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Joining Video Conferences hosted by external Exchange Organizations  You have now setup your Microsoft Teams Room system, Zoom Room system or any other Video conferencing endpoint and want to join meetings from external organization using One button to Push. But you find out anytime you forward the meeting to the Mailbox/Calendar for the room nothing ever shows up on the Calendar.  Sound familiar? The reason is because resource room mailboxes do not accept external calendar requests by default due to security considerations. This extends to both directly addressed or forwarded invites to the the video endpoint room's mailbox/calendar. We can confirm the 'resource room mailbox' does not allow external processing of calendar requests by running the following command.  This is just an example and your resource mailboxes names will likely be different. Get-CalendarProcessing "MTR" | fl Process*   To enable the Exchange resource room mailbox t...

Troubleshooting Proximity Join Microsoft Teams Proximity join with Auto Answer for the Microsoft Teams Room system is an important feature in achieving the virtual ‘no touch conferencing room’. Using a mobile phone or personal computer we can start a meeting by selecting a nearby MTR using Bluetooth or by the Suggested room list which is a list of rooms that you’ve used recently on your calendar coming from the Exchange address room list.  The mobile phone or PC is used as the content sharing source in this case. The proximity join feature provides Bring Your Own Calendar (BYOC) with BYOD.  This feature provides increased calendar privacy without displaying your meetings on the touch controller interface and physical health & safety in not having to touch the conference room controller to start a meeting. But their are rules to be aware of when using these features and the tips and tricks that follow will help optimize the experience: 1. Make sure yo...

A Microsoft Teams Room for every room The Crestron Mercury MX150 is the first turnkey native  Microsoft Teams c onferencing room system on the market that allows a user to also run a meeting scheduled on a different UC platform.  What does this mean?  Well, I  simply attach the USB and HDMI cables coming from the front of the Mercury to my laptop and utilize any UC client from Zoom, WebEx, Bluejeans, Google Meet, etc.  How this works is quite simple! Once I attach the cables, the Mercury will detect the connection and prepare itself as the speaker and mic along with the front of room camera as USB peripherals for my laptop. The HDMI cable is used to project the laptop display to the front of the room display.  Voilà! When the MTR is not being used as a native Teams room, anyone can utilize the space to run any type of meeting off their own laptop securely with BYOD and BYOC - 'Bring Your Own Calendar' With the majority of companies util...

The Zero Touch Conferencing Space Covid-19 has changed the world forever to say the least. As businesses are now starting to open back up, executives are taking a pause and thinking about what the new normal is going to look like.  Questions that are being asked include:  • How is social distancing going to be implemented?  • How will I provide a healthy and safe working environment?  • How do I project confidence that my workspace is safe and convince employees to come    back?  • Should I build out larger spaces allowing for social distancing?  • Should I scale back the open office and repurpose huddle rooms and build out new     enclosed offices?  • How do I provide a minimal touch environment to limit the vectors of infection if it is    from Covid or something else? These questions are relevant to just about every working space environment.  So, what can we implement today to facil...

Schedule and Start meetings from Crestron XiO Cloud This a repost from a video I did on LinkedIn but thought for prosperity sake I would turn it into a living blog article. The ability to provide remote room conferencing support is front of mind for a many business planning what the new normal will look like in the office. With social distancing, flexible or staggered work schedules the IT and AV staff might not always be in the office to provide in person support.  With Crestron XiO cloud, providing zero touch administration and concierge support from a distance are just some of the features the Doctor has ordered to stay compliant with social distancing and keeping employees safe.  In this video I demonstrate the ability to provide high touch concierge services remotely leveraging XiO cloud by scheduling a meeting and starting a Zoom meeting with the remote control feature. Hope you enjoy this demonstration. 

Microsoft Teams Room System with Occupancy based Automation Crestron recently introduced a new firmware that enables the pairing of the TSS scheduling panel and POE occupancy sensor together without the need for a control processor or Crestron Fusion. The scheduling panel talks directly to Microsoft Exchange and uses the same credentials as the Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) system. If a meeting on the calendar has been booked and no one has checked into the room from the scheduling panel or triggered the occupancy sensor with motion, the meeting will be canceled and the  Room along with the MTR will now be made available for use by other parties.    The CEN-ODT-C-POE occupancy sensor covers up to a 2000 square foot space. In addition to this functionality the LED lightbars and room signs indicate the following presence states:       þ   Green means the room is Available and not occupied   þ    Blue means the room...

Microsoft Teams Room & Zoom Room Feature Matrix There are quite a few opinions on why Zoom or Microsoft Teams has the better UC platform including features, value, capabilities and security. I think we can all agree both UC platforms are iterating at lightning speed and the capabilities and value of each UC platform is tied to the end user’s business and functional needs.   Below you will find a side by side feature list of the Zoom Room system running on a Windows PC and the Microsoft Teams Room system. To caveat this is focused on the capabilities from the room systems themselves not the individual UC clients. What should you choose? Well that depends on the use cases and there are too many to list here.   If you have a medical facility or field hospital where auto answer and FECC are requirements Zoom has you covered.  Additionally, If you're looking for a turn key video solution with native applications that have highly customizable feature...