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    December 29, 2020

    Consistent Meeting Experiences with Microsoft Teams Rooms

    Many organizations had their users work remotely either partially or entirely when COVID-19 broke out in early 2020. Working remotely may have caused meetings to be more challenging to conduct effectively, but they were no less crucial.

    Most current meeting spaces aren’t equipped to facilitate meetings in this new culture of remote work. They instead leave employees feeling disconnected, which causes them to lose productivity. Microsoft Teams Rooms keeps participants productive by creating a consistent meeting experience room to room.

    Meetings in the World of COVID

    According to a Stanford study published in June 2020, about 42% of the American workforce works remotely. According to Microsoft, more than 70% will be remote as the years go on.

    Most organizations plan to have their employees back in the office in the future. Others such as DropBox, Slack, and Twitter plan to offer their users the option to work from home permanently.

    Meetings need to accommodate this dramatic change in the workplace. Remote employees need to feel as though they're a part of something bigger, even if they're miles away from the office. If they aren't able to easily set up and conduct meetings with their in-office colleagues, they’ll feel disconnected and be unproductive.

    Rooms equipped to facilitate meetings in the world of COVID are in short supply. Many meeting rooms sport outdated technology which doesn’t work well with modern collaboration platforms. This technology makes setting up virtual meetings difficult and forces participants to rely on their IT personnel too frequently.

    Meetings shouldn't be difficult to conduct. Meeting Rooms should allow participants to bring their own devices into a touchless environment and effortlessly begin meetings with their remote colleagues.

    The Ticket to the Ultimate Meeting Experience

    Microsoft Teams Rooms extends Teams into meeting rooms to create consistent and inclusive meeting experiences. This solution transforms any space into a meeting room for the modern workforce.

    Equipment in Teams Rooms can be scaled and customized for any space. A Teams-certified conference room device and camera can turn any sitting area into a Huddle Space for impromptu collaboration sessions.

    Large meeting spaces can be equipped with any number of cameras, speakers, and microphones. The products manufactured by Polycom and Crestron produce high-fidelity audio and video, so participants both inside and outside the room can be seen and heard.

    A seamless one-touch join system make meetings in Teams Rooms easy to set up and begin. Plus, the touchless meeting join feature enables participants to join virtual meetings and share content in their rooms via their personal computers or mobile devices.

    The Teams mobile app gives the hosts full control over the room. Users can mute and unmute the room, adjust the volume, turn the cameras on and off, and exit the meeting. Teams Rooms will also automatically exit meetings once all the participants in the room have left.

    The “bring your own device” environment creates a more simple and consistent meeting experience without sacrificing security. The Teams Admin Center allows admin to simplify, customize, and automate device management to keep devices healthy and prevent unauthorized access. Teams Rooms also comes with the protection of Azure Active Directory, Microsoft’s secure cloud platform.

    Teams Rooms includes features to help remote and in-office participants stay engaged and productive. Together mode in Teams allows large groups of people to feel as though they're in the same space by displaying the participants in a virtual auditorium.

    Remote participants also don’t need to worry about their in-office colleagues collaborating on whiteboards out of frame. Intelligent capture allows a dedicated content camera to locate, crop, and frame the whiteboard to share its content with remote participants. It can also blur anyone standing in front of the whiteboard.

    Man using Surface Hub 2S

    Organizations can also replace their whiteboards with Microsoft’s Surface Hub 2S. Built to function as a digital whiteboard, these devices enhance collaboration with premium pen and ink capabilities.

    They can also connect to meetings with high-quality audio and video. The coordinated meetings feature in Teams Rooms can allow any room device to connect to meetings on the Surface Hub. It can even function as a conferencing device, making the room experience mobile.

    Getting Even More Out of Teams

    Teams is more than just an app in the Office 365 suite. It’s a platform that provides its users with a whole new way to collaborate.

    Teams Rooms is yet another capability within Teams that is changing the workplace by revolutionizing meetings and increasing the return on investment.

    Read more about our Teams Rooms and get the ultimate meeting experience.

     

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    * Editor's Note: This article was originally published in December 2020 and has been revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

    Mike Hanks

    As Director of Microsoft Solutions and Services, Mike Hanks leads the Continuant team in program management and sales of solutions and services for Microsoft Intelligent Communications. While at Continuant, Mike has worked in many key areas, including Cloud, Strategy, Sales, Customer Service, and Operations, where he...

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