The future of work is flexible. Now more than ever organizations need a single, integrated experience that makes working together easier and more engaging for their employees whether they are all in the same room, remote, or—for many of us—a mix of both.
At Microsoft, we are committed to bridging the gap between physical and digital workspaces. More than 60 percent of the Fortune 500 have already chosen Microsoft Teams Rooms to connect employees across the hybrid divide and active Teams Rooms devices have more than doubled year over year.1
Enabling truly great hybrid meetings and collaboration has gone from nice to have to must have. Because of this, Microsoft is happy to announce changes to Microsoft Teams Rooms, making it easy to start your hybrid journey.
What is Microsoft Teams Rooms?
Meeting space solutions play a vital role in enabling effective hybrid collaboration, but many of today’s rooms systems are focused on the people who are physically present. In fact, less than 8 percent of the 90 million conference rooms worldwide are video enabled.2
Microsoft Teams Rooms help remove the barriers between spaces, places, and people and are designed to deliver inclusive meeting experiences with all participants in mind. Teams Rooms can turn any room into an easy-to-use and inclusive meeting space where everyone can fully engage and participate, no matter where they are. Teams Rooms is an ecosystem of Microsoft Teams software and certified partner hardware devices that provide flexibility for your meeting needs.
Introducing Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro
Meet Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro. Teams Rooms Pro is a new offer that brings together the value of our existing Teams Rooms features, new innovations, and the Teams Rooms managed service platform—all in one license. Teams Rooms Pro simplifies the purchasing process for our customers and delivers the collective benefits of our advancements in both hybrid meeting experiences and device management.
Teams Rooms Pro will deliver the latest hybrid meeting experiences with a focus on inclusivity, ease of use, flexibility, security, and management. Let’s look at some of the features available or coming soon to Teams Rooms Pro.
Teams Rooms Pro is available now at USD40 per user/month.
- Intelligent audio and video: To help everyone be seen and heard, we combine high-quality audio and video from Microsoft Teams-certified devices with video layout options like front row, noise suppression, and bandwidth optimization. Advanced camera capabilities use AI to help remote attendees feel like they are in the room with automatic framing to capture the active speaker.
- Increased engagement: Beyond audio and video, one of the best ways for remote participants to establish their presence in a meeting is to engage with ease. We’re bringing popular features from the personal Teams meeting experience to Teams Rooms Pro—including features like wirelessly sharing content, raise hand, and live reactions. And when using the classic video grid layout, chat bubbles alert in-room participants to the conversation happening alongside the meeting, so nothing gets missed.
- Powerful collaboration: Real-time collaboration can be a part of every meeting for every attendee through Microsoft Whiteboard, Microsoft Surface Hub 2S, and the intelligent capture of an analog whiteboard. Easily add a touch display to enable multi-user, shared whiteboarding, or add a content camera to share an intelligent, augmented whiteboard view into Teams meetings.
- Management and security: Great meeting experiences start behind the scenes with strong security and operations. Teams Rooms Pro provides essential enterprise-grade management and security, including access control, remote configuration, and device analytics, as well as IT service management (ITSM) integration. Teams Rooms Pro also includes the Teams Rooms managed service platform, which provides AI-driven operations that automate updates, problem detection, and resolution at scale.
Updates for Teams Rooms managed service
Teams Rooms managed service enables customers to scale and optimize their rooms deployment. Building on our learnings delivering on this value for the past several years, today we are announcing an evolution to one of the Teams Rooms managed service workflows. Starting October 1, 2022, incidents will automatically remediate or route to the customer’s IT department or designated management partner, without the intermediary involvement from our engineers.
The Teams Rooms managed service platform will continue to provide all the platform value Premium customers know and use today, including all-day monitoring, update ring configuration, incident diagnostics, inventory planning, and advanced incident analytics.
We will focus our approach moving forward on growing and deepening the value of our managed service software platform by increasing our feature investments. Additional support for Teams Rooms issues will move to our standard processes for customers across their Microsoft products.
For customers who are seeking additional help managing and supporting their meeting rooms, we have partners with strong technical expertise and deep experience working with Microsoft Teams Rooms.
Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic
Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic makes it easier for small businesses to create hybrid meeting experiences. Teams Rooms Basic provides foundational Teams meeting experiences like scheduling, joining meetings, and wireless content sharing. For customers needing core management and hybrid meeting features, we recommend Teams Rooms Pro.
Teams Rooms Basic is included with the purchase of any certified Teams Rooms device at no additional cost purchased on or after September 1, 2022. Customers can apply up to 25 Basic licenses to their tenant.
Learn more
Learn more about Teams Rooms Licensing.
As the new way of work demands ever greater flexibility, Microsoft is committed to providing inclusive meeting experiences and seamless device management. We believe these features will enable organizations to support their employees and help them to thrive in the hybrid workplace.
We are excited about the role Microsoft Teams Rooms plays in this mission and the roadmap of innovation ahead.
How to get Teams Rooms Pro
To get started, check out Teams Rooms Plans and Pricing.
Source:
Meet Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro | Microsoft 365 Blog
Microsoft Teams Rooms helps organizations support their employees through inclusive meeting experiences and seamless device management.
www.microsoft.com
