This week on the All About 365 podcast, Jay and I are talking about Microsoft Teams Rooms. It’s probably fair to say that Skype for Business had quite a varied ecosystem of different devices from different vendors that connected in different ways. These often had different user experiences and were not very consistent.

So are things different with Microsoft Teams? Can Microsoft now compete with vendors like Cisco who have an arguably clearly device and room system strategy? Are things much simpler now if you want to equip your meeting rooms with Microsoft Teams compatible devices? Listen to the show to find out.

And as always, here’s what we talked about in today’s show…

• Who are the main vendors in the market:
  • Officially there are Logitech, Crestron, HP and Lenovo
  • What’s different between them?
    • HP and Lenovo have built in Audio natively into the device. Only the older Logitech has a surface pro still installed but that’s likely going to go soon too.
  • What’s similar between them? Same Gui, all units, all units need the same type of I/O – so inputs and outputs, Standard for them to have 3 USB, Two HDMI out, One HDMI in.
• What features are recently added?
  • Dual Screen – so you can display content and video at the same time, have it switch on the fly.
  • Proximity is available in the Room System software but not yet available in Teams, but this should be coming soon. Remotely display from any Teams enabled device that has Bluetooth.
  • Need to be part of the meeting invite and on the same wifi network for this to work currently.
• Can we just use anything to plug into the SRS? For example can we just use our own native speakers that are in the meeting room already?
• Can any video camera work?
• What about licensing and setup? What do I need to know before I order 100 room systems? Do they need licensing? How to I manage and provision them?
• What about the size of the room, does that impact the product or the choice of the device?
• What are some of the really killer features of the product?
• Are there any other companies or products to keep an eye out for?

You’ll find Episode 24 above, and at our podcast site, on iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, Google podcasts and you can subscribe with your favourite podcast app using the feed. If you’ve got any suggestions for what you’d like to hear on the next shows, let us know. You’ll find us on Twitter as @SteveGoodman & @jaywynn