Microsoft Teams Certified Devices: The New Guide

Microsoft Teams Certified devices work out of the box (plug & play) with no additional configuration required, and offer call control with Microsoft Teams. The products provide a great experience for end-users and administrators.

Introduction

Microsoft’s vision is to allow better collaboration and communication within the company, whether in an individual environment (personal office, open space, home office) or in shared spaces (meeting room, collaboration room, ideation).

To do this, a set of personal devices or shared equipment have been defined to allow:

• A simple and unified MS Teams conferencing experience no matter what environment you are in.
• More inclusive conferences that allow everyone to participate regardless of where they are.
• To have an integration into quality and complete conferences regardless of the space used.
• Always up-to-date and up-to-date environment to ensure conferences work.

A little reminder on the device certification program:

Skype for Business certification ensures you have quality peripherals, supported by Microsoft and is performed by an independent laboratory. Microsoft Teams certification adds more; an extensive portfolio, additional features that are shared by all Microsoft Teams devices, and an ability to keep them always up to date.

Microsoft is pleased to announce, in addition to the already available Yealink CP900, a set of new “Speakerphones”:

• Yealink CP700
• Poly Calisto 3200
• Sennheiser Expand SP30T
• Jabra Speak 750

As discussed above, a feature common to all Microsoft Teams devices is the button that lets you:

• Flashing to notify you of a new message in Microsoft Teams.
• By clicking on it to highlight your application.
• If you forgot a conference or missed the notification toaster to join the conference in one click.

Headsets

Headsets are also designed to allow you better productivity whether you are in an open office environment, on the move or in an office.

Phones

The desktop phone market is far from shrinking, it is even increasing 5% globally, 13% in the North America market, and even conference octopuses have increased by 30%. Microsoft wants to continue to integrate into this market and announces, with its OEM partners, new phones

With the poly phone line

The implementation of new features, eagerly awaited, such as the hot-desking function.

Automatic screen lock and, for the North America market, support for “dynamic 911.

Collaboration bar for Microsoft Teams

• In the solutions section for common rooms or meeting rooms, Microsoft announces the “Collaboration bar for Microsoft Teams”

• Whether you have a small meeting room, an office with a meeting space, the promise of the Collaboration bar is to be able to transform any small room (Huddle or focus room) into a stand-alone meeting room.
• All you need is a screen, a TV, or even better, a touchscreen. These new autonomous peripherals arrive in the form of all in one, sound recording, shooting and speakers, but also with a “computing” part in Android allowing to run a specific Microsoft Teams application.

• Poly announces two products: the X30 for very small rooms (1 to 4 people) and the X50 for slightly larger rooms (3 to 6 people). For the management part of the meeting, these products can be associated with the Poly trio or the Touch TC8.

• Yealink announces the VC210 for rooms from 1 to 4 people. The piloting part can be done with a remote control on which you will find the Microsoft Teams button.

• If you have a touchscreen, then you can control everything from the screen.

• These devices are tested and certified for Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams Rooms

• The purpose of Microsoft teams rooms is to allow a stand-alone device to be logged into a resource account so that the user does not need to have their machine to enter a meeting.

• These solutions were launched two years ago under the name “Skype Room System”. With the arrival of Microsoft Teams, they were renamed to Microsoft Teams Room, they support Microsoft Teams conferences but they also retained support for Skype for Business conferences.
• Where “Collaboration Bar” are all-in-one peripherals with “computing”, microphones, speakers and camera, MTRs are puzzle solutions to be able to adapt to any type of room while allowing the best sound and video experience for users.

The key element for the specification of these rooms was to simplify its use, the objective is that the user can access his conference simply, with an interface that he already knows, and that he does not have need to learn how to use the room when entering a meeting. You invite the room and when you get in you just have to click on the button to start the conference with sound and video appropriate to the room.

Another goal is that everyone in the meeting, onsite or remotely, can participate in the meeting and not feel left out. For that, Microsoft is innovating in this direction and continues to work on the subject, we will see it a little later.

Adapting to any venue is also one of the specifications and the portfolio, described a little later, does indeed fulfill this objective.

Finally, many improvements have been made to make these solutions easily deployable and manageable on a large scale. There are always problems related to networks, electricity, etc … but also directly to the room: a camera could be unplugged, a screen turned off or broken.

Microsoft also continues to innovate in this direction to have the best possible view of room availability.

There are 5 OEM partners who provide MTRs, they range from room MTRs that integrate sound and the “computing” part, all that remains is to add a camera to them and the room is functional (Crestron, Lenovo and HP), others are more fragmented (Crestron, Logitech and Yealink) to adapt to larger rooms. Likewise, the control tablets range from 7 to 12 inches and thus allow to adapt to the needs of the rooms, or even to add several control tablets. The key thing is that whatever solution is deployed, the interface remains exactly the same and so does the user experience.

Peripherals also make it possible to adapt to the size of the room. Going from the small room with, for example, a brio of Logitech, to the large room which can be equipped, for example, with a Poly EagleEye Director 2. But to allow better inclusion of users in conferences, content viewing cameras have also been defined to capture a whiteboard and include it in the meeting so that remote users can follow the entire meeting without being partially excluded.

Finally, for very large rooms, it can be difficult to capture the speech of all the participants present in the room, which is why new sound capture solutions have been certified such as the Sennheiser TeamConnect Ceiling 2 associated with the Biamp Tesira DSP.

Innovation

Microsoft continues to innovate to meet needs and here are some examples of innovations that have been implemented.

Let’s start with the ability to add a room using the proximity features:

Whether you arrive in the room with your pc or your smartphone, provided that your Bluetooth is activated, your machine will find the room and allow you to invite it directly by starting the conference, it will deactivate the sound and the camera of your machine to avoid the unpleasant feedback effects in a meeting.

And even if the room has not been invited to the conference, you will be able to add it through this feature.

In terms of collaboration and inclusion of remote users, two new features have been added:

• The Microsoft Whiteboard
• The content capture camera

If someone shares from their Microsoft Teams PC or Mac client, the room will be able to see it, and if it is equipped with a touch screen connected to the Microsoft teams rooms, then you can also interact on this whiteboard. By adding to your Microsoft teams rooms one of the 3 cameras certified for content capture in addition to the room camera, you will be able to capture the analog whiteboard that you have in your rooms and share it in the meeting.

And the innovation does not stop there, you can also take a snapshot, save it and find it in the conference chat, but also turn it into a digital whiteboard and integrate into Microsoft Whiteboard.

Many companies wish to personalize their wallpapers and control consoles.

Also Read: The Awesome Tips Of Microsoft Teams Filters You Need To Know

Finally, through OEM partners, there is the possibility of extending room controls to automation, camera control, etc.

Microsoft teams certified devices are tested to provide clear audio, but open office and other noisy environments fulfill a greater challenge: to pick up clearly the voice of the headset user but not transmit the sound of their neighbors.

Also Read: What Is Pexip Microsoft Teams? And What You Should Know?