For the past last 12 months, Microsoft has provided numerous updates to their Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) systems. This has not only shown their commitment to growing in this area; the updates have also cemented their position as market leaders.
Here is a summary of the improvements and updates that stand out from the last 12 months.
• Quality and reliability fixes
• Windows 10 20H2 Support
• Both HP Slice and Crestron UC-Engine MTRs have some compatibility issues and drivers and fixes will be provided by these vendors.
• Fix for MTR Consoles not showing a room system that has been hidden from the Global Address List (GAL)
• Government Community Cloud High (GCCH) support for Teams Rooms can now use Teams Rooms. There is a manual update that needs to be applied to update these devices.
• Join Cisco WebEx meetings from Teams Rooms with direct guest join
• Join Zoom meetings
• Join Zoom meetings from Teams Rooms with direct guest join (Preview)
• Join Zoom meetings with better video quality (720p support) and receive the video gallery of participants
• Skype for Business sign-in failure banner removed for Teams default mode. This change supports organizations removing Skype for Business infrastructure
• Teams meetings join link parsing now handles Microsoft Defender Advanced thread
• Protection Safe Links to allow joining external Teams seamlessly
• Fix for shared content scaling issue in Skype for Business meetings when the sharer’s PC has a custom DPI setting in Windows
• Share HDMI audio to meeting participants in Teams meeting
• Cortana voice skills (Preview)
• Unfortunately, Cortana voice skills are available for select audio peripherals for tenants located in the United States. Additional countries or regions will be added in the future.
• Prevent unmuting based on audio permissions when Teams Room joins as an attendee. For more information, see Manage attendee audio permissions in Teams Meetings.
• Spotlight someone’s video from Teams Room console and consume spotlighted video on room displays
• Fix for white half-screen when invoking On-screen keyboard in Teams meeting
• See more videos with a 3×3 video gallery on front of room displays
• 3×3 video gallery and local live closed captions are delivered through the Microsoft Teams service. These features are available to all Teams Rooms devices with application version 4.5.37.0 and above.
• Start local live closed captions from MTR.
• Fix for Skype For Business sign-in failure when Windows 10 update KB4565351 or Windows 10 update KB4571709 is installed.
• Teams Admin Center enablement and auto-enrollment
• Windows 10 1909 release support
• Switch to video gallery layout even when content is present
• Virtual raise hands support for attendee and controls for the presenter
• The adjustable default volume setting for conferencing and default speaker
• Search and call federated users (tenant) from Teams Room
• Version 4.5 is the last to support Windows 10 version 1803; future releases will not be offered to systems on Windows 10 version 1803. For more information about Windows version support, see Windows 10 release support.
• Fix for “application won’t launch after update to 4.4.41.0” issue
• If your device doesn’t automatically update to version 4.4.63.0, follow the steps in the Microsoft Teams Rooms application that does not start after updating to version 4.4.41.0 to resolve the issue.
Please note that it is always best to leave the MTR system to do its updates by itself. Microsoft has an automated script that runs overnight and will download any patches and updates required and apply them. It is strongly advised not to apply updates or Windows updates manually.
