This article has been reposted from graham-walsh.com.
The Microsoft Teams Panel is a brand new category of devices. They will be initially launched by Crestron and Yealink. The GA date for these is scheduled for March 2021 as per the roadmap. What’s the point of these? Well many organisations use these devices to show room booking information and guidance if rooms are free or busy. Users can book the room if free, or they can use the Nearby Rooms feature to find the next available room. What is really cool with these devices, when the Teams Panel is paired with a MTR, it will pick up the room count information and can indicate if the room is full, so you can visually see from a distance, meaning you don’t have to walk down the corridor only to find out the room is full once you get there. A great time saving feature.
The Crestron panel will be available in either a 7″ or 10″ version and the hardware will be available later in 2020, so you could plan to use them now with just Microsoft Exchange connectivity and then upgrade the software to have the Teams panel software.
You can book nearby rooms simply by tapping the icon and it will show you free/busy rooms.
Once you’ve selected the room, you can book it there and then. This saves time from heading the proposed room, only to find someone else beat you to the room booking.
Management of Meeting Rooms
Teams Admin Center (TAC) is the go to device management tool for all your Microsoft Teams devices. With your $15 MTR license, this provides you access. Previously launched at Ignite in 2019, Managed Meeting Rooms (MMR) was introduced. This has now evolved and is called MTR Premium (MTRP). Same great service, full 24×7 management of the devices. You don’t need to enrol all your MTRs into the portal, you can just select maybe the high profile ones. The cost of MTR Premium us $50 per room per month but includes the room license, so the net cost is really $35. What is interesting now is how will MTRP manage the MTR on Android devices? As the MTRP install an agent on the Windows 10 device, they’ll have to develop one for Android I guess. More info when we hear more I guess.
If you want a deep dive overview of the portals, here is a session from Ignite.