7 New Features that Make Microsoft Teams Rooms Pandemic-Ready

Microsoft has been steadfastly committed to supporting teams as they transition to the new normal.  

Like most collaboration apps, usage rates for Microsoft Teams spiked over the last few months – increasing by 1+ hour per user, as per the company’s announcement on World Productivity Day. Usage in Italy (one of the most affected geographies in the initial months) increased by a whopping 775%. To improve the experience for this emerging set of use cases, Microsoft is looking to roll out seven new Teams updates at Ignite 2020. Here’s the scoop:  

1. Get social distancing notifications – Meeting room cameras that come with people counting technology will feed the data directly into the Teams app. You will be notified whenever the number of meeting participants crosses the capacity threshold predefined by the IT administrator
2. Enjoy touchless controls – Users can now control in-room devices through anew interface on the Teams mobile app, reducing the need to touch or constantly sanitise shared surfaces. Basic controls like meeting joining/exit, camera on/off, mute/unmute, and audio volume will be available via the Remote Room app
3. Control via voice – Adding to the reduction in high-touch interactions, Microsoft Teams Rooms will now support voice commands through Cortana. At the moment, this includes meeting joining and exit – more commands are on the pipeline for the next few months
4. Discover intuitive proximity actions – Proximity Join is a feature meant for the surface hub, where users will be able to select their preferred Rooms device and audio/video peripheral based on physical proximity (non-touch). The user’s PC or mobile device will mute automatically to avoid audio duplication
5. Cast to Teams Rooms systems – In this long-awaited update, Microsoft will allow in-person users to wirelessly connect their Teams smartphone app to a Rooms display. It works exactly like Chromecast and brings the same level of low-touch convenience, coming soon to PCs as well
6. Say hello to intelligent speakers – Microsoft has announced a new category of audio peripherals that will be able to recognise meeting participants by their voice. This will allow Teams Rooms to add participant names on Live Captions and Transcriptions, without any software configurations
7. View quick snapshots on Teams Panels – we are excited about this brand-new hardware that you can mount outside a meeting, huddle, or conferencing room. It will display a quick snapshot of ongoing and scheduled meetings, capacity details, and look for an alternative using a “Nearby Rooms” feature

Clearly, the definition of meetings as we know them have changed, and Microsoft has taken notice. Originally, Teams Rooms were intended as an all-in-one hardware + software bundle that makes it easy to set up mid-sized to large conferencing spaces. Today, companies must comply with a host of other protocols like social distancing, low touch, and shift-based work when coordinating multi-participant gatherings. This slew of updates to Teams Rooms will help to achieve just that.  

Most of these updates are already available like basic voice controls, and Teams casting. Others like additional voice commands are in the planning phase, while the intelligent speakers are scheduled for early 2021.  

 

 

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