Ultimate Guide on How to Design and Build a New Signature Microsoft Teams Room

In this guide, we explore how Microsoft is transforming standard conference rooms into Signature Microsoft Teams Rooms that give Teams Room users the best front-row experience possible. The guide provides room design, technology guidelines, installation practices, recommended products, and Microsoft Corporate reference specifications.

In the near future work will be fluid, dynamic, and powered by the cloud. At any time, from anywhere, Microsoft enables meeting experiences that allow people to be present. As these are hybrid meetings, you can participate in them seamlessly no matter where you are located. With devices designed for Signature Teams Rooms, meetings are inclusive; everyone's voice is heard, and everyone has a clear voice.

Microsoft sees a future in which immersive meeting spaces and environments are designed around those who use them. It is now possible for everyone, wherever they are, to connect face-to-face with each other. There is no better way to keep everyone connected to the content and to each other than with our dynamic meeting expereince: Formal presentations are blended with collaborative chat conversations. Creativity is unleashed when groups use digital canvas.

The vision for the future is based on a simple idea: meetings must offer more than one-time transactions to participants. Whether people are in a room or worldwide, meetings will be tailored to their needs.

The needs of both remote and in-person participants drives room standards in Microsoft's hybrid workplace. The Signature Teams Room is designed to provide an elevated hybrid meeting experience, fostering more natural and immersive connections while helping participants feel included, represented, and productive. Using software and hardware capabilities in conjunction with guidance on room configurations, Signature Teams Rooms make a set of principles a reality.

A Signature Teams Rooms is a concept developed around a set of experience principles, which are based on a set of important goals.

Goal 1: Everyone in the meeting feels included, represented, and productive.

Design principles:

• Remote participants can establish a genuine presence in the room.

• In-room participants can retain their individual identities in the meeting.

• All meeting participants can engage in boundaryless collaboration.

Goal 2: Connections feel natural and immersive.

Design principles:

• Experiences are scaled for human connection, enabling interactions that feel like everyone is in the same room.

A Signature Teams Room experience is all those components and ideas put together with no single feature defining the experience. The individual characteristics and concepts found in Signature Teams Rooms may also be deployed independently.

Examples of specific feature deployment:

• Take advantage of our new front-row front-of-room display experience in all types of meeting spaces where a Microsoft Signature Teams Room solution supports it.

• Implement and update rooms with curved tables and front-facing layouts with traditional Microsoft Teams Room experiences to promote better human connection while maintaining continuity of experience across all meeting spaces.

Signature Teams Rooms are not intended as a replacement for all other meeting spaces in your organization, but rather as a complement to existing meeting spaces utilizing Microsoft Teams Rooms. You should deploy them strategically within your organization at locations and spaces where high-touch face-to-face interaction is most valuable.

Microsoft Teams Rooms will continue providing people-centric hybrid meeting experiences through new technology and continuing software updates. It is essential, however, to follow room configuration guidelines and implement hardware technologies to optimize Signature Teams Room experiences. There are several components of a Signature Teams Room, but their combination creates the complete Signature Teams Room. There are several factors to consider when determining how many Microsoft Teams Rooms you would like to evolve into Signature Teams Rooms, including:

• Is a high touch conversation requred?

• Room dimension and capacity are closely related in most conference rooms, which maximize valuable square footage. Rather than maximizing square footage, a Signature Teams Room prioritizes the meeting experience. It is not possible for every organization to prioritize this way for every meeting space, as it may reduce the number of meeting rooms available.

• Are there any hardware upgrades or investments to be made?

Balancing hybrid flexibility with inclusion:

Flexible work guidelines at Microsoft headquarters prioritize employees' choice and flexibility about where and when they work. Microsoft has rethought the evolution of our meeting spaces and technology because of this fundamental shift in policy.

In research studies, remote meetings during the pandemic have been shown to have many benefits, including increased feelings of equity and inclusion. As we consider returning to a hybrid workspace setting, where remote and in-person collaboration happens simultaneously, Microsoft created meeting spaces that better support flexible work policies while maintaining a level playing field for all participants through room design and technology.

For small groups and medium-sized groups, this signature space provides the most immersive experience for working together as a team.

Signature, Microsoft Teams Rooms provide a unique environment where meeting participants can meet remotely and locally, presenting and co-creating content easily, just like in the typical Microsoft Teams Room.

The key to making the room so effective is its configuration that allows remote participants and content to be seen and engaged in the best way possible.

During the course of the presentation, all chairs in the layout are aligned with the display, which enables remote participants to see what is going on. The curved table also facilitates eye contact and assists in-person participants in orienting themselves.

Using Microsoft Signature Teams Rooms certified audio solutions, it is possible for people to hear and be heard clearly. Auto tracking microphones enhance the conversation and reinforces real time paricipaion no matter the location in the Signature Microsoft Taems Room.

In the future, Signature Teams Rooms will support audio systems that utilize spatial audio. With spatial audio, sound emanates from the direction of the person speaking. For example, if a person on the right side of the meeting gallery says, the audio will come from the speaker closest to that location. This immersive audio experience helps meetings more closely resemble an in-person conversation.

An ultra wide-angle HD camera is recommended for this space. It is positioned at the front of the room below the displays to capture everyone in the space.

The ultrawide-angle camera features intelligent tracking of meeting participants so they can be represented individually in a large view instead of as faces within a large image of the entire room.