The Ultimate Teams Room is Not What You Might Expect 

Your Microsoft Teams Rooms are getting smarter — and not just because of AI. An evolving partnership with Cisco is adding more capabilities on both the front-end and back-end of Teams Rooms integrations.

There’s no question Teams is gaining ground in enterprise applications – as of last year, when the Cisco partnership was announced, Microsoft counted more than half a million Teams Rooms in use. So it makes sense that Cisco is connecting more of its hybrid-meeting enhancements and IT-friendly device management tools to Teams users. 

From the start of the brands’ partnership, Cisco’s Teams-certified products provided all the NVIDIA-boosted intelligence in Cisco’s camera, audio and video technologies. But now, after a year of learning what customers needed in full-scale integrations, Cisco has opened up a few more features.

On the IT admin side, customers can dual-register Cisco Devices for Teams Admin and also Cisco Webex Control Hub, which adds usage, occupancy and environmental sensor insights. It also enhances UI and opens up the API to actively use Cisco sensor data to improve Teams meetings.

From a user experience standpoint, there are few extra improvements. A new Cisco RoomOS version from last fall has added Signage capability to Microsoft Teams Rooms. That’s the most outward-facing update. But inside the rooms, Cisco RoomOS also adds AI-enabled analysis to improve the human factors of a hybrid meeting. Using sensor data, Cisco hardware adjusts to how people are using spaces, measuring room size and occupancy to calibrate microphones and cameras so everyone is heard and seen.

Cisco started its collaboration with NVIDIA on AI-enabled meeting room technology almost ten years ago, so RoomOS is pretty smart. Its Cinematic Meetings experience setup allows Cisco devices to follow presenters around the room, intelligently listen for audio cues and switch between multiple cameras. Then the sound and video is processed for framing, zoning and multiple streams to create a better meeting. 

There are still more updates coming, and PPI is tracking all the layers where Cisco has opened up its APIs for more customized integrations. It’s a long list of new options, and it all adds up to collaboration rooms that are easier to use and smarter to manage and maintain. 

Ream more about the new collaboration between Cisco and Microsoft here.

Get in touch with PPI to find out how these new Cisco offerings can improve the Teams Rooms experience in your collaboration spaces.