As a trusted Zoom partner, Poly has equipped many meeting rooms with the Poly Studio X Series and G7500 Zoom Rooms Appliances. These solutions simplify Zoom meeting experiences and help create meeting equity with innovative technology, which is why we are excited to announce Poly Studio Bundles for Zoom Rooms—our new PC-based solution, powered by HP’s Mini Conferencing PC. This solution expands our portfolio and fosters Zoom Room adoption with even more flexibility. It doesn’t matter if you need to equip a small meeting space, a large lecture hall or a boardroom, Poly has you covered.

Poly Studio Bundles for Zoom Rooms

Our new Poly Studio Bundles for Zoom Rooms include USB video bars, our Poly Studio R30 for small rooms, our Poly Studio USB for medium rooms and our Poly Studio E70 for large rooms, the recently announced Poly TC10 touch panel and an HP Mini Conferencing PC to power this solution.

The HP Mini Conferencing PC included in the Poly Studio Bundle is a very powerful and capable device, certified to support three cameras (multi-camera mode), three displays, and is designed to allow expansion with Flex port—just in case additional interface is required for future capability. The HP Mini Conferencing PC is a very powerful engine that can scale from small rooms to custom rooms.

Our Poly Studio X Series, G7500 Zoom Room Appliances and Poly Studio Bundles for Zoom Rooms can co-exist in the same organization, offering consistent, simple meeting experiences for everyone.

Supporting Effective Collaboration

Zoom Rooms offer a user-friendly meeting experience for both Android-based Bundles and PC-based Room Bundles. This experience is enhanced with Poly’s innovative Director AI technology, which is built into our room solutions to provide cutting-edge video with various camera framing modes that optimize views of room participants regardless of room sizes or configurations. This technology empowers effective collaboration in a hybrid work environment because it helps virtual attendees feel as if they are in the same room as the speaker and, therefore, can participate on an equitable level. No matter the rooms size or work location, we want to ensure every participant feels equally seen and heard.

Click here to learn more about Poly Studio Bundles for Zoom Rooms.

With more companies preparing for a return to office in some capacity (full-time, hybrid), deployment of Microsoft Teams Rooms into meeting spaces has seen a huge boom as a way to allow workers to effectively communicate with dispersed teams. As a longtime Microsoft strategic alliance partner with the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of certified solutions, it should come as no surprise that Poly offers a full portfolio of Teams Rooms Kits on Windows, optimized for meeting spaces of all sizes from focus rooms to large conference rooms. 

This morning at ISE, Poly announced the new Poly Studio R30, a USB video bar optimized for small rooms, and introduced a new room kit specialized for small rooms, the Poly Studio Small Room Kit for Microsoft Teams Rooms. The new Poly Studio R30 packs the same UltraHD 4K camera with a 120-degree field of view as the original Poly Studio USB video bar, including PolyDirectorAI features such as automatic group and speaker framing, Poly NoiseBlockAI and Acoustic Fence technology. However, Studio R30 comes in a significantly more compact form that can be easily mounted on top of a room display.  

More MTR Room Kit Options 

While the new R30 is custom-built for small meeting rooms, we offer MTR Room Kits for meeting spaces of all sizes. The original Poly Studio USB video bar with stereo speakers and optional expansion microphone support remains an ideal solution for medium-sized rooms, with other kit options built around Poly Studio E70 available for larger spaces. The introduction of our Small Room Kit rounds out a complete lineup that can support the full spectrum of rooms and their specific needs. 

But wait…there’s more! We have other enhancements coming that make it easier to deploy and maximize the use of Microsoft Teams Rooms.  

Poly Camera Control App 

This new app lets users take control of a Poly conferencing camera from the convenience of a touch controller and make the most of smart Poly conferencing cameras that support multiple camera framing modes. Users are able to turn the auto-tracking on/off and manually control the camera or adjust the auto framing mode (group, speaker and people framing*) on the fly.  This means users can experiment and select the best camera setting that is most suitable at that moment, such as a presentation, brainstorming session or group discussion. This app will be available in June as a free-of-charge download.    

USB Extender for Poly GC8, Easier installation in Large Rooms 

Installing a Teams Room in a large conference room just got easier with the introduction of a USB 2.0 extender for Poly GC8. The USB extender option makes use of a standard category 5e/6/7 cable to extend the distance between the room PC and Poly GC8 touch controller up to 100 m/330 ft, which comes in handy when you need to wire the cable through raceways in large room settings. This USB extender for Poly GC8 will start shipping in late June in US, Canada, UK, EU/EEA, Australia and New Zealand.   

BYOD Solution for Poly Studio Room Kit 

Even when a user receives a video meeting invite that’s not a Teams meeting,  they will still be able to enjoy pro-grade video and audio quality in the conference room, through the use of a new BYOD solution option. Simply connect a USB cable on the conference table to your laptop and instantly, you will be able to select Poly camera, mic and speaker on your video client. In this way, users can leverage conference rooms for much broader use cases. The BYOD Solution for Poly Studio Room Kit will start shipping in late June in US, Canada, UK, EU/EEA, Australia and New Zealand. 

These are incremental enhancements to the Microsoft Teams Rooms solution that simply make the experience better and more flexible. When you are trying to design and implement consistent meeting rooms that cater to more hybrid work and meeting equality, these changes collectively deliver big improvements and big results.   

To learn more about the complete lineup of Poly’s Microsoft Teams Room Solutions, visit Poly.com 

 *People framing feature support for Poly Studio E70 forthcoming with future software update 

Today’s hybrid work environment has created its own issues and challenges but new innovations in artificial intelligence are providing solutions. If workers feel disconnected or left out of a conversation it can lead to consequences in lowered productivity and employee buy-in. Alternatively, poor audio and video quality can hurt the professional image of individuals and your entire brand. Static, unchanged views of the entire room in an hour-long virtual meeting can disorient even the most attentive meeting participants. Both remote employees on the far end and the in-room participants lose their focus and become less engaged and productive.

Poly has partnered with Microsoft on advancing A.I technology that delivers an equitable experience for in-person, remote, and hybrid employees. This A.I. addresses issues with having workers in-office, remote, and on-the-go such as giving everyone in the room equal face time and voice. The way workers connect is changing every day and the future of work lies in A.I. Poly and Microsoft are proud to work together to continue introducing intelligent hardware and software features that will help all participants feel engaged, connected, and empowered on every call.

Poly Solutions and Microsoft Teams Rooms

Poly has pushed the envelope with our ground-breaking capabilities such as speaker tracking and AcousticFence technologies. We have been at the forefront of solving hybrid working problems with A.I solutions. Poly continues to work with Microsoft Teams to deliver seamless meeting experiences, using our innovations in camera and audio technology alongside Microsoft Teams Rooms. This includes intelligent features like Group Framing and industry-first technology like Conversation Mode and Presenter Tracking which provide effortless video conferencing.

Today, Microsoft announced the next wave in Teams Rooms innovations with a new category of intelligent cameras. There are three unique technologies that power this new category of intelligent cameras:

• A.I.-powered active speaker tracking, enabling in-room cameras to use audio, facial movements, and gestures to detect who in the room is speaking, zooming in for a closer perspective. Poly has offered speaker tracking capabilities for many years and is proud to partner with Microsoft to bring it to Teams and Teams Rooms.
• Multiple video streams that allow in-room participants to be placed in their own video pane.
• People recognition, which will identify and display the profile name of enrolled users within their video pane.

When intelligent cameras are paired with Dynamic view in Teams, you can deliver more equitable meeting experiences where everyone feels seen and represented. As people join the meeting, Teams will automatically adjust various elements of the meeting, so remote participants can see the room and content with ease.

Advancing Meeting Equality

These Poly features paired with Microsoft Teams new capabilities advance meeting equity for everyone in the “room.” The combination of meeting A.I. innovation and professional-grade equipment sets every employee up for success.

Pairing Microsoft Teams with the right audio and video solutions—for both group and personal workspaces—ultimately determines how your employees experience and show up in virtual meetings. Professional-grade headsets, speakerphones, and external video cameras are the equalizers that elevate the virtual meeting experience for everyone in a Microsoft Teams meeting—no matter where they work.

Check out our professional-grade equipment, support, and services to create meeting equality, at Poly.com.

This week, we are celebrating four years of Poly RealConnect, our cloud video interoperability as-a-service that connects traditional videoconferencing systems to Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business meetings. Originally launched as an on-premises-based video solution to support Microsoft Lync, RealConnect evolved into a cloud-based service to support our customer’s interoperability needs for Skype for Business and eventually Teams. Four years in, this service is still going strong – in fact, this year we’ve witnessed our highest volume of service usage to date, as organizations begin their return to the office and conference room usage has increased.

With all the momentum behind our RealConnect Service, I thought I’d take the opportunity to reflect on the past four years and share what we are looking forward to in the future.

THE ORIGIN OF REALCONNECT

Before RealConnect existed, there were multiple so-called “gateway services” which brought Microsoft (in this case Lync 2013) users into their respective non-Microsoft bridging services. The problem was that while they did allow Microsoft clients to connect to meetings with videoconferencing endpoints, they created new problems. Namely, unfamiliar and confusing scheduling workflow and an unfamiliar video experience that disoriented users. Poly RealConnect solved these problems by introducing a clever way of utilizing the familiar Outlook scheduling process and by keeping the video meeting experience intact. Poly’s own Adam Jacobs, Principal Architect for Microsoft solutions, patented this scheduling mechanism, which laid the foundation of the cloud video interoperability services that we see today.

VIDEO INTEROPERABILITY AS-A-SERVICE

Poly was Microsoft’s first cloud video interoperability partner, starting with Skype for Business, then Microsoft Teams support was added to enable customers to smoothly transition without any disruption. This cloud-based approach was critical in lowering the initial entry cost and speeding up ROI for our customers, driving a huge uptick in the cloud-based subscriptions relative to on-premises based. And after Microsoft announced that Skype for Business Online is going to be retired after July 31, 2021, we have seen steady growth of Microsoft Teams-based meetings in our service. In fact, we are seeing more than 99% of RealConnect calls are for Microsoft Teams meetings since mid-2020.

REALCONNECT SERVICE’S ROLE GOING FORWARD

Poly is the only cloud video interoperability partner that also offers an end-to-end portfolio of native Microsoft Teams solutions including Microsoft Teams Rooms – and we’ve helped hundreds of customers transition to native Teams video. Last October, Microsoft reported 115 million active daily Teams users and we’re seeing strong demand for Teams-certified meeting room and personal solutions. At the same time, we’ve seen a steady rise in RealConnect service minutes – logging a record-breaking number of minutes in March 2021. And we believe these numbers will stay strong, especially as more companies return to the office and as the retirement of Skype for Business Online approaches. Additionally, each company has its own schedule to deprecate videoconferencing books, and RealConnect Service will support an organic transition to Microsoft Teams solutions. This is especially true, as we are surprised to see a huge diversity of endpoints that connect to our service — we have recorded more than 200 types of systems to date!

Regardless of your timeline or where your organization stands in its transition to Microsoft Teams, Poly can help you with RealConnect video interoperability, and multiple Teams-related services available from Poly Professional Services team.  Here’s to a strong four years with Poly RealConnect Service – looking forward to more great years to come.

For more information visit Poly.com or contact us at TeamMicrosoft@poly.com.

Simple, familiar user interfaces across devices are key attributes people love about Microsoft Teams, and I would argue the same applies to Microsoft Teams Rooms – along with the rich collaboration features and manageability for administrators. The recently announced Poly G-Series Room Solution for Microsoft Teams is one of Poly’s latest certified solutions for Microsoft Teams, delivering a simple, clutter-free experience that’s easy to deploy in any type of meeting room environment.

While there are other types of room applications that may already be in place – such as room automation, environmental control and AV control – it would make sense to consolidate all the controls through a single interface, wouldn’t it? Today, we are thrilled to announce Poly’s partnership with Extron to integrate room automation and AV control capabilities with the Poly G-Series Room Solution for Microsoft Teams. Beginning in late August, customers will be able to access Extron’s powerful AV device control options integrated with Poly G-Series Room Solution for Microsoft Teams through the Poly GC8 touch controller interface. Let’s take a look at the unified AV experience this integration enables.

Room Automation and Control

A simple tap on the Poly GC8 touch controller interface allows users to send commands that trigger automation events such as display control, blinds, lighting and more. Occupancy sensors and room scheduling can be added to automate display on/off and the room status.

(Bottom right shows controller icon)

Presentation and USB Camera Control

Presenters have full control of all AV system functions while presenting, including multiple presentation sources to choose from. This extends to Poly USB cameras that support UVC camera control (Poly Studio, EagleEye Cube, and EagleEye IV USB), through the Poly GC8 touch interface as shown below. Of course, cameras such as Poly Studio and EagleEye Cube support automatic framing and tracking capabilities. For these cameras, automatic tracking must be disabled to manually control the camera, but we recommend users keep the automatic tracking on for a hands-free, dynamic video experience.

A Unified AV Experience

In addition to advanced control and automation, Extron provides hundreds of solutions for complete room integration. This will enhance the simplicity of the user experience, further promoting a unified AV experience through a single interface.

Integration will require the Extron application to be loaded on the Poly G-Series compute appliance, and Extron hardware is required to support different functionalities.

For details, visit www.Extron.com/Poly

(NYSE: PLT)

[UPDATE: August 17, 2020] Poly G-Series Microsoft Teams Rooms Solution is now certified for Microsoft Teams.

With business operations around the globe swiftly enabling different ways of working, we’ve seen a dramatic acceleration in the number of organizations turning to Microsoft Teams to support their voice and video communication and team collaboration. Today, Teams hosts 75 million daily active users* and is by far one of the fastest growing business apps to date. As we turn our gaze toward facilitating a seamless transition for those returning to the office, it will be essential that teams use the same collaboration infrastructure in the conference room as they have grown accustomed to using from their home offices.

While the Teams platform does its part reliably delivering a consistent user experience, the hardware used to launch your Teams meeting has a vital role to play in the quality of your virtual interactions. That’s why, we are proud to introduce Poly’s Room Solutions for Microsoft Teams which combines Poly’s legacy of quality endpoints with Lenovo’s ThinkSmart computing technology to bring you a  clutter-free Microsoft Teams Rooms experience**.

Introducing Poly Room Solution for Microsoft Teams

To ensure successful org-wide deployments and user adoption, we reached out to Poly customers who have either already deployed or are considering deploying Microsoft Teams Rooms to get a sense of what problems needed solving.

The primary concern we heard from administrators was ease of deployment and consistency. Users were looking for high-quality meeting experiences that were easy to navigate. We listened. Poly designed the Poly Room Solution for Microsoft Teams to address both stakeholders’ needs.

For administrators, we made sure that our solution wouldn’t tangle them up in a mess of wires and is easy to install. Our simple cable management also eliminates cable clutter on the floor or on the conference table, resulting in greater ease of physically maintaining rooms and fewer user ‘accidents’.

Clean cabling systems are a big deal in smaller meeting rooms where table surface real estate is important. In larger rooms, it’s crucial to have a cable that is long enough for installation.  That is why we separated the compute appliance and the tabletop console using just a single, generous 10m long fiber optic USB cable (with 25m and 40m option available), making the installation a breeze.

To keep this simplicity intact, the Poly GC8, our sleek 8-inch touch console, has HDMI ingest and a USB port, so that you can connect your laptop and a USB speakerphone to the touch controller rather than to the compute appliance.

Additionally, having cameras and speakerphones with sufficient reach even when being installed in a larger meeting room is key.

For end users, we made sure that they would be able to focus on their meetings with technology that is easy to use. As always, Poly’s solution delivers a high-quality meeting experience, from delivering best-in-class audio, to intelligent features like NoiseBlockAI to filter out distracting background noise and MeetingAI for group framing and speaker tracking. This means basic functions such as remembering to mute when there’s background noise or shifting the camera to capture different speakers are taken care of by smart technologies that are baked into the Poly Studio, Trio C60, and EagleEye Director II. Not only do these functionalities allow meeting participants focus on their conversations, but it also creates a dynamic video experience with crisp audio that breaks the tendency of virtual meetings being monotonous and disengaging.

Keep it Simple. Keep it Secure.

As mentioned, Poly’s solution reduces cable clutter on the floor and conference table by enabling the PC to be ‘tucked away’ in the cabinet or behind the monitor. Furthermore, to provide secure, reliable compute platform for Poly MTR solution, we partnered with Lenovo’s ThinkSmart team to deliver an enterprise-class compute appliance, optimized for the collaboration space and built on Intel vPro technology.

Three Configurations to Choose From

Poly’s Room Solutions for Microsoft Teams come in a variety of different configurations and can comfortably equip small to large rooms​.

Poly G10-T​

Base Kit, to connect to existing USB peripherals​ (Bring Your Own Peripheral)

Package includes: ​​

• Poly GC8​
• Lenovo ThinkSmart Edition Tiny​
• PC VESA/Wall Mount Kit​
• 10m fiber optic USB cable

Poly G40-T​

For Small to Medium Rooms​

Package includes: ​​

• Poly GC8​
• Lenovo ThinkSmart Edition Tiny​
• PC VESA/Wall Mount Kit​
• 10m fiber optic USB ​cable​
• Poly Studio​

Poly G80-T​*

For Medium to Large Rooms​

Package includes: ​​

• Poly GC8​
• Lenovo ThinkSmart Edition Tiny​
• 10m fiber optic USB ​cable​​
• PC VESA/Wall Mount Kit
• EagleEye Director II​
• Trio C60​ 

*Microsoft Teams Certification testing in process

Collaboration Bars for Teams

What about Smaller Conference Rooms?

You didn’t think I was going to write a blog about collaboration and not mention our Studio X family of solutions with native Teams, did you? The Poly Studio X30 and X50 all-in-one collaboration bars are the ideal solution for smaller conference rooms and executive office. Native Teams means you can launch your meeting directly from the touchscreen and leave your PC at your desk.

For more information about Poly’s Microsoft Teams solutions, visit: https://www.poly.com/us/en/solutions/platform/microsoft/video

* “Microsoft Teams now has 75 million daily active users” (Business Insider, April 2020).

** Microsoft Teams Certification coming Summer 2020.