Who owns the management and support of your Microsoft Teams Rooms?

3 Minutes Read

Organisations are deploying Microsoft Teams Rooms on mass, globally.

The number of Microsoft customers with more than 1,000 rooms has doubled YoY and the rate at which organisations are moving to Microsoft Teams shows no sign of slowing down.

We have been working with our global customer base to install and deploy Microsoft Teams Rooms at pace. One of the key components organisations miss when planning for deployment is how these rooms will be supported and managed post deployment.

How are you planning for the management and support of Microsoft Teams Rooms, devices and supporting AV equipment?

Ongoing managing and support for all your rooms

Many organisations work with multiple vendors resulting in different support agreements for one room, leading to different SLA agreements, management tools and support processes.

This can make problem and incident management extremely challenging and lengthens the time it takes to get
reactive support and overcome issues or problems with your conferencing environment. You will also likely have different support teams providing local support globally .

As the number of Microsoft Teams Rooms you roll out increases, so will the demand for planned and reactive support/management for these rooms.

Microsoft Teams Rooms are not just a PC in a room

Many organisations have made the error of viewing the Microsoft Teams Room like a ‘PC in a room’, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Whilst they are fundamentally windows or android based, they cannot be treated in the same manner as a personal device, both in terms of encryption and security as well as corporate IT policy on device configuration.

Implementing tools, which provide the visibility to enable problem identification and the quickest time to resolution is imperative to ensuring a successful program and improved user experience.

You should determine a strategy for remote support of your rooms and ensure you opt for a management tool or application that’s offers a single pane of glass view of the management, monitoring and performance of the complete room environment (including all AV peripherals).

You might consider working with a supplier that offers a global SLA of onsite assistance and replacement parts the next day.

Prior to deployment, consider what dedicated local onsite support resources are required to supplement the correct monitoring remote management tools. Service providers can supplement resources to allow you to scale up support to cover the magnitude of increase in Teams Rooms, whilst keeping a reliable service.

Align your internal teams

Fully align your internal teams. If using a service provider ensure they are fully aligned with your internal Microsoft Support Team and customer security teams to ensure you have all the commissioning details prepared ahead of the installation.

Test applications! We suggest testing on a pilot room and to work with a service provider who will test these and stage your devices prior to deployment.

How does a service provider like New Era help?

New Era will support all your Teams Rooms on a global scale. From design through to a fully managed service, we will relieve the burden on existing teams, increase cost efficiencies and provide ownership of the Microsoft Teams Rooms environment, through one single SLA – globally!