This article is the first in a series which will focus on each new release of the Microsoft Teams IP Phone client by highlighting any new or changed functionality in each release.  Depending on the depth of a specific new feature or functionality a separate, dedicated article may be posted to cover that topic in greater detail. Background Currently Microsoft targets roughly quarterly updates for the array of certified Teams Phones available from multiple Microsoft partners.  While each phone manufacturer manages device firmware releases on their own schedule they all still use the sa ..read more

The purpose of this article is two-fold.  Primarily it introduces and explains a new provisioning capability in Microsoft Teams which is applicable to Teams-certified devices across all Android-based categories: Teams Phones, Teams Displays, Teams Panels, and Teams Rooms on Android.  Secondly the overall concept of device provisioning in Teams is explained along with real-world scenarios to provide some additional guidance and clarity. Background At the beginning of 2021 Microsoft quietly added a new item to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap entitled Zero Touch provisioning for Teams devices ..read more

The purpose of this article is to demystify a common misconception with how Microsoft Teams allows various types of clients and devices to communicate between each other when leveraging several different native features. The most important concept to understand in this article is that there is actually no direct pairing happening between the Teams clients among these scenarios.  Yes, then the title of this article is purposely misleading.  The word “pairing” was specifically included as that term is commonly used for categorizing the behavior of tying multiple devices together.  ..read more

This article explains how the meeting lobby is applied to different participant types joining a Microsoft Teams meeting from various clients and devices as well as how to control this behavior using various options provided at the tenant, user, and meeting levels.  Also covered is newer behavior available in Microsoft’s Cloud Video Interop (CVI) partner-offered services like Poly’s RealConnect for Microsoft Teams which now allows more flexibility in the lobby experience for different sets of standards-based video teleconferencing (VTC) system.     Microsoft Teams will ..read more

This article provides the latest best practice configuration of the Poly One Touch Dial (OTD) Service when used with resource mailboxes stored in Exchange Online.  It does not matter if the room mailboxes are used by Poly or Cisco video conferencing systems as while the actual endpoint configuration may differ slightly, the initial access configuration and calendar integration for the service is the same for all supported device capable of displaying a Join button for scheduled meetings. Background Currently there are three different methods to configure the OTD service for access to Exch ..read more

The process outlined in this article can be used to reset a Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) system to a factory default configuration.  This would be the preferred method to use on a system which may have any customization beyond the base MTR application settings which need to be removed.  For example, a system which was joined to an Active Directory domain, or had custom policy settings defined or pushed, or had any third-party software applications installed.  Completion of this process will reset the Windows OS installation, retaining the existing MTR client application version an ..read more

This article outlines the currently available options to upgrade a certified Microsoft Teams IP Phone device to the latest firmware version as provided by Microsoft.  The concepts and processes are generally the same for all certified IP phones provided by the various Microsoft partners.  The example screen captures and documented upgrade process in this article was performed using a Poly CCX 500 phone. Background Microsoft Teams-certified desk phones and conference phones utilize a fairly new approach that is a mixture of different approaches used across several generations of IP ph ..read more

While this blog already contains several articles discussing Poly’s RealConnect solution many organizations with existing Poly video infrastructure deployments want to understand which RealConnect for Microsoft Teams topology may be best.  The purpose of this article is to explain the differences between the available topologies so that an informed decision can be made.  Some of this content has already been covered in various older articles, but this serves as an opportunity to present the latest information in a single cohesive story leveraging best practices derived from real-worl ..read more

The deployment and administrative experience for a Common Area Phone (CAP) across Microsoft’s UC platform has changed over the years as it has matured from an on-premises software release with Lync to hybrid offerings of Skype for Business only to eventually be replaced by the cloud-only Microsoft Teams solution.  Generally the ideal of a common area phone is just that: a phone located in a shared space which only needs to provide the ability to place phones calls to other users and/or phone numbers.  These are not meeting devices. Thus a core trait of the common area phone scenario ..read more

A increasingly frequent experience for Microsoft 365 administrators and users leveraging various third-party solutions is the need to approve some sort of permissions request presented to them as Enterprise Applications (also know as Service Principals) while navigating a workflow.  A common example of this is when attempting to sign into a third-party website which leverages the Microsoft Identity platform for user authentication. Another growing scenario is related to how devices like phones and conferencing systems can connect to and access data in Microsoft 365 tenants. For readers of this ..read more