Microsoft Teams Room on Android (MTRoA) deployment (Step-by-Step) Instruction - Part -4

In Part - 1,  Part - 2, and Part -3 we looked at Licensing requirements, Resource Accounts, Group Based Licensing setup, Calendaring configuration for Room accounts, and finished device configuration. In this article, we are discussing how to manage MTRoA devices from the Teams Admin Center.

• Login to Microsoft Teams Center (https://admin.teams.microsoft.com),
• Navigate to the "Teams Devices" folder,
•  select "Teams Room on android".

Here you can view and manage the device inventory for your organization and do tasks such as update, restart, and monitor diagnostics for devices. 

You can also create and assign configuration profiles to a device or groups of devices, and create and assign tags to devices for easy filtering.

Once the device is successfully registered to Intune/Endpoint manager, the device also registers to TAC automatically through the Teams admin agent preinstalled on the device by default.

On this page, you will find a summary of total MTRoA devices, health status, and License details.

You can use the filter to filter the devices in different variations. You can use one or more filters as you need to get the details exactly what you are looking for. In this example, I'm using Health status to filter the device's pending updates.

There are two ways you can update the devices firmware or Teams app updates,

1. Auto-Update/Scheduled update.

2. Manual Updates.

1- Auto-Update: -

By default, the updates are deferred 30 days from the date of release and then the updates are pushed to the system automatically, but you can always change the update frequency.

• Login to Teams Admin Center (https://admin.teams.microsoft.com)
• Navigate to Teams devices and then select Teams Rooms on Android.
• Select one or more devices and then select Update.
• Under Firmware auto-update, you can do the following,

As soon as available - Use this option to test devices on which you can carry out any validation you need to perform. Updates start deployment as soon as the latest firmware version is released. Select the devices that are very less impact.

Defer by 30 days - This is the default option and is best for most of your general-purpose devices. Updates start the deployment only after 30 days have elapsed from the release of the new firmware version. 

Defer by 90 days - This option is best for devices used by VIPs/Executives. Updates start the deployment only after 90 days have elapsed from the release of the new firmware version. 

2 - Manual Updates -

You can also manually update the firmware/Teams app or any component updates on the devices either in a scheduled window or immediately (it takes 15 minutes).

Note: - Once you initiated the update, there is no way to cancel the updates.

For Teams Room on Android, you have to update the Video Bar and Touch console updates separately.

• Login to Teams Admin Center (https://admin.teams.microsoft.com)
• Navigate to Teams devices and then select Teams Rooms on Android.
• Select the "Touch consoles" tab

This page will summarize the report of all device inventory, device health status, and license distribution.

Open each device and click the "Health" tab and update the device firmware or Teams app updates.

Once the updates are scheduled/pushed immediately, the updates are queued and pushed within 15min (if the device is reachable else the updates will be canceled after 7 days of submission). 

Note: - Once you initiated the update, there is no way to cancel the updates.

Manage the MTRoA devices in Intune/Endpoint Manager portal -

• Login to the Endpoint Manager portal (https://endpoint.microsoft.com)
• Select devices from the left navigation,
• Select "Android" under the platform and then select "Android devices".
• In the Search type either the room device resource account or device model to filter the devices.

Here you can able to create configuration profiles and device compliance policies and assign them to the device group.

This is the end of this multi-part series document. If you need any further help on the DA access policy or Conditional access policy. Please comment below.

How to configure Teams Audio Conferencing Dial-Out policy to restrict the calls to Non-Zone A country users and How to monitor and Analyze the reports

What are Zone-A Countries in Microsoft Teams?

Currently, there are 44 countries in Zone-A. When you use call-me or dial-out features within Teams meeting the call is considered domestic. 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/audio-conferencing-zones

Audio Conferencing Dial-Out/Call-Me pool minutes -

When you are using an E3 license audio conferencing is not included by default. You need to purchase an additional add-on license for audio conferencing. The audio conferencing standard license includes 60 minutes per user per month that can be used to dial out or call-me features in Teams meetings to dial anyone within Zone-A counties.

Note: - You need communication credit to dial premium numbers.

The standard license per-user min is pooled together, so anyone in the organization can use it even if their 60 minutes pool is over/full/utilized.

The tenant-level pool munites are calculated based on the number of users who have audio conferencing licenses assigned e.g if you have 1000 users in your organization and you have only 100 audio conferencing licenses assigned, the dial-out minute pool of the audio conferencing 6000 minutes ( 60 dial-out minutes per user X 100 licenses assigned to users).

How to use the "dial-out" and "call-me" feature from Teams meeting -

In the Teams meeting, you can use "Call-Me at" to dial the PSTN number or you can invite someone from the participant section (Dial-Out), both calls are routed to PSTN and PSTN pool minutes are used if it's domestic (Zone-A countries).

If you dial Non-Zone A country then you need communication credit which is "pay-per-minutes".

Once the tenant pool minutes are consumed it will use communication credit (if it's setup) else the outbound calls will fail.

What is Communication Credit -

It's an add-on license you need to purchase and assign to the users, so they can dial into a toll-free audio conferencing number and dial any PSTN destination without impacting their productivity.

How to Restrict users dialing Non-Zone A countries -

Login to Microsoft Teams admin center,

• In the left navigation, select Users, and then select the display name of the user from the list of available users,

• Next, go to Audio Conferencing ta, and select Edit.

• Under Dial-out from meetings, select the dial-out restriction option you want.

• Select Save.

Options -

Any Destination - This is the default setting.

In the same country or region as the organizer - It restricts the access to dial non-organizer regions. If the organizer is from the USA, users cannot dial outside US numbers.

Zone A countries or regions only - You can dial 44 Zone-A countries PSTN numbers.

Don't allow - This blocks the outbound dialing option from Teams meeting.

How to monitor or analyze the AudioConferencing dial-out utilization -

Login to Microsoft Teams Admin Center, Navigate to "Analytics and reports" select "PSTN and SMS Usage" select the time range and run a report. 

Click Filter and select column "Call/SMS type" with the "Conf_out" condition to filter Outbound calls made from audio conferencing.

Login to Microsoft Teams Admin Center, Navigate to "Analytics and reports" and select "PSTN Minutes", by default the report runs for 28 days. This report shows how much pool minutes were consumed in a month.

Note: - PSTN pool minutes are not carried over to the next month if it's not utilized.

Check this article on how to use PowerBI to analyze your audio conferencing dial-out usage -

https://m365community.blogspot.com/2022/12/analyze-your-teams-direct.html

Calling License Types -

• MCOPSTNPP - Communications Credits
• MCOMEETADD - Audio Conferencing
• MCOMEETADD_DIALOUT_US - Audio Conferencing US and Canada dial-out plan
• MCOMEETADD_CN_GLOBAL - Audio Conferencing for non-China users
• MCOMEETADD_TATA - Tata Communications Connections
• MCOMEETACPEA - Audio Conferencing Pay-Per-Minute
• MCOMEETACPEA_GOV - Audio Conferencing Pay-Per-Minute for Government

Configure Call Answering rules on the Teams Voicemail Settings to forward the call to someone/PSTN number after the greetings.

It's almost time most people go on vacation and you might have set out-of-office on your calendar, but that doesn't stop someone from calling your office number. You might don't want to miss that call, but at the same time, you want the caller to know that you are in out-of-office.

Teams Cloud Voicemail setup: -

Cloud Voicemail is automatically set up and provisioned for Teams users. A Microsoft Teams Phone license is not required for Cloud Voicemail. Cloud Voicemail deposits voicemail messages in a user's Exchange mailbox. 

Note: - Cloud Voicemail doesn't support third-party email systems.

License requirement: -

• Exchange Online
• Teams

Enable Voicemail: -

Login to Teams Admin Center and click Manage User, Search the user and select the "Voicemail" tab and enable the voicemail.

You can enable the voicemail through PowerShell as well.

Set-CsOnlineVoicemailUserSettings -Identity "Gengaiyan" -VoicemailEnabled $true

Create/Assign Voicemail Policy and enable the call routing rules: -

Login to Teams Admin Center and expand Voice and select "Voicemail policies".

Check Microsoft's official documentation for more information -

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-voicemail-policies

So far, we have configured the voicemail setup for the user account. Now, let's configure the Call Answering rules to route the PSTN Inbound number to Internal User or PSTN number after voicemail greetings.

There are a couple of ways you can configure these settings,

1. Admin Level through TAC or PowerShell.

2. User-level settings.

Admin Level through TAC:-

Login to Teams Admin Center and click Manage User, Search the user and select the "Voicemail" tab, 

select the "caller can leave a voicemail" option on the call answering mode,

Select "Transfer to a number" on the call transferring,

Enter the "PSTN Number e.g +112345679" on the Transfer Target,

Default greetings prompt "Enter your OOO message".

Admin Level through PowerShell:-

Set-CsOnlineVoicemailUserSettings -Identity gmani@visa.com -CallAnswerRule "voicemailwithtransferoption" -TransferTarget "+1123456789"

User-Level Settings

Go to "Settings" ---> Calls, under the call answering rules, select "Calls ring me" and "No one else" under the "Also ring" option, and select "Voicemail" on the "If unanswered". 

You can configure how long your endpoint needs to ring before the call is routed to voicemail (default 20 seconds).

Click "Configure Voicemail" under voicemail settings,

Call answering rules -

Select "Let the user record a message or be transferred to someone else" on the dropdown list.

You can transfer the call to someone internal or transfer it to a PSTN number e.g +1 123456789.

 

What are the difference between Teams Meeting, Webinar and Live Event? How do we choose which meeting type to use?

There are three different types of meetings available in Microsoft Teams that we can use based on a use case to make a better user experience. In this article, we are going to discuss these 3 types of meetings, so you can make a better choice for your use case.

Teams Meeting - 

This is the standard meeting that we regularly use to connect with others and we can use Outlook or Teams client to schedule the meeting for audio/video or content sharing/whiteboard etc.

• Teams meeting supports 1000 participant limits and it allows overflow to 10,000 participants in view-only mode.
• Note:- Microsoft currently supports 20,000 participants till June, 30-2023.
  
  
  
• Schedule meetings with the organizer/co-organizer role for better meeting management.
• Restrict Meeting chat e.g Disabled, In Meeting Only, Enabled after meeting discussion.
• Control meeting participants Microphone, Video (Camera).
• You have more control over who can present in the meeting e.g only the organizer/co-organizer, everyone, the user in the organization, and the guest.
• Meeting registration. You need to enable the option on the meeting policy.

• Schedule meetings through outlook or Teams client.
• Join the meeting with the "Meeting code" through Teams client, Browser, and Teams Room systems.
• Join Teams meeting on the 3rd party meeting solutions via direct guest join e.g Zoom & WebEx.
• Control dial-in, anonymous users join the experience through meeting settings.
• Cloud recording and control who can record the meetings.
• The meeting organizer can control who can bypass the lobby (guests, dial-in users etc.)
• Enable language interpretation and choose the interpret to language.
• Allow attendance report.
• Interact with the Teams app during the meeting e.g MS Forms, Polls, Q&A etc.
• Enable Gallery (3x3), large gallery (7X7), and together mode with creating own scene selection/creation for a better user engagement/meeting experience.

Teams Webinar - 

Teams Webinar is built on the Teams meeting features foundation, so it has most of the common feature set. However, the webinar has a very structured role for presenters and attendees.

• The key difference between Teams Meeting and vs Webinar is, Webinar supports robust registration, customization event to show company branding, a dedicated registration site, and finally event oriented meeting options.
  
  
  
• You can only schedule through Teams Client (outlook doesn't support it).
• Presenter Bio.
• We can put a banner, logo, and predefined color on the registration page.
• With the Teams Premium feature - you can set automatic/manual event approval, and you can set even registration start/end times, event participant capacity, and waiting list.
• Event access Internal / Public.

Teams Live Event - 

The key difference apart from Teams meetings is Webinar - the live event is a more structured meeting that enables organizations to schedule and produce events that can be streamed org-wide through Teams/3rd Party systems (VBrick), Stream, or Yammer to a larger audience of 20,000 people.

Note: - You can stream up to 100,000 participants for big events. Pls, contact Microsoft support to set up the event.

• Live Events have three different roles to manage and produce the event effectively.
• Organizer – The person who creates the event.
• Producer – The Host who schedules content during the event, and starts/ends the event.
• Presenter – Presenters can share their video or content through screen sharing with the audience.
• You can only schedule the event through Teams client.
• You can invite an external speaker to the event.
• You can create events for specific users/groups or Internal org-wide events, or Public events.
• Stream Live Events through MS Teams, RTMP-based streaming with external encoders.
• Live captioning up to 6 different languages (attendee's PC regional settings should be in the correct language setup).
• Attendees engaged through Q&A only.
• Integrate eCDN solutions to optimize media quality and reduce internet bandwidth utilization.
• You cannot join Live Events as an attendee from Teams Room Systems. You need to be invited as a presenter to the event.
• No dial-in option for attendess.

Now you know the key differences, 

- If you need to schedule more interactive meetings you can choose Teams meeting (limited meeting registration option).

- Do you want to schedule an interactive meeting with robust meeting registration e.g company logo, registration approval flow, and event capacity then Webinar is a good option.

- You can also disable meeting chat and add a Q&A app to the meeting with the attendee's microphone & camera option disabled. so, you can produce a meeting similar to Live Events. This option gives additional benefits whereas users can join meetings from MTR Rooms/ CVI Endpoints.

- If you have external encoders/studio setup with the eCDN network built-in then Live Event is a good option.

How to Leave/End the Teams Meeting from all the Endpoints joined the meeting

 

Microsoft Teams allows joining a single meeting from multiple devices. When you join the meeting either you can transfer your current call to another device or add a new one to the call. When you transfer the call automatically other endpoints disconnects from the meeting. However, when you add the device to the call another endpoint will be in the call as well (unless you disconnected it manually).

When you want to leave/end the meeting from all the devices instead of leaving the meeting running till expiration (24 hours) there was no option earlier.

Now Microsoft released a new feature to leave/end the meeting from all connected devices (on the Mac endpoint).

On the Mobile client: -

Improve Hybrid Teams Meeting with Logitech Grid View /Neat Symmetry

What is Hybrid Teams Meeting?

Hybrid meetings are meetings that feature at least one group of in-person/face-to-face attendees connecting virtually with other meeting attendees. The hybrid meeting involves a mixture of in-person and remote attendees for collaboration using Teams/Zoom UC platforms.

 What are the challenges in the Hybrid meetings?

Companies are embracing change and updating their policies to allow employees to choose their workplace, either completely remote, coming to the office every day, or hybrid. Lots of people really like a hybrid meeting – 64% of professionals report that hybrid video calls are their preferred meeting style https://owllabs.com/state-of-remote-work/2021 . The remote participants often experience when interrupting the speaker, audio echo, Video, distortion and not being able to hear everyone in the room. To make the most of hybrid meetings, you may need to make some upgrades to your meeting spaces and the way you manage them. The modern meeting room will rely on technology more than a traditional meeting space. Sound, video, and connectivity are all important.

 In terms of sound, ceiling- or desk-mounted microphones that aren’t sensitive to background noise, and that can distinguish who is speaking, will ensure remote attendees don’t miss out on the conversation.

 For remote attendees, a laptop will typically be their window into the meeting room. In-person attendees will either use a tabletop screen that combines video and audio, or a central video conference screen. Each person in the meeting should feel like they have an equal opportunity to engage in the discussion and contribute their ideas. Your technology will need to accommodate screen sharing so that every attendee can see the meeting content and contribute to a virtual whiteboard or equivalent.

 How to improve the Hybrid meeting experience in Teams?
 

Microsoft made lots of improvements in Teams to improve the Hybrid meeting experience that includes,

CollabOS Release Notes: Rally Bar and Rally Bar Mini – Logitech B2B Support

1. Front Row feature for meeting rooms in-person & remote participants.
2. Raise Hands with orders that give priority.
3. Chat bubbles to show the active chat conversation.
4. Conference Room Video unique auto framing technology ( Speaker/Grid View or Symmetry).

 Improvements in the Video Conference Room devices

Logitech Grid View :-

The hybrid workplace presents unique challenges, with its mix of in-person and at-home meeting participants. For remote workers, it can be difficult to see all the in-room participants when multiple people are squeezed into a single video stream. This makes it harder to see key communication signals like facial expressions that are crucial for effective collaboration. In-person meeting participants are also not represented on screen equitably.
 
It’s more important than ever to bridge the gap between physical and digital spaces and create an equitable collaboration experience for everyone. Logitech recently released CollabOS 1.8.290 to push the boundaries of hybrid meetings with the introduction of Grid View to the RightSight 2 suite of features for Rally Bar and Rally Bar Mini.
 
Grid View uses AI to intelligently frame in-room meeting participants. It gives everyone more equitable representation in the meeting by detecting faces and zooming in on each person to give them their own frame. This allows each person in the room to be better seen by their remote colleagues.

How to Enable Logitech Grid View:-

You need to install Logitech Sync minimum version 2.5.293 https://prosupport.logi.com/hc/articles/360040085114-Download-Logitech-Sync and install it on the MTRoW device and register the device to Sync portal.

Neat Symmetry: -

Neat Symmetry is Neat’s unique auto-framing technology. Symmetry allows people in a Neat room to be shown in their own dynamic video frame. This improves the conference experience for other participants in the meeting by allowing people in the Neat room to be seen more easily.

 

Reference Documents: -

Neat Symmetry: Auto Framing - Neat Support

CollabOS Release Notes: Rally Bar and Rally Bar Mini – Logitech B2B Support

3.5 RightSight 2 Grid View - CollabOS Guide – Logitech B2B Support

Teams Group Chat using Distribution Group/Security Group/ Custom Tags, Delete Chat Conversation & Automatically End the Stale Teams Meeting

 

Teams Chat -

    Start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-Enabled Security Groups, and O365 Groups. You can max add 250 users in the group chat.

Automatically end stale Teams meetings

Microsoft Teams is enabled with a new feature that will allow meetings to automatically end if they're identified as stale. If a user is the sole participant in a meeting 10 minutes after the scheduled meeting end time has passed, then a dialog will appear in the call prompting them to end the call or dismiss the notification. If no action is taken on the dialog within 3 minutes, the meeting will automatically end.

If there is more than 1 user on the call and/or the scheduled meeting end time has not passed yet, then the feature will not trigger.

If the user dismisses the notification, they will not see it again for the same meeting, and it will not be at risk to automatically end anymore.

Users ability to delete chats Conversation/Thread

    Users can now delete 1:1 chat threads or chat groups from the Teams desktop or mobile application.By selecting the ellipsis, users can select the Delete option to clear their chat list.

On Mobile client: -

Logitech Sync Offers more management control for CollabOS Updates, Device Management, Inventory Management

Logitech released new offers for Sync solution on management control for CollabOS Updates, Bulk Device Management, and Inventory Management e.g Update Channels, Group Settings, and IT User Access Control.

With the latest release, you can now choose which version of CollabOS you want your device to update to. 

Sync Update Channels provides new customization options: 

• Create custom channels and assign devices to them.
• Deploy your preferred version of CollabOS on your devices.

Additionally, you now have access to the CollabOS beta channel and to preview upcoming software releases before they are publicly released. 

Create CollabOS Update Channels -

Login to https://sync.logitech.com and select "Meeting Rooms" and "Settings".

• By default, all rooms are on the production channel. This is a Logitech-maintained channel and will always provide the latest production versions of software for your devices and by default, all your existing rooms will be under the production channel.

• The beta channel is also maintained by Logitech and will provide the latest beta version of our software for your devices if you wish to test ahead of production.

• Note: You cannot downgrade devices. Only upgrade devices to beta software you are comfortable with.

Create a new channel by clicking the “Add a new channel” button. Give the new channel a name to continue.

Now, you can assign the room to the update channel by clicking "Add Room" option.

You can also assign a specific room to any update channel by going Inventory, Search the room you want to add and click "Modify Channel" column

Once you assigned the rooms, you can click back to the "Update Channel" and select the channel to find how many rooms was assigned to each device type.

You find the the Release note easyly by selecting the target firmware version.

You an change change group of devices into different upgrade channel.

You can publish/assign different firmware versions to upgrade channels.

Bulk Device Management -

Now, you can do bulk device management for immediate firmware upgrade or schedule updates,

configuring device settings e.g Camera Right Sight- 2, Audio settings.

bulk reboot all the devices in a specific group.

Access Management - 

Now you can create a RBAC role to grant access to specific Site/Country that you want local user access only thir site devices.

Inventory Management -

You can check your environment device portfolios under the inventory tab or device settings page.

More about Sync and CollabOS

Logitech is consistently working to improve the hybrid work experience for both in-person and remote employees through our video conferencing hardware and software portfolios. 

With CollabOS, devices work better together, receive regular updates, and are simple to deploy and manage. That way you can ensure everyone has high-quality, equitable meeting experiences. You can manage CollabOS devices through Logitech Sync, where you can quickly configure features in meeting rooms to best suit your organization’s needs.