Building a Microsoft Teams Room conference space requires looking at meeting rooms from a new angle! With many employees back at the office, at least partially, there’s a need to reimagine the workplace. Deploying a new meeting room enhanced for hybrid or a traditional in-office space requires carefully planned equipment and collaboration guidelines.

1. Room Attributes for AV Best Practices

Building a new in-office meeting room must encompass all the audio, video, projection, compute, and networking needs. Microsoft Teams is often the backbone for numerous organizations to help them easily transform to work from anywhere. You want to follow these best practices to avoid employees experiencing difficulty joining Teams with Audio Video from their conference rooms. If your setup has a variation of existing conference room hardware including a speaker, monitor and projector as well as a dedicated PC, it’s a good starting point. 

Bring further features and flexibility to create custom meeting rooms with audio systems, video consoles, conference phones, Teams panels, content cameras, intelligent speakers, and collaboration displays.

The first step in the AV design journey is to consider the questions below.

Room Attributes Checklist

• Number of Walls? Fully enclosed with a door? Can walls support displace weight?
• Are there conduits available for cable pulling in the desired locations?
• Will cables need to be run on top of the floor?
• Are there any acoustic issues?
• Does the room have lighting concerns?
• Does the room have any apparent ambient noise issues (open space noise, HVAC)?
• Does the room include a physical white board? If so, where?
• Will this room require any external automation controls, such as Crestron/Extron lighting/shades?
• What is the size of the room (LxWxH)?

2. MTR Windows vs MTR Android

You must also decide early-on if you’re building an MTR Windows or MTR Android setup. 

Microsoft Teams Rooms should be designed with each customer’s unique needs, which is why Microsoft offers a range of options, including Teams Rooms on Windows and on Android.

Primary functionality is available on both platforms. End-users will always have great audio and video experiences, with one-touch join meetings, and access features such as live captions and ask a question.

As Microsoft brings new features to Teams and to Teams Rooms, we strive to bring them to all platforms, but features may roll out at different times due to several factors, including things like technical feasibility and customer feedback for each platform. This means you may see some features rolling out on Windows before they come to the Android platform.

​For a successful deployment of Microsoft Teams Rooms, it’s necessary to identify the right devices for your spaces and carefully evaluate the functional differences between these two systems.

For Windows 

• Flexibility/ Large Meeting Room 
• Custom Design 
• Unified Platform
• Immediate Access to new Features

For Android

• Inclusive Software, Hardware & Connectivity
• Mixed OS environments
• Small Hub Space for Collaboration
• Cost Efficiencies 
• Remote Site Enablement

3. Key Components

Once you have an inventory of your organization’s existing meeting spaces to understand their environment, size, design, and purpose – you should then identify intelligent cameras, whiteboarding, content camera, and compute hardware like USB ports, etc.

After you create an inventory of the gear and capabilities, your requirements for that room feed into your device planning to create a powerful conferencing solution. Audio Visual and compute needs of each room play a key role in which solution is most appropriate for each room.

Best Practices around Teams Room Compute  

1. Consider the number of USB ports​  
   • Count your USB peripherals because not all computes have the same number of USB ports.​
2. Consider the type of USB Connector​
   • Is it USB A/B/C or Micro because ​USB audio and video peripherals have different connectors​
3. Verify type and speed of USB connection​
   • Is it USB 2.0 or 3.0 because they operate at different speeds
   • USB 3.0 for newer technology Cameras and BYOD USB Extension​
4. Verify compute location​
   • Wireless network is not supported so a located network may be needed​
5. Understanding EDID – Extended Display Identification Data with 4K displays​
   • The premise of this form of communication is for the display to relay its operational characteristics, such as its native resolution, to the attached source and then allow the source to generate the necessary video characteristics to match the needs of the display​
   • Use display controllers like Atlona AT-DISP-CTRL or Extron HD CTL 100

4. Teams Touch Console

Consider the following camera components to transform meeting space collaboration, from small huddle rooms to large conference areas. Choose a camera(s) that provides a rich and collaborative Teams meeting experience that’s simple to use, deploy, and manage. Enable participants to see everyone in the room.

Camera Design

• Make sure Teams Room Camera is MTR certified​
• Camera Field of View​
• Number of cameras supported​
• Camera Types​
• Camera Extension

Number of Cameras Supported

• Not all MTR Manufactures support more than one camera​
• Crestron MTR 2 Cameras​
• Poly MTR 2 Cameras​
• Yealink MTR 9 Cameras

Camera Types

• Fixed vs. PTZ
• Speaker Track
• Group Framing
• Presenter Track
• People Framing
• Camera Extension

5. Teams Rooms Audio

Complete a Teams Room design with certified audio parts that integrate well with your meeting room design.

• Make sure Teams Room Audio is MTR certified​
• All-in-one soundbar ​
• Tabletop microphones​
• Overhead ceiling microphones​
• Cortana voice assistance 
• Speaker radius

Audio options include:

Soundbars​

• All-in-one devices that include camera, microphone and speakers​
• Use Microsoft approved USB devices​
• Direct USB connection to compute behind display​
• Know the limitations of Microphone pick up range​

Tabletop​

• Some devices connected USB to the Tabletop Touch Console​
• These include the speaker component as well​
• Table-top microphones require certified Digital Signal Processor​
• These require additional wall mounted or ceiling speakers​
• Some manufacturers offer Cortana enabled tabletop devices for voice assistant features​

Overhead Beamforming​

• Intelligence built in for noise reduction and automatically tracking the talking participants​
• Requires certified Digital Signal Processor with USB connection to compute

6. Third Party Control

Third party control allows the room to connect to a third-party control processor from Extron and Crestron to be able to control room lighting, room shades, additional Camera control, additional sources, etc. Be careful to not over complicate your third-party control because the room control page times out after 60 seconds and forces you back to the Windows interface.

Third-party control options work with Audio Visual Collaboration components including:

• Poly, Lenovo, HP, Yealink, Logitech MTR partners with Extron control processors for control​
• Crestron MTR uses their control processors for control

Consider when selecting licensing:

MICROSOFT TEAMS ROOMS BASIC	MICROSOFT TEAMS ROOMS PRO
Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic $0 per device per month	Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro $40 per device per month
Available at no charge for rooms equipped with any Microsoft Teams Rooms device (up to 25)	Licensed per device, per month (Annual subscription – auto renew)
Collaborate with your team	Advanced hybrid meet with layout, intelligent AV, branding
Instantly join meetings & share content	Remote management, bulk actions, real-time analytics
Cultivate real-time collab from any device	Enterprise-grade security
	Get new features
	Upcoming: Advanced Control & management
	Upcoming: Seamlessly update devices
	Upcoming: Advanced manage by device by location

MEETING ENGAGEMENT	MICROSOFT TEAMS ROOMS BASIC	MICROSOFT TEAMS ROOMS PRO
Teams video gallery with multiple layout options
Front row
Together mode
Large gallery (up to 50 videos)
Dual screen support

INTELLIGENT AUDIO AND VIDEO	MICROSOFT TEAMS ROOMS BASIC	MICROSOFT TEAMS ROOMS PRO
Support for Intelligent Speaker live transcript with speaker identification
Multi-camera support
Panoramic room view
AI noise suppression
People counting

• Using Microsoft E3 & E5 licenses for MTR license is going away​
• MTR basic license gotchas:​
  •  Single Monitor only​
  •  Single Camera only​
  •  No multi stream people feed for intelligent cameras​
  •  No share whiteboard with content capture camera​
  •  No PTSN calling​
  •  No Front row​
  •  No Together mode​
  •  No large gallery (up to 50 videos)​
• Very limited device management​
  •  No detailed system and configuration information​
  •  No peripheral health management​
  •  No remote configuration​
  •  No device history and activity​

What Makes NWN Carousel MTR Experts?

US Partner of the Year Meetings, Calling & Devices for Microsoft Teams
MSFT Gold Communications Partner 
MSFT Gold Midmarket Solution Provider
MSFT Gold Cloud Productivity
MSFT Gold Cloud Platform
MSFT Gold Messaging
MFST Trusted Meeting Room Partner
MSFT Teams Rooms Technical Solutions certified
Poly – Platinum Level Status
Logitech Video Specialist 
Yealink Video Specialist
Extron EAVA, XTP Designer
Crestron DM- Design, Technical, Engineer