Manage Microsoft Teams Room Systems
Microsoft Teams Rooms are the native meeting room system solution for Teams. These devices include functionality to support traditional meeting room experiences, such as audio, video, and screen sharing. Microsoft Teams Rooms also support advanced capabilities, such as multi-screen support, meeting transcription, smart speakers that identify active speakers, and meeting views, such as Together-Mode and receive regular updates to functionality from Microsoft.
Microsoft Teams Rooms scale to different room sizes. Teams Rooms use a wide variety of certified audio and video peripherals based on the size and use of the room. By selecting the right core device and console, combined with microphones, speakers, cameras, and displays appropriate for the space, Microsoft Teams Rooms can be deployed into spaces of any size - from small huddle spaces to large conference spaces and boardrooms.
In the following picture, you can see the key benefits of deploying Microsoft Teams Rooms. These benefits include:
The ability to transform existing meeting rooms by adding Teams.
The ability to fit into different spaces from huddle rooms and personal offices to large event and board rooms.
Simple management with integration into the Teams admin center.
The ability to connect with third-party hardware and software solutions that are certified for use.
Microsoft Teams devices are designed to help people maximize the power of Teams and bridge the gap between remote and shared workspaces. Through a combination of Teams meetings features, people-centric room experiences, and industry-leading hardware, users benefit from low-friction, inclusive, and interactive meetings, whether they join remotely or in the meeting room.
There are three types of Microsoft Teams Rooms: Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows (MTRoW), Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android (MTRoA), and Surface Hub. Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows (MTRoW) runs on Windows. MTRoW devices can scale from medium to larger meeting spaces and support a wide range of certified Teams devices.
Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android (MTRoA) devices run on Android. They're typically designed for small to medium meeting spaces, including huddle rooms. Like MTRoW devices, these devices can also have a center room touchscreen attached and HDMI ingest for screen sharing and support multiple screens.
Licensing requirements
Microsoft offers two licenses for Teams Rooms:
Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro delivers enhanced in-room meeting experiences like intelligent audio and video, front row and large galleries, and dual screen support. The Teams Rooms Pro license also provides advanced management features like remote device management, conditional access policies, and detailed device analytics.
Teams Rooms Pro is a great fit for medium and enterprise organizations, as well as smaller organizations with larger room counts or more advanced needs. Teams Rooms Pro licenses can be used to license both certified Teams Rooms and Teams Panels.
Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic provides core meeting experiences for certified Microsoft Teams Rooms system, at no additional cost. The Teams Rooms Basic license includes scheduling, joining meetings, content sharing, and collaborative whiteboarding, as well as basic security and management capabilities out-of-the-box.
You can assign up to 25 Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic licenses to Teams Rooms systems in your organization. If you need to license more than 25 Teams Rooms systems, those additional licenses need to be Teams Rooms Pro licenses. Teams Rooms Basic licenses can be used to license Teams Rooms systems only and not Teams Panels.
Note
To enable Teams Phone for a Microsoft Teams Room, allowing it to make or receive a call from the room or join an audio conference using a phone number, you must assign a Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro license, in addition to a Domestic or International Calling Plan if you aren’t using Direct Routing or Operator Connect.
Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro Management portal
The Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro Management service is a cloud-based management solution that proactively monitors and updates Microsoft Teams Rooms devices and their peripherals. The Pro management solution is for organizations looking to optimize the meeting room experience for end users and rapidly scale their footprint enabled by real-time monitoring and management for Microsoft Teams Rooms devices.
The Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro Management monitoring solution is built on a strong foundation of Microsoft's expertise in software-enabled management of endpoints, and intelligent automation.
These are three key aspects of the service:
Intelligent operations
Software and machine learning that automates updates, problem detection, and problem resolution for Microsoft Teams Rooms.
Update management
Automated meeting application and windows update orchestration based on customer configurable deployment rings.
Enhanced insights
Rich analytics, reporting and proven learnings at scale across many customers.
Management capabilities
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| Room planning and rollout | Room planning capabilities that allow you to understand existing equipment and inform decisions on equipment standards for new room deployments. Features include: setting MTR Standards, export plans, Room inventory tracking with a bulk export option that lists room devices, peripherals, makes, and models. |
| Monitoring | Room health monitoring that detects problems with the room system or peripherals. The service monitors applications, operating system, peripheral and firmware health. |
| Troubleshooting and remediation | Automated diagnostics and auto-remediation where applicable. |
| Update management | Automated configuration and delivery of the Microsoft Teams Rooms application based on preconfigured rings of deployment. |
| Insights and recommendations | Insights into room health, usage, and equipment reliability. |
| Compliance and certifications | Meets all applicable standards for Microsoft Online Services. |
| Supported devices | Certified Microsoft Teams Rooms systems and their peripherals. Surface Hub and MTR Android support coming in the second half of 2022. |
| Supported regions | See Supported regions. |
| Integration | Available basic integration with customer-hosted Service Now for incident coordination. |
Creating room accounts
Microsoft Teams Rooms needs to be assigned a "device account". The account is used to access its meeting calendar and establish Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business connectivity. People can book this account by scheduling a meeting with it. Microsoft Teams Rooms will be able to join that meeting and provide various features to the meeting attendees.
Every device account is unique to a single Microsoft Teams Rooms device and requires some setup:
The device account must be configured with a Microsoft Teams Room Basic or Pro license and enabled with an Exchange Room Resource Mailbox. The device account must be configured in Microsoft Teams as a room resource.
Your infrastructure must be configured to allow Microsoft Teams Rooms to validate the device account and to reach the appropriate Microsoft services.
Note
In hybrid environments. the account used for Microsoft Teams Rooms must have password sync enabled in Microsoft Entra ID Sync because Microsoft Teams Rooms authentication requires Microsoft 365 or Office 365 authentication. When setting up the account, make sure that the account's SIP address matches its User Principal Name (UPN) in Microsoft Entra ID.
You can think of a device account as the resource account that people recognize as a conference room or meeting space account. When you want to schedule a meeting using that conference room, you invite the account to that meeting.
If you already have a resource mailbox account set up for the meeting space where you're installing Microsoft Teams Rooms, you can change that resource account into a device account. Once that's done, all you need to do is add the device account to a Microsoft Teams Rooms device.
These properties represent the minimum configuration for a device account to work with Microsoft Teams Rooms. Your device account may require further setup.
| Property | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Exchange mailbox (Exchange 2013 SP1 or later, or Exchange Online) | Enabling the account with an Exchange mailbox gives the device account the capability to receive and send both mail and meeting requests and to display a meetings calendar on the Microsoft Teams Rooms device. The Microsoft Teams Rooms mailbox must be a room mailbox. |
| Skype for Business is enabled | Skype for Business must be enabled to use various conferencing features, like video calls, IM, and screen-sharing. Both Skype for Business Online and Skype for Business Server are supported. |
| Password-enabled | The device account must be enabled with a password, or it can't authenticate with either Exchange or Skype for Business Server. |
Microsoft 365 resource accounts can be created in the Microsoft 365 admin center or Exchange PowerShell. The steps to create the resource account include:
Create a new resource account. Or, if a room mailbox already exists and you want to convert it to a resource account, you can modify an existing Exchange room mailbox.
Configure your account for Teams Meetings.
If the resource account is going to be associated with a shared device, such as Teams displays with hot-desking, turn off password expiration.
Lastly, assign a meeting room license so the account can access Microsoft Teams.
For more information, see Create and configure resource accounts for rooms and shared Teams devices.
Enabling voice for Microsoft Teams Rooms
As an optional step, after the creation of a Microsoft Teams Room device account, complete the voice configuration for the Room account by enabling voice services for the account. If you don’t enable voice services, then users won't be able to PSTN dial-out from a Microsoft Teams Room.
A standard or premium Meeting Room system license includes a Teams Phone license, however, a PSTN connectivity option will need to be added such as a calling plan, direct routing or operator connect.
To enable voice services, use remote Windows PowerShell with the same Microsoft Teams PowerShell module used for the device account creation. Enable Enterprise Voice for the device account using the Set-CsPhoneNumberAssignment cmdlet as follows:
Set-CsPhoneNumberAssignment -Identity "MicrosoftTeamsRoom@contoso.com" -EnterpriseVoiceEnabled $true -PhoneNumberType CallingPlan -PhoneNumber "+14255551010"
The cmdlet doesn't provide any output if activation is successful.
After enabling voice services for a device account, the Microsoft Teams Room will display a dial-pad. This configuration will allow the user to dial into a third-party PSTN conference bridge from the Microsoft Teams Room or perform direct calls to phone numbers.
Microsoft Teams Rooms policy options
If you have Microsoft Teams Rooms-certified devices in your organization, you have flexible management options. You can manage the devices yourself in the same central location where you manage all your Teams solutions. Microsoft Teams admin center. You can also delegate management access to a partner of your choice for either of the options.
With the Microsoft Teams admin center, you can perform the following tasks:
Perform device management like restarting devices and downloading device logs
Apply Teams-specific settings
Check the health status of Microsoft Teams Room devices and their peripherals, including cameras, displays, microphones, and so on
Review current and past meeting activity (such as details about call quality, network health and connectivity, and number of participants)
See peripherals (such as cameras and projectors) connected to a Microsoft Teams Room device
To manage Teams Rooms devices, open the Microsoft Teams admin center and go to Devices > Teams Rooms on Android, Teams Rooms on Windows, or Surface Hubs. To manage devices using the Teams admin center, you need a privileged account with one of the following roles assigned: Global Administrator, Teams Administrator, or Teams Device Administrator.
You can change settings on one or more devices in your organization. To change settings, select the device or devices you want to manage and then select Edit Settings. A new pane will open with all the settings you can change on your devices. Some settings are only available when you select a single device and not if you want to bulk edit multiple devices.