Last Updated on December 14, 2021 by GrahamWalsh
A little short on news this month due to Microsoft Ignite around the corner. March’s show will feature a full recap of the announcements.
Questions during Episode Eleven
Q. Getting ready to roll out several Crestron MTRs. Azure AD joined. Is there any documentation for adding/creating an admin group for these devices?
A. Best guide is here on domain joining considerations. Also a comment in the chat of
Likewise with Chris, this has been frustrating. Its reasonably simple to setup AAD users as local admin users on MTR in Intune, but it looks like you need a newer version of Windows than 1909 to support adding AAD groups to local device administrators?
Q. Is there some training available on MTRs?
A. Yes there are several resources – aka.ms/learnteamsrooms, aka.ms/teamsroomslearning and aka.ms/teamsroomslab
Q. Why is the Poly Bar already working with android and Logitech says that Teams on Android is not available yet?
A. Logitech are waiting to launch with the next gen Android client.
Q. When can we expect coordinated meeting join for MTR on Android?
A. Not sure, keep checking the public roadmap – aka.ms/mtrroadmap
Q. Will the Crestron Mercury Mini also be available with an X version? BYOD?
A. Yes, the MMX30 is available now – see here.
Q. With the A30 – Is the HDMI ingest on the remote or the bar?
A. MTRoA does not support HDMI ingest as yet. It is on the roadmap.
Q. What features are in the A30?
A. The A30 is a medium room solution. It will support speaker tracking and group framing picture in picture like the Poly EagleEye Director 2.
Q. What are the good sessions coming up at Microsoft Ignite?
A. This is the main keynote for Microsoft 365 and this is the main devices session.
Q. Using OBS with Teams desktop client, anyone have any tips/tricks?
A1. 🐱💻 Top 5 Video Camera Hacks in Microsoft Teams – YouTube
A2. Take you Microsoft Teams meetings to the next level (OBS, Streamdeck and more) – YouTube
Q. MTR with Live events?
A. Alexander provided an update that he tested. “Live events and MTR. The together mode, large gallery, new gallery UI and live reactions are working in the latest update
“
Q. Any info on the 10″ Crestron personal communication device you posted with camera on twitter?
A. The forthcoming UC-P8-C and UC-P10-C will be launched shortly. Check out a video here in the Ignite Demo center.
Q. On the theme of replacing Tech Community articles with full docs: Is Microsoft going to document powering on displays in rooms? Many rooms are upgrades, some don’t have commercial displays, and many MTR compute devices don’t support CEC. We have upgraded a bunch of rooms and have a TV remote left in the rooms, which I despise. Talking with our vendors, are going to be ordering Altona AT-DISP-CTRL units to these rooms (comparable to Extron HD CTL 100 but supports PoE and a bit cheaper) so that when the touch panel wakes up, the displays will come on without user intervention.
A1. Every vender has a different interpretation of CEC control, so difficult to mandate/specify. Jimmy wrote a good article here.
A2. Even with the Yealink MVC500 II I have on order that has CEC, I’m not planning to trust just that. We will use “Power on signal” functionality on the Sony commercial displays alongside it.
A3. Our customer purchased 20 consumer grade displays and having a huge issue with the CEC control.
A4. Look at theseoptions: Display Controller – Atlona® AV Solutions – Commercial & Residential and HD CTL 100 – Control Systems | Extron. Both can do CEC, RS-232 and even IR to control. Also have “EDID Minder” functionality to keep signalling happy (another issue we have faced with one older consumer display).
A5. if you’re dealing with CEC issues on Samsung, they normally come down to base firmware challenges. Those displays are usually 3 tiers – Micom, Submicom, and application FW. I’ve had to get base updates from Samsung to get CEC working
Q. Skype for Business sign in Failures, why does this happen when I’m just using Microsoft Teams?
A1. Even in Teams only use cases, please do not disable the SfB account in the Teams Admin Center. There is still some back-end functionality that requires SfB components. Also ensure the UPN, Email and SIP address are all set and match exactly.
A2. On my MTR’s we found the UPN attribute for SFBO was not there. I believe this is attributed to the length of the account name with truncation. Not sure yet on that, still working out the root cause. In our case we did a migration from SFB on prem to SFBO and the on-prem attributes for UPN didn’t exist. However, some accounts worked, some didn’t. Those that didn’t had long account names. Still looking at this.
A3. I also have a dual forest domain in hybrid. So, my situation may be quite different here. I had to verify matched passwords for my SFB account that matched my Teams AAD account. Also, SIP URI and UPN need to match.
Q. Other MTR mailbox issues seen by Joel
A. We had some DNS issues with our first MTRs, but also ran into a strange issue where EWS was disabled on our conference room accounts preventing calendar access to Exchange Online. Likely a tenant specific issue, but wanted to share. set-casmailbox -identity ROOMNAME -EwsEnabled $True
Q. With Teams MTR Premium, is there a schedule for how quickly all the updates to a new Windows MTR device should take? If we’re deploying 80 devices, should we let them update in their own time via MTR Premium or should we try and “front load” updates with a script where we can? Thoughts?
A1. Let MTRP manage them in the designated Rings. It’s an excellent feature included in that service.
A2. Just leave them alone. The auto-update built into MTR will get them up to speed. Save your efforts.
Q. Is there any good in-depth resource/hub for MTRs in the education or specifically higher ed vertical? It seems potentially a large opportunity for MS, which Zoom is ahead on. We currently are doing ‘USB rooms’ with USB FoR and rear cams, Shure Mics/USB DSP, etc, but it is a manual/many-click process for the instructor to turn ‘the room on’ (join the Teams/BlackBoard/Zoom meeting) compared to our previous hard codec Poly/Renova solutions. MTR one-touch or this new auto-answer seem great, just not finding as targeted of resources as provided by Zoom. Zoom example: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/sections/360009297492-Professional-Services-ProAV-Designs
A. Microsoft is working on some simplified MTR designs for certain scenarios. I don’t think EDU is specifically targeted but room size/features is.
Q. Any update on Teams Casting?
A. Still in TAP testing.
Q. Also, just to touch on something Graham mentioned at the end which has gotten me thinking. It would make sense me for to bring home a spare Lenovo MTR as a lot has changed over the last 12 months and I’ve little doubt there will be more changes before we return to the offices, which I’d like to spend more time testing. Anything to be aware of setting it up at home, I’m thinking fully configure in office and take home? (all our devices currently running as Teams default, domain joined)
A1. Remove it from the domain 🙂 Otherwise, drag it home and it will work fine. Oh – make sure you have enough power outlets for everything. I have no idea how I have not yet tripped a breaker.
A2. And be sure to have space. I had to buy a second desk in my office to support a 2x monitor configuration. Or purchase small, portable monitors. I have a touch-enabled portable monitor and it works fantastically for MTRA. I have something like this.
A3. Russ has 2 HDMI switchers for dual monitors (to support 2 MTRs) and a USB switcher for 2 MTRs with 1 – mic and 1 camera
A4. Interesting, Russ Is this supported in MTR/W? I have tested the video part, integrating MTR/W’s with HDMI splitters, switchers and even matrix switchers for integrated A/V rooms. But no experience with USB switchers. Have you tested multiple brands? Is the one that you are using a pro model? Does the TAC refresh the devices connected to the unit each time you swap the camera/speaker/microphone? Any diagnostics / monitoring problems from TAC with this arrange? Thank you!
A5. No this is not supported officially as TAC will recognise the MTRs as the peripherals are offline.
Q. Hi, my name is Martin from Switzerland! We just deployed around 100+ Teams Meeting Rooms, I have a question: Any way to disable auto-start video in Teams Room System by default? Thanks
A1. This is by design and not possible to change. You can disable it but means users must press sign-in each day after a nightly reboot. Remember the Skype account is secure by design.
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