Update management

• Applies to:

  Microsoft Teams

A modern meeting room is equipped with a Microsoft Teams Rooms device and other peripherals such as a camera, microphone, or speaker, and potentially more devices to create an inclusive and effective meeting experience. Equipment from different kinds of OEMs provides the exact organizational experience desired; however, they must be maintained with software and firmware on an ongoing basis.

Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro Management provides the assurance that each room in your organization will be maintained at recommended levels to deliver a room that is always ready and works properly. Microsoft's goal is to reduce complexity and legwork for your operational staff with intelligence and automation. Troubleshooting or diagnostics is performed as quickly as possible.

Transitioning a device to Pro Management

Room devices onboarding to Pro Management usually have a change management history and practice that is different from our guidance.

• To benefit from Pro Management, you must transition change management for all updates under Pro Management portfolio.
• Multiple sources of change management impact incident SLAs as there is a discovery and remediation that will restart anew if an incident happens in the room.
• Microsoft has implemented controls and checks to implement policies that may differ from one organization to another, and the ability to intervene in exceptional situations.
• Eventually, the room devices will be updated to common standards, except for exceptions due to issues with a specific hardware installation.

Transitioning devices: Basic readiness checks

Most unexpected failures arise from changes in the base image with uncertain history of change management.

Following simple readiness checks is recommended:

• Base Image: The base image must be from the specific OEM. If the device has been rebuilt in the past and shows unexpected failures or behaviors on common tasks, the base image must be restored. We can provide assistance but cannot remotely rebuild the room device, so you will need a local site technician.
• Base OS, Edition: The base OS and edition must match the requirements of Microsoft Teams Rooms devices. If this is not so, it must be corrected as part of onboarding. Microsoft Teams Rooms requires the Windows IoT Enterprise or Windows Enterprise SKUs under Semi-Annual Channel servicing options. Consult the official MTR guidance for more information.

Readiness checks

There are a few pre-requisites for receiving updates through the Pro Management service:

Software	Guidance
Logitech Sync Services	Should be installed and running on the Logitech meeting room devices. Required Sync services will be installed automatically from Windows Updates unless blocked. The full Sync package can also be installed.
Windows OS updates	Should be kept enabled and not redirected to WSUS, nor blocked from a networking perspective. Neither GPO nor MDM policies should be used to manage OS updates.
Microsoft Store updates	Should be turned off. Managed Services will turn off Store updates if found on.
Anti-Virus Software	If you are running AV software on these devices, you should ensure that AV has exclusions in place for Teams and Skype dlls. See How to include or exclude Teams from antivirus or DLP applications for more details.
Additional Software	Additional software such as third-party remote desktop viewing, etc. should be reviewed with Managed Services to rule out side-effects.
Additional Change Management	Can interfere with covered updates, and` should not be introduced.

Managed updates – How it works

There are two primary ways how updates are managed:

• Automatically managed: Updates are installed in your room device based on Pro Management assessment. No intervention is required for the updates managed in our portfolio.
• Ring validated: Set up a ring system to preview updates on specific devices so that you can monitor them without the associated leg work. Ring setup provides an additional layer of due diligence before broad rollouts.

Automatically managed

If you choose to be automatically managed, then no action is needed for the updates on your part. However, you should review the current portfolio of updates supported by the Pro Management service. The portfolio is constantly getting new additions, and it is our priority to cover the most frequent and impactful updates to ensure your room stability. Check the current list (under the “Update Management” section of this doc) to plan any additional change management needed for your organization.

Recommendation: Do not install updates that are covered by the Pro Management service on any managed device on your own.

Ring validation

When choosing ring validation, review the following sections on how rings work in the Pro Management portal and the options available to customize it for your organization. Even with ring validation, attempts are made to ensure that rooms are not past due on recommended updates. Depending on the situation, a room might receive “catch up” updates to ensure it complies with Microsoft recommendations.

Check for announcements on the portal home page and within the Pro Management documentation as new types of software and firmware become available in the portfolio.

Scheduling

Updates are scheduled for rooms based on the equipment in the room and if they are not meeting recommended standards for applicable software and firmware.

• To help our customers meet change management requirements, update deployment start on Wednesdays in the staging ring. If a critical update is required, this schedule will be bypassed and the update released as soon as it’s available.
• Updates are sequenced based on the need in a particular room.
• If you have setup rings to validate the updates, the update will progress through the ring order.
• A new update can supersede an update that is queued up if it is determined that room stability will improve, based on your situation.
• Updates are typically applied during our nightly maintenance window – which is room local time 12:00am – 5:00am to avoid any kind of interruptions.

Microsoft Teams Rooms app update lifecycle policy

The MTR engineering team’s support policy states that all support ends after the twelve (12) month lifecycle for a version has expired or if more than two updates have been released since then. Then, customers must update to a supported version. Please reference Microsoft Teams Rooms app version support - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs for detailed service description.

Update Management experience walk-through

To view updates, log in to the Pro Management portal and navigate to the Updates page.

The Updates pane displays a high-level overview of update management for your rooms with the following tabs:

• Updates: Software or firmware updates that are applicable to your organization.
• Rooms: The Rooms tab provides a view of rooms and rings to which each room belongs.
• Rings: The Rings tab shows the rings of rooms for your organization.

Updates

This view shows the relevant updates for your tenant and their respective status. To view past updates that are no longer active, select the Include past updates toggle to ON.

Any update can be in one of the following states:

Status	Description
Scheduled	An update is scheduled for the rooms in a given ring. Please keep in mind that an update will only show Scheduled after the progression hits the ring the room is in. For example, if a new update is in the Staging ring, it would only show Scheduled for rooms in the Staging ring. Other rings will have a “Not required” status until the update progresses to that ring.
In progress	An update is in progress, and individual rings show status. This state shows the overall ring status, and therefore if an update applies to a single room in the Staging ring in your tenant, the update will have an “In Progress” state until the Executive ring is reached.
Completed with failures	An update has completed progression through all your configured rings and failed in at least one room.
Completed	An update has completed progression through all your configured rings and successfully installed on all applicable rooms.
Deprecated	An update has been deactivated. Further deployment is halted. This is typical because the update has been superseded by a new version.
Paused	An update is in a paused state.
Not Required	The update is either not yet evaluated for the room or does not apply to the room.

Rooms

The Rooms tab shows all the rooms in your tenant and to which ring they belong.

To configure which ring a room should belong to:

1. Click on the room to bring up the detailed view.
2. Under Ring, click Change.
3. Select the Ring to which the room should belong.
4. Click Assign.

The detailed room view displays the relevant updates and their status under the Updates node.

Rings

Rings are used to reduce the risk of issues derived from the deployment of the feature updates. This is done by gradually deploying the update to the entire site. Each ring should have a list of Microsoft Teams Rooms rooms and a corresponding rollout schedule. Defining rings is generally a one-time event (or at least infrequent), but IT should revisit these groups from time to time to ensure that the sequencing is still correct.

The Rings tab lists all the rings in your tenant. There are three preconfigured rings:

• Staging: Assign rooms to the Staging ring, which is your testbed. All new updates will roll out here first. Generally, you will want to ensure that your staging ring represents rooms with the diversity of device types in your environment. If there are certain types of rooms with an uncommon configuration or a history of seeing issues, please consider representing them in Staging.

• General: By default, all rooms are placed in this ring. Most of the room devices being used across the enterprise fall into this category.

• Executive: This group should include your most high-profile rooms where you want to minimize disruption proactively. A good example is a large conference room used for executive meetings or large team meetings.

Specifying rollout timeline

Updates cannot exceed 60 days to complete across all rings.

Parameter	Explanation
Deferment Period	Once an update starts with the first ring, the deferment period is the delay in days before the update is initiated on this ring.
Rollout duration	Once the update commences on this ring, this is the time to deploy in this ring. For example, if the duration is 5 days, it will deploy over 5 days to the rooms in this ring once the update starts on this ring.
Test Period	The number of days to test/validate the update in a ring once applied to the ring. The test period starts after the rollout is completed, and once complete, the update moves to the next ring.
Completion Time	The “Completion time” column indicates the total number of days (rollout duration + test period) for this ring to complete.
Total Time	At the bottom is the “Total” row that indicates how long an update will take to complete from the first to the last ring.

Creating Custom Rings

1. Navigate to the Rings tab.
2. Click Add ring.
3. Specify the order in which this ring will receive the update, where 1 is first, and 9 is last.
4. Give this ring a name.
5. Provide a description if desired.
6. Specify the number of days the update will roll out in this ring.
7. Specify the test period.
8. Click Submit.

Note

The “Days set by other rings” is the total number of days an update will take to complete across all rings. The “Remaining days” indicates the maximum days for this ring to complete. The sum of “Rollout duration in days” and “Test period in days” cannot exceed this amount.

Edit a ring

1. Navigate to the Rings tab.
2. Click on the ring to delete.
3. Click Edit ring.
4. Edit the number of days of rollout and testing, as necessary.

Delete a ring

1. Navigate to the Rings tab.
2. Click on the ring to delete.
3. Click Delete ring.

Note

The default rings cannot be deleted.

Move rooms

Moving rooms from one ring to another is possible in two ways:

1. Navigate to the Rings tab.
2. Click on the ring that you want to move rooms from
3. Click Move rooms.
4. Select the rooms that you want to move in the List of Rooms.
5. Choose the Target ring, which the selected rooms will move to in the dropdown.
6. Click Move rooms.

Or

1. Open the room details for the room you wish to move (either through Incidents, Rooms, or Updates -> Rooms).
2. Click the Updates tab.
3. Under Assigned Ring, click Change.
4. From the dropdown, select the new ring.
5. Click Assign.

Automated updates: Visibility and control

Automated updates in Pro Management orchestrates updates throughout your organization. However, you have the visibility and control to intervene if needed. Here are the ways:

• In the event of an update failure, a ticket is automatically generated for tracking.
• If you see an update causing issues, you can pause the update with the Pause button. Hitting the Pause button will prompt creation of a Record an issue ticket for your team to investigate.
• If you see an update has failed in a room and you have corrected a plausible reason such as network disconnect, you can retry the update with Retry all failed button.
• There may be urgent situations when you may decide to make an update available earlier. In this case, you can use the Force updates button. When using the Force Update option, you have the choice to force the update immediately or when next the room is available.

Note

We do not recommend “Force Updates” as a general update management strategy, as you may encounter known issues with those updates.

• Further, to ensure good change management practices, we will log every force update internally in the service. In the future, we expect to make that visible to you as well.