Microsoft Teams Rooms: The Future of Meetings is in Safe Hands

Hybrid, flexible and agile working have all brought benefits to the workplace. These range from raised levels of employee engagement, diversity, and wellbeing, to greater productivity and better operational resilience. But this newer, more fluid model isn’t without its challenges.

One of the biggest challenges pivots around the cornerstone of most businesses - team meetings. With an increasingly dispersed workforce, how can the physical in-the-room experience be replicated and optimised so it works equally for all participants, wherever they’re based?

A modern meeting space solution, Microsoft Teams Rooms has the answers your customers are looking for. And with the most comprehensive portfolio of Microsoft Teams Rooms certified hardware devices to choose from, we’re here to help you provide them with a package of peripherals unique to their needs.

For Every Meeting Room Challenge, a Solution

There are around 90 million meeting rooms worldwide. But only 7.8% of these are enabled for video collaboration. Given that 82% of businesses are committed to supporting more flexible working, there’s an obvious gap here that needs addressing. But relying on traditional AV conferencing solutions to fill that gap isn’t the answer long term. To help your customers create connections that feel natural, inclusive, and equal irrespective of location requires a different approach. Here’s where Microsoft Teams Rooms comes in.

The Great Equaliser

When meeting participants are in different environments it’s hard to provide a consistent and fully inclusive experience for all. Whether it’s sound quality, field of vision, in-the-room interpersonal dynamics, or in-the-moment collaboration, if just one component fails, participants can feel disconnected.  Microsoft Teams Rooms uses a portfolio of complete system solutions and AV peripheral devices to eliminate this. Advanced camera and audio technology, plus features such as Microsoft’s Front Row layout, work in harmony with the package of AV hardware to provide the same immersive experience for all attendees.

A Seamless Start

Microsoft research shows it takes 11 minutes to get a meeting started in a traditional video meeting environment. With Microsoft Teams Rooms’ one-touch meeting functionality all it takes is a click. Using Direct Guest Join, even attendees using different platforms such as Zoom, or GoToMeeting can join with ease. And because all of the certified devices are remotely tracked and controlled, any performance issues can be solved on-the-spot.

Room to Grow

An expanding business is a successful business. But growth doesn’t come without challenges. Microsoft Teams Rooms is designed to grow as businesses grow. From small, focused meeting rooms to large conference spaces, with our extensive Microsoft Teams Rooms certified device ecosystem your customers can pick and choose the tech they need, when and where they need it. Designed to work in any space, with Microsoft Teams Rooms you can help them scale up or down with minimal fuss.

Microsoft Teams Rooms Certified Hardware Solutions to Suit Every Type of Customer

The beauty of Microsoft Teams Rooms is its flexibility - there are systems and certified devices to suit every type of space and business operation. To guide your customers to where they need to be on their hybrid journey, they’ll need the right Microsoft Teams Rooms toolkit. With the biggest portfolio of Microsoft Teams Rooms certified hardware available at a single distributor, we’re here to help you match products to customers. With this in mind, here’s a rundown of some of the many brands and devices available:

Poly

With a selection of Studio Room Kits to suit any space (from focus room to boardroom), Poly’s Microsoft Teams Rooms solutions deliver a simple but versatile, clutter-free user experience. Each kit contains a video bar with exceptional audio and video features, plus a tabletop touch controller that connects to the dedicated collaboration PC. For pared-down simplicity, Poly’s all-in-one video bars are an elegant solution. Choose between Studio X30 (for huddle rooms) and Studio X50 (for small to medium rooms). Both connect easily with whatever video collaboration software your clients may use, deliver full, boardroom-quality audio, have advanced camera capabilities, and seamless wireless content sharing.

Yealink

A range of wired and wireless bundle video solutions bring your customers everything they need to interact, connect, and collaborate with internal and external users seamlessly and intelligently. The Yealink MVC range caters for medium-sized rooms with wireless mics and soundbar all the way up to extra-large boardrooms with multi-camera system, presentation pod and flexible audio options.

Lenovo

Designed to make meetings more efficient, Lenovo’s ThinkSmart Hub is scalable across room sizes and features one-touch meeting start for the best possible Microsoft Teams Rooms experience. Combine it with one of Lenovo’s peripherals partners.

Neat

For smaller or huddle rooms, Neat offers a dynamic touch screen pad configurable as a controller or scheduler. Bundled together with one of Neat’s two soundbars (the Neat Bar or Neat Bar Pro) the package brings superior quality audio and video to smaller spaces. Meet the requirements of larger rooms with the Neat Board. An immersive 65-inch multi-touch screen, with powerful audio system and a versatile wide-angle camera, Neat Board enables annotations and whiteboarding to deliver a collaboration experience beyond video meetings and wireless content sharing. Team this with a wall mount and floor stand for flexibility and optimum positioning.

Jabra

With industry-leading professional audio, advanced and innovative 180° video technology, and a range of unique intelligence-driven features, Jabra’s PanaCast and PanaCast 50  video bars are suitable for huddle rooms and small to medium rooms. For a more scalable option, the PanaCast 50 can be procured as a bundle with Lenovo’s ThinkSmart Room System.

AudioCodes

Whether it’s the standalone video collaboration bar or webcam , AudioCodes Microsoft Teams Rooms solutions deliver an intuitive meeting room experience that supports collaboration in smaller video-enabled meeting rooms. For larger spaces, opt for one of two video-conferencing kits (a camera and hub with speakerphone or without speakerphone).

Epos

Powered by Epos AI,  the EPOS EXPAND Vision 3T is an all-in-one video collaboration solution that combines full HD video with exceptional voice pickup and noise cancellation capabilities. For standalone speakers, larger spaces will benefit from the EXPAND 80T Smart Speakerphone with six adaptive, beamforming microphones that isolate voices from room reverb and ambient noise. Add in  an expansion mic and your customers can boost the range and scale up even further. Designed with Cortana in Mind, the EPOS EXPAND Capture 5 also includes advanced voice recognition and transcription capabilities.

And More: Peripherals That Power Up Without Powering Down

Whether it’s discrete yet powerful audio solutions from Bose or Shure, BYOD computer-based conferencing from Biamp, versatile conferencing cameras from AVer or Huddly, or intelligent speakers from Sennheiser, none of our certified peripherals require any extra configuration. And all offer call control with Microsoft Teams.

Know Your Space, Know Your Tech

While every organisation is, of course, unique, most corporate spaces will have meeting rooms that fall into one of three categories. Each of these spaces works in different ways and will benefit from a specific set of Teams Rooms devices.  Here’s a breakdown of the kind of tech your customers might consider for each space.

Small huddle spaces

Designed for focused collaboration between groups of 2 to 4 people, key components of this room are:

• A 4K quality camera that ensures all attendees can be seen equally.
• Portable touch screen pads that can be configured as a controller or scheduler.
• A teams panel providing meeting space availability.
• A content camera to bring whiteboard functionality to all attendees.
• Intelligent (portable) speakers. (By isolating voices from room reverb and ambient noise, intelligent speakers ensure speech is delivered in high-quality audio. Accessibility and inclusivity are further enhanced through speech recognition and tracking.)

Medium-sized rooms

Catering for meetings of up to 12 attendees, these rooms need to provide more distance between people and equipment. Important additions to this type of space include:

• A second large display that allows participants and content to be viewed together side-by-side.
• An auto-tracking camera that moves and zooms to frame all participants in an equally optimised view.
• A discreet ceiling tile microphone to capture crisp audio from every corner.
• Expansion microphones, and speakers at the front of the room so in-room attendees can hear remote participants from their direction.

Large boardrooms

Seating up to 18 people, these larger spaces are often used for presentations or to facilitate collaboration across teams and departments. To scale up, these rooms require:

• A smart camera with responsive framing that detects, tracks, and highlights active speakers, bringing them into full view for remote participants.
• A meeting board that supports annotations and whiteboarding so everyone can brainstorm together on a shared digital canvas.
• Larger (60-inch plus) HD screens.

Low Risk, High Return: Ready for a Great ROI?

According to research, businesses who’ve committed to Microsoft Teams Rooms see a 273% return on investment. And it’s easy to see why. With greater collaboration comes greater productivity. With a flexible, simple set-up, processes are streamlined and more efficient. And with an immersive and inclusive meeting room experience, employees are more engaged.

But even if you set ROI aside, the future of hybrid working demands something more than the traditional AV approach. And it’s hard to see a future where Teams Rooms doesn’t dominate the landscape. So, if you need more info to understand how you can help your customers on their hybrid journey using Teams Rooms, or want to discuss suitable Microsoft Teams Rooms licensing solutions?

Get in touch!