When this is be available: Microsoft Teams Rooms Devices Front Row Layout for Meetings 2022 (petri.com)

Question

Hi all,

Do you know anything about when this gonna be available? We have a client that is desperate to get this new solution.

https://petri.com/microsoft-teams-rooms-devices-new-front-row-layout-meetings-2022

The question is, it will be compatible with the kit we have ?

Microsoft is planning to roll out a new immersive layout called “front row” on Teams Rooms devices in January 2022. The new meeting layout was originally announced back in June this year, and it aims to make the meeting experience more engaging between in-room participants as well as virtual attendees.
The front row layout for Microsoft Teams rooms on Windows will move the video feed of remote attendees to the bottom of the screen to keep them at eye level for those physically present in a conference room. It will also display meeting information such as tasks, agenda, chat messages, and notes to everyone present in the meetings. The front row feature will be supported across all single and dual display configurations.
“With front row, remote attendees are seen in the room at eye level and additional meeting experiences including chat, and a rostered view of participants with raised hands, are brought to the front of room screen. Users can select the front row layout from the layout chooser experience on the Teams Rooms console. It can also be set as the default layout or turned off altogether by device admins,” the company noted on the Microsoft 365 roadmap.

Answer 1

Hi @Marcelo Parreira - Visually Connected ,

Based on my research, so far the latest publicly available information about this feature is as mentioned in the the official Microsoft 365 roadmap：

According the information shown above, the general availability date of this feature is Janauary 2022. Considering that this item was just added and modified around one month ago, personally I suppose that the date provided would be relatively reliable. So I'd recommend keeping the Teams client up-to-date and hopefully this feature can be rolled out soon. I'll also post back here once I see any additional information about the feature from my end.

Regarding your concern about the compatiblity with the kit you have, are you referring to the devices involved? If this is the case, I tried searching around but so far haven't seen any article explicitly stating this topic. According to the information above, we can learn that"Front row will be available for all Teams Rooms on Windows and across all display sizes." The official blog below also contains some feature description for reference: New experiences coming to Microsoft Teams Rooms to allow everyone to participate on equal footing.

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Answer 2

Front Row is available for MTR on Windows with release 4.11.12.0 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/rooms/rooms-release-note

Answer 3

Dear all,

I just want to test the new Layout on the MTRS and enable the 2 new config items in the skypesettings.xml but no luck:

<FrontRowEnabled>true</FrontRowEnabled>
<DefaultFoRExperience>0</DefaultFoRExperience>

Someone already sucessfully tested the new Layout on MTRS V 4.11.2.0 ?

Thanks,
Marco

Answer 4

I have read that front row might be available on Android later this year, but I can't find it in the road map. Does anyone have any insight as to when this functionality will be available on Android Devices? Microsoft have certified most of the Neat brand devices but they are all Android.

Answer 5

I am worried that they are not deploying this at all, or worse that they're deploying to Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) on Windows but NOT the $10K+ Surface Hubs that we invested in. I sure hope this is made available to all platforms, but especially please include all Surface Hub hardware in the MTR software solutions you are deploying.