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After the past year at home, our staff is starting to come back to the office and want to use our conference rooms for video calls. Problem is, we use Teams and WebEx internally, with Zoom Phones, and our clients host Teams, WebEx, Zoom, Google meetings.

I have looked into several solutions but they all seem to be locked to a single platform, Teams, Zoom, etc. They all claim to be interoperable with the other systems but that requires extra licenses and requires the host of the meeting to have these interop services enabled, which we all know is not reliable.

My question for the community is what are you all doing in your conference rooms post COVID? We are seriously thinking about just hooking up a small Windows PC behind the TV and run something like the Poly X50 unit in device mode as the camera/mic/speakers, then let users use the computer to join their calls. We lose the fancy one touch dialing and now have the normal pains of a PC but we gain complete interop functionality.

I am really trying to find a solution that will allow us to join any call on any platform, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to exist right now.

Thanks for any advice. John

@Zoom

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Very close to what you describe. With the variety of online platforms (include our internally hosted JITSI) we use an ordinary PC. Everyone knows how to operate the web browser. It really simplifies training.

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Yeah, we had to set up a webcam, but in one conf room, we are using an old laptop (hooked up to a projector and speakers with a nice but old usb conf room mic) and in the other one, we have a small NUC hidden behind the TV with a logitech webcam sitting on top of the TV. Wireless keyboard and mouse and a wired mic. Seems to work so far… might have to reassess as the laptop is getting kinda old… We do have a phone in both conf rooms so there’s that as well if people run into issues.

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Both rooms, PC and large TV with remote mouse& keyboard. Both before WFH and after.

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I’m using a TV and PC with a USB webcam and a microphone array connected to a mixer. It works well and is platform independent. If they really want to do call-in audio, there’s a Polycom Soundstation 2 on the table that they can use.

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We have a Windows computer hooked up (with all the conferencing software they need installed) to some PTZ cameras in front and back of the room. They can join meetings without having to create an account with most software. But if they host, they will need an account to do that.

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We do exactly that. I’ve got a large monitor on a wheeled stand, a SFF PC attached to it, and a Logitech ‘Group’ PTZ camera & speakerphone system.

Users either invite the conference room account to the meeting, or forward received meeting invitations to it.

The only annoyance I’d like to solve it to make the account behave more like a ‘room’ resource.

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We use the Logitech Group Conferencing system. While we are WebEx all in, occasionally we have to join meetings from other platforms. Works great with WebEx, Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Teams.

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Pre-Covid we had Dell optiplex micros mounted behind a TV with a Logitech C270 for mic/camera.
We had some extra budgeting this summer so I installed a stem audio system in each room with a logitech PTZ pro for nice video coverage.
Everything seems to be working well and the company was very helpful in getting the best quality in each room.
Each piece of stem audio gear runs on a single POE+ run and has echo cancellation/mixing built in.
They advertise working really well with Zoom, but the hub shows as a usb interface to the computer and makes it easy to use for just about any VOIP/video conferencing software.

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We have smart TV’s in each of our conference rooms that any manager can connect to with their mobile device. I purchased webcams (Logitech c930e), Logitech K400 keyboards w/trackpad, and tiny PCs for each room. I spec’d out Corei5 Lenovo Tiny PCs but our COO found some very cheap Beelink Intel Atom PCs on Amazon that he insisted we use. Reluctantly I purchased the Beelink PCs and surprisingly they perform ok. They are running Win10 Pro and when on a conference we are using every ounce of computing power that little Atom processor can provide, but the conference calls have all been acceptable with good results. So far we’ve used Zoom, Teams, and GoToMeeting. I implemented this only two weeks ago so not sure of the reliability factor yet, but so far this solution has worked well for us. Just have to be patient when getting the conferences set up as that little Atom processor is working its little heart out.

This solution is nowhere near a professional video conference experience, but it is satisfactory for our needs.

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All our staff have laptops so in the bigger rooms we setup a 75 inch tv with the logitech meetup cam mounted below it.

We used a ethernet to usb converter to present the usb cable from the centre of the table (for the camera) was very expensive for the compatible converter but works well and means all staff do is plug in usb and hdmi cable and way they go.

For smaller rooms we have been using the logitech connect cameras, they work well and are easily portable.

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We have a small Dell behind our TV with a camera whos model I can’t recall right now, but if we’re not hosting, we just use whatever the caller is using, zoom, teams, ring central meetings, doesn’t matter. We lost the use of our nifty Ring Central setup when they updated software (long frustrating story), but with a wireless keyboard/mouse it’s actually a pretty easy setup to use and as @rhummel ​ said, really simplifies training.

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Thank you all for the advice and comments. This has been very helpful for us.

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Similar to the others, we’ve had Optiplex micros installed in our rooms for a number of years now. These are connected to either a TV or projector. We recently added some of the Logitech room kit hardware (depending on the size and needs of the room), and it’s integrated very well with our existing hardware. This setup works well across Teams, WebEx, and Zoom.

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We’ve built conference carts with the Poly G-40 System and cheap 60" displays. Been very pleased so far. Added the extension mic so it can be used in larger spaces, and haven’t had any issues with Third party guest join that I have been made aware of.

Enable Teams Rooms devices to join third-party meetings - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs

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We’re going to use large TV displays and Logitech Meetup cameras, connected to a USB-C docking station on the conference table that can be connected to each user’s own laptop. We did purchase one Logitech Teams conference system, but had to purchase the Swytch unit to bypass the Teams functionality to use other conference software on user laptops. We decided that it made no sense to have to buy extra equipment in order to disable functionality and I came up with the docking station configuration. The only problem is that I’m still waiting on the docking stations that have been backordered since April.

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Like the others, we use a PC connected to speakers and PTZ cameras. However, because we have all Dell laptops with USB-C ports, we’ve installed a dock in the conference room. There’s the standard conference room PC but users can also bring theirs in and simply plug in.

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How are people getting around M365 licencing issues with a single PC in the meeting rooms that everyone can login to with their own credentials?

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We just have per-device licensed copies of Office 2019 installed on ours, although we don’t actually need Office on those PCs very often anymore, most folks just use their laptops instead of the in-room PC

@the-grinder01

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M365 has shared licensing configuration on the computer, so each user that sign in has to activate Office in their user profile. I use a Group Policy applied to our shared computers that enables this configuration when installing Office on them.

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