Mirrored/duplicated Microsoft Teams Room using Logitech Rally and two displays

Question

Hello,

My company is rolling out Microsoft Teams rooms using a Dell solution that incorporates touchscreen monitors, Dell Optiplex micro desktops and Logitech Rally camera and audio hardware. The Rally solution includes a small tabletop unit called a Tap, and this is the primary interface to the Optiplex. The Optiplex runs a custom Teams image for the Teams Room software.

One of the rooms in my office has two of the touchscreen monitors, but instead of mounting them side-by-side at one end of the room, one is mounted at the end, and the other is mounted on a perpendicular wall. The intent of the screen placement was so that content displayed at the end of the room would be duplicated for the people at the other end of the table. This room is a long rectangle, as is the conference table.

In our testing so far, we can't achieve this duplication. We've turned on dual monitor mode via the Logitech Tap and both screens are able to display content. But each screen displays different content, which I think is by design.

My searches so far have been pretty fruitless. I found a few posts of people having the same issue, so I think it's a limitation of the software rather than a configuration issue or operator error.

I contacted Logitech and am waiting for a reply.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

This post in the feedback portal is exactly what I'm asking:

https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/64a203f9-12a6-ec11-a81c-002248519ffe

I voted for it, but given the lack of traffic, we must be the only two people who have asked this question.

I don't have a lot of hope that anyone from Microsoft will see it and implement it.

Answer 2

More feedback from today. The Optiplex in our solution connects to the two screens using DisplayPort and HDMI. The 3D model on Dell's site shows two DisplayPort but we hired a third-party to mount the equipment so I never saw it the Optiplex to confirm. Dell's solution is neat but can be a pain to service. The display unit has a pocket on the back of it for the Optiplex and it can be a chore to take it out. If the display is mounted on a wall (and we have some that are) it's worse. The room in question with the two displays has a significant gap behind one display since there are windows in the wall.

We tried using an HDMI splitter on one of the Optiplex's outputs and then connected the two displays to it instead of using the two native video outputs on the Optiplex. This is a brute-force method to achieve the duplication, but it's also an all-or-nothing approach. Now we can't show content on one and participants on the other. This method also caused some errors to pop up on the Tap display that had to be resolved by turning off the dual-monitor setting via the Tap, since there's no longer an actual second monitor.

While we were discussing this option, we landed on the idea of using THREE displays, with the third being powered by the second video output on the Optiplex. Not sure how this would work in practice in that room, and it would also mean buying a third 86" display, which might take months to arrive. We're considering running a test with a regular monitor to test out the concept and then pitch it as an option.

Not sure if this will help anyone but here we are. After all this work, I think the main issue is Microsoft Teams. No one ever considered this particular use case, or if they did they chose not to implement it. Not sure if Microsoft would be likely to consider it now since it's still a niche use case.

Answer 3

Hi @Eugene Tang ,

Did you found a solution finally?

Thanks