M365 Perspective

Teams Rooms with AI Facilitator for in-person discussions?

Facilitator agent is coming to Teams Rooms for ad hoc, in-person discussions (public preview late March on Windows, late April on Android), plus MDEP firmware from Jabra and Yealink, Logi's five-stream Rally Bar and dongle-less Bluetooth headset certification, and Tom's Enterprise Connect session…

Many thanks to Pure IP this month's Empowering Cloud Benefactor, be sure to catch our great webinar with Pure IP and Microsoft, Microsoft Teams Phone: Optimise Costs & Boost Productivity in 2025, tomorrow! (reg for live or to be sent the recording).

Count Down to Enterprise Connect News

It's the week before Enterprise Connect, so lots of Microsoft Teams news coming, but we did also get some exciting updates in the last couple of weeks ahead of the show.

I'll be at the show, look out for some interviews from the show on LinkedIn. At the end of next week, we have Teams Fireside Chat with Pete Daderko, Senior Director, Microsoft Teams Product Marketing, where we will discuss all the news and announcements.

If you are there, these are some of the sessions I am looking forward to:

Microsoft Keynote with Ilya Bukshteyn
Keynote Panel: Is there a new model for collaboration technology? with Jim Burton, Eric Krapf, Graeme Geddes, Carlos Quintero, Mahendra Sekaran, Thomas Kraynak and Akshay Srivastava
Breaking Through the Fog: Demystifying UC Interoperability with Craig Durr, Ilya Bukshteyn, Rich Bayes, Quentin Esterhuizen and John Stearns
Maximising Value from Microsoft Teams and Copilot with Kevin Kieller

I am involved in two sessions:

MDEP: Will Microsoft's New Android Version Disrupt Your Meeting Room Ecosystem? - A Panel led by David Danto (Principal Analyst, TalkingPointz)
Fannie Mae Case Study: Implementing Microsoft Teams Copilot at Scale - I am moderating this discussion with Ronald Hulen and James Redmore from Fannie Mae

Microsoft Teams News this week

What if you could use AI in Microsoft Teams Rooms to capture notes for ad hoc and in-person discussions? That is what is coming with Facilitator agent for ad hoc and in-person discussions in Microsoft Teams Rooms (Public Preview late March for MTRoW and late April for MTRoA) See MC1020213 for how to opt into the preview.

MDEP is in customers' hands, Jabra were the first with the Panacast 50 VBS and Yealink has just released firmware for the Yealink Roompanel E2 (8 inch) and Roompanel Plus E2 (10 inch). I'm watching for news from other OEMS who have announced MDEP partnerships.

AOSP management firmware for Teams devices continue to roll out via Teams Admin Center. 6 OEMS now with firmware available, AudioCodes, Cisco, DTEN, Jabra, Poly, and Yealink. More coming in March and April.

Logi Rally Bar and Rally Bar Mini are the first video bars that support up to 5 simultaneous video streams for Teams Room on Windows, giving new remote video experiences and paving the way for future capabilities. Details on how to set up Teams Room on Windows Multi-Stream (Beta) in CollabOS 1.14.

Logi are also the first to certify a dongle-less/Native Bluetooth Teams headset. Look out for a blog I'm putting together on the details of dongle-less headset certification soon.

We also got some updated documentation on configuring SMS with Microsoft Calling Plan numbers for United States (including Puerto Rico) and Canada, and Managing voice recognition for MTR and BYOD.

Also remember Face and Voice enrollment are now enabled by default, controlled with two new settings in csTeamsAIPolicy MC1024383.

We are finally starting to see new Teams Phone Mobile providers/countries coming through, Vodafone Business launched covering Germany, and I'm informed Voda and VM02 close in UK - look out for more news at Ent Connect. Full Power BI comparison research report here.

Microsoft Teams Roadmap

The new Microsoft Teams desktop client health dashboard is in the admin center. I think these will be really valuable for Teams admins, giving visibility to users having issues and out-of-date clients. Coming April, MC1015900.

Microsoft is moving to the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal, managing Teams Rooms on Windows with a Standard or Basic license, not just Pro as it is currently. Roadmap: 482539.

Speaker recognition and attribution coming to Teams Rooms on Android April (480715), and Local PTZ camera controls for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android coming May, 482189.

One-year retention policy for meeting attendance reports in Microsoft Teams will be implemented in August, if you want to get data older than this, now is the time. MC1022529.