Microsoft Teams Rooms: What is Microsoft Teams Rooms and How to Use It

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In early 2020, many companies started performing most of their operations remotely. About 42% of the American workforce works remotely, according to a Stanford study from June 2020. As a result, remote meetings have become crucial for businesses. Even though some companies plan to have their employees back in the office soon, others plan to give theirs the option to work from home permanently. This is why it’s so important to make employees feel connected even though they’re miles away from the office. 

Unfortunately, many meeting rooms use outdated technology. As a result, it can be difficult to set up virtual meetings and conduct them effectively, forcing participants to lose productivity and rely on their IT personnel too often. 

Microsoft Teams Rooms is a great solution to this problem, giving employees a consistent meeting experience to help them stay connected and productive.

Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTRs) is an umbrella term for Teams native hardware solutions that allows you to transform meetings into a shared room of any size, from small huddle areas to large conference rooms. Microsoft has partnered with several vendors, including Yealink, Logitech, Crestron, Polycom, Lenovo, and HP to create MTRs that meet your specific needs.

Why Use Teams Rooms for Business 

Microsoft Teams Rooms is a special solution because it allows participants to create large meeting spaces with any number of cameras, speakers, and microphones. This highly customizable program gives you the freedom to piece together different components to build out your own system. Have a small huddle room? No problem. All you need is a single screen, microphone, and camera. Need a larger conference system? MTR is also useful because you can easily set up and start meetings with a seamless one-touch join system. Once meeting attendees are connected, they can manage the meeting via a touchscreen control panel. For example, they can mute as well as add or remove attendees.

You can select the MTR that is best suited for your room and your use case. Attendees can wirelessly display content on a physical display in the shared meeting area using their laptops and mobile devices. They can also display their content to all the remote attendees who join via their Teams desktop or mobile clients.
 
Furthermore, you can easily schedule meetings via Outlook. The account tied to the Microsoft Teams Rooms system will automatically accept or deny invites based on availability. The Teams desktop and mobile clients have a built-in proximity function, which allows you to detect a nearby Microsoft Teams Rooms system. This is a useful alternative to joining a meeting via an invite.

An alternative to buying new MTR hardware is using your existing SIP/H.323 standards-based room systems to connect to Microsoft Teams using Cloud Video Interop (CVI) like BlueJeans Gateway. 

How do you decide which option is right for you? 

• If you are equipping new rooms without any hardware, and you primarily use Microsoft Teams as your main collaboration platform, MTRs would be a good solution for you. 
• If you have existing room systems in your meeting rooms, such as Cisco, Poly and Lifesize devices, it might be best for you to simply buy a CVI license that connects those rooms with Microsoft Teams rather than buying new hardware.

The best approach will be to have a combination of MTRs and CVI-enabled devices in your office, so you can maximize the benefits of both.

Conclusion 

Teams gives its users a whole new way to collaborate. Microsoft Teams Native Rooms provides a more enriched experience and a higher ROI. To augment your new MTRs, use BlueJeans Gateway to get the most out of Microsoft Teams.

Try BlueJeans Gateway for Microsoft Teams

Check our pricing for BlueJeans Gateway or sign up for a 30 day free trial . You can also quickly test drive BlueJeans Gateway for Microsoft Teams by signing up for a one time meeting.