STOP! Before you begin thinking about testing that new Teams Room!

Got your attention now? Good.

I want to save you from the trouble and pain of disapointment from walking into a new Teams Room to test, only to find that the room just doesn't work!

There are a few items we need to cross off first in preparation for testing.

This post will break down the Teams Room preparation into 5 key points:

1. Network Configuration

2. Room Peripherals

3. Accounts and Licenses

4. Teams Room Application

5. Sign-in and Testing

If you are about to venture into the realm of Teams Rooms, or are deploying your 50th and don't understand why things don't go to plan, please read ahead for some tips and checklists to help you along.

1. Network configuration

This stage is critical if you want to get anywhere with your MTR. Often network teams require time, energy and consultation in order to open and modify the appropriate firewalls for Teams Rooms. Adding to this, you may need to use a separate VLAN to segregate Teams Rooms computers from other devices on the internal network. A Teams Room computer requires internet access to the Microsoft servers.

Thankfully, Microsoft have created documentation that outlines the exact network requirements to be implemented. Keep in mind, there may be ITIL policies inplace, or other change management requirements. Therefore, be sure that these have been implemented BEFORE testing day!

There are some Microsoft resources at the bottom of this post for you to read. I highly recommend you look at these and bookmark them for future reference.

2. Room Peripherals

A very important step in preparing your new Teams Room is to ensure all the components of the room, such as the display, speakers, microphones, and camera are connected correctly. In a Teams Room, you will be unable to conduct any functional tests of these peripherals at this stage; not until the room has signed into an account, then the options are made available.

3. Teams Account and Licensing

In order to move on to testing a new Teams Room, you need to make sure accounts have been created and pre-configured with the appropriate Teams Room license. Often this task is completed by a specific team in the organisation, but if you are required to undertake this task yourself, there will be a post on how to do this soon.

4. Teams Room Application is up-to-date

Many people may not consider updating the MTR application prior to testing. However, Microsoft has a minimum supported application version. If you are working with a version below this minimum supported version, the new Teams Room will just not sign in.

For a detailed guide on how to manually update the MTR version, see the video below. Otherwise if you have time, allow the MTR to sit on the network overnight (provided step 1 is complete!) and the computer should automatically receive the nightly update.

5. Sign in and Test

You’re there!

You can start testing your new Teams Room and possibly hand it over into production use. A few things to check though:

• Ensure the Teams Room is using the correct Speakers, microphones, and camera. This is completed via the Teams Room settings, or via Teams Admin Console.

• Ensure it is connected and appears in Teams Admin Console as ‘Healthy’.

• The camera is clear and functional. Including any automatic framing.

• Microphones can be muted and unmuted by the user interface, or if applicable, via the microphones themselves.

• The speakers are functional.

• The HDMI ingest works and audio is present (ensuring the setting is toggled ON).

• The time is correct. If the time is incorrect, there may be a network issue or blockage. The MTR will retrieve its time from a Microsoft NTP server.

• All the other application features are available via the touch interface.

Summery

As you can see, it is not as simple as slapping in some hardware, signing in, and starting your conferences. There is some forethought and planning required. However, much of the leg work is in steps 1 and 3, which should all be prepared in advance prior to installing any room hardware.

Below is a quick baseline checklist you can use to ensure that the Teams Room is getting off on the right foot!

*Note that this list does not factor in things such as Domain joining the PC.

Resources