in one office and it works well
Q. Anyone knows if there is Audio codes SBC test environment for trying it etc?
A1. You can download a virtual with 5 licenses – will (with newer firmware) – be limited to max 3 minutes calls
A2. We have DR provider in SBC as a service model. They have infrastructure based on AudioCodes – if you have any questions, I’m happy to help (Daniel Sierzant)
Q. Question on Direct Routing: Early January there was a possibility to alter Phonenumbers in the Teams Admin Web interface in the context of the User……..and you could put in any number……….its gone again. Any comment?
A1. I noticed that this disappeared yesterday
A2. Guess they decided to fix the issues by re-writing all of it
Q. Any way to stop people calling Group Chats?
A1. User Training 🙂
A2. It’s like the Teams equivalent of Reply to All 🙂
A3. It’s like the game of knocking on a door and running away. Someone accidentally pressing the call button, then hanging up, and everyone else joining for the next minute and finding nobody there…
A4. If you have over x number of people, group calling is disabled. Although I don’t know what the required users to make this disabled.
Q: Just enabled the Teams “Praise” app in our tenant…. usually how long after the app appears for our end-users in their Teams UI? Thanks
A. Apps are usually appearing in people’s teams clients within a few hours but max around 24 hours
Q. Anyone have any luck with connecting Cisco phones with MPP to Teams? (Web gateway for SIP devices)
A1. Got a VVX410 connected via the SIP Gateway
A2. Did you pay the Cisco exit tax?
A3. I have with Poly VVX and Yealink
A4. Heard it would cost less to just go to a Teams Phone
A5. Cisco MPP is about £150
A6. Well then i would just buy a new Teams phone and have the right experience
A7. For Cisco phones, use the new Trade in from Microsoft
Q. Random Question: If you have retention turned on in Teams, do you have to open an e-discovery case if you need to keep something beyond your retention period?
A.
Also published on Medium.