Microsoft Teams Rooms and associated devices like the Surface Hub and certified conference room equipment are gaining steam among pro AV integrators, so they should be paying attention to new features Microsoft is announcing this week at its annual Ignite conference.
These new features include new meeting experiences, chat and collaboration capabilities, security, and new integrations with other apps.
For the integration community, we’ll start with new meeting room experiences powered by some new hardware.
Microsoft said it is simplifying its portfolio of Teams devices for shared spaces by bringing collaboration bars into the Teams Rooms product family after earlier this year launching collaboration bars for video-first conferencing on Android.
According ot the company, aligning both Windows and Android platforms within the Teams Rooms allows the company to deliver feature sets across both operating systems. This will allow device manufacturers to develop new form factors beyond the single, integrated bar.
Read Next: Help Customers Sync Microsoft Teams Rooms Devices and Surface Hub With Coordinated Meetings
Also coming to Teams are new touchless meeting experiences, like Room remote for Teams Rooms, support for Teams casting for Teams rooms, proximity join on Surface Hub and Cortana voice assistance for Teams Rooms in Windows.
With COVID-19 still top of mind, Microsoft is also adding meeting room capacity notifications that use data from meeting room cameras that will alert in-room meeting participants if the room is over capacity.
New Microsoft Teams panels from Crestron and Yealink can be mounted outside a meeting space to help manage rooms. They provide users with the ability to view space and meeting details, reserve a space, view upcoming reservations and identify availability status. They also allow users to see the building floor plan and book another room using the “Neary Rooms” feature. These will be available early next year.
With help from AV integrators, Microsoft is offering to deploy two Teams Rooms at no additional charge to qualifying customers, and beginning in October, Teams Rooms will be added to the FastTrack benefit that gives qualified customers remote assistance on selected rooms at no additional charge.
Other announcements include new calling, chat and collaboration features, healthcare integrations, security and compliance improvements and updates to the Teams Admin Center.
For a full list of new Microsoft Teams features, read the official Microsoft Teams blog.
