Microsoft Teams Webex Zoom



Zoom and Microsoft Teams have become two of the go-to video conferencing solutions for businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, and for good reason. While Zoom is better suited. It is possible to use your existing Microsoft Teams Room System (MTR) for joining external WebEx or Zoom meetings. The requirement is to make sure your MTR devices are running the Microsoft Teams Room App version 4.5.35.0 or later. The update has been out for a while, since it was released back in July 2020. This way, Microsoft Teams is much cost-effective than Zoom vs Webex vs Skype for the business use. Zoom Vs Microsoft Teams Security If you are looking for Zoom alternatives because of the security issues, Microsoft Teams can be a great option with security features like two-factor authentication and data encryption both in transit and in rest. Your Microsoft Zoom tab also serves as your personal notification hub for all of your Zoom Meetings. Make the Zoom Meetings tab persistent to the left navigation by contacting your Zoom account admin. From the message compose extension, you can initiate a Zoom phone call in the teams space by clicking on 'Make a phone call'. Zoom's Microsoft Teams integration allows you to start an instant meeting or join a scheduled meeting through Bots commands. Meetings created in Teams will appear on your Zoom account. If you have not yet configured Microsoft Teams for Zoom, see Getting Started with Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft

Using Microsoft Teams Room for Zoom Meetings (Preview)

10/12/2020

In a previous blogpost the ability to join Webex meetings directly from Microsoft Teams Room for Windows was discussed. Since then, Microsoft has released version 4.6.20 which includes direct guest for Zoom Meetings (Preview) as well. In this post we take a look at the experience of joining Zoom meetings directly from Teams Room for Windows (MTR). While this is currently in preview, the actual release should be coming in the months ahead. With the ability to join both Webex and Zoom meetings directly from an MTR system, the need for USB pass-thru BYOD feature is significantly reduced as Teams, Zoom and Webex form the vast majority of online meetings conducted in the world today.
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There are some simple configuration steps on the MTR's resource mailbox account that allows the device to recognize Zoom and Webex meetings which was already described in the previous blogpost and hence there's no need to repeat it here. Since we have already done it in our tenant, we simply send our MTR a Zoom meeting and a Webex meeting invitation and within a few moments they will appear on the home screen as shown below:
To being our Zoom meeting we simple click on the Join button and now the MTR controller will display the meeting subject with some meeting controls at the bottom bar. The display will show the video participant. Note that neither Zoom or Webex meetings that the MTR joins will utilize dual displays at this time. Refer to the below picture for a basic meeting with a single Zoom participant and the MTR:
One of the interesting capabilities is the ability of the MTR to display the chat window on the right side of the display. The MTR itself cannot send any chat messages but it can show messages that are sent to the meeting's group chat by other Zoom participants as shown below:
As with Webex meetings, there is also the capability to toggle on the button on the bottom left of the MTR controller labelled as 'Show meeting on this device'. This will mirror the MTR's main display onto the MTR's touch controller as shown below:
Finally, sharing content from a Zoom PC client works well with the content taking up most of the display and the video participants shown in smaller windows on the right:
This summarizes the Direct Guest Join for Zoom meetings (preview) on MTR for Windows. It is expected that more features will be added in the future that will likely further reduce the need for additional components for USB Pass-through BYOD.

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Microsoft Teams Rooms devices support a one-touch experience for joining third-party online meetings, also referred to as Direct guest join. When enabled, you can use a Teams Rooms device to join meetings hosted on Cisco WebEx and Zoom just as easily as you can join meetings hosted in Microsoft Teams.

Before you can join third-party meetings from a Teams Rooms device, you need to do the following:

  1. Configure the Teams Rooms device's Exchange Online room mailbox to process invites for third-party meetings.
  2. Make sure your organization doesn't have any policies that would prevent you from connecting to third-party meeting services.
  3. Configure your Teams Rooms devices to allow third-party meetings.

The following sections show you how to do each of these steps.

Step 1: Allow calendar invite processing for third-party meetings

The first thing you need to do to enable a one-touch join experience from a Team Rooms device is set the calendar processing rules for the device's Exchange Online room mailbox. The room mailbox needs to allow external meetings and keep the message body and subject so it can see the URL needed to join the third-party meeting. To set these room mailbox options using the Set-CalendarProcessing cmdlet, do the following:

  1. Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell. For more information, see Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell with Basic authentication or Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell using multi-factor authentication, depending on your authentication method.

  2. Get the User Principal Name (UPN) of the room mailbox if you don't know it by running the following command:

  3. Find the name of the room mailbox associated with your Teams Rooms device and make note of its UPN.

  4. After you find the room mailbox's UPN, run the following command. Replace <UserPrincipalName> with the room mailbox's UPN:

Learn more about Exchange Online PowerShell.

Step 2: Configure Office 365 Threat Protection and link rewrite

To enable the one-touch join experience, meeting join link information from the third-party meeting needs to be present and readable in the meeting invite. If your organization uses the Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection Safe Links feature, or if you use a third-party solution that scans all incoming and outgoing URLs for threats, it may change the meeting join URLs and make the meeting unrecognizable by the Teams Rooms device. To make sure this doesn't happen, you need to add the third-party meeting service's URLs to the ATP Safe Links 'do not rewrite' list or the third-party URL rewrite exception list.

To add third-party meeting service URLs to the ATP Safe Links 'do not rewrite' list, follow the steps in Set up a custom do-not-rewrite URLs list using ATP Safe Links. If you use a third-party solution, refer to the instructions for that solution to add URLs to its URL rewrite exception list.

Teams

Here are some example entries that you may need to add to your ATP Safe Links 'do not rewrite' list or third-party URL rewrite exception list:

  • Cisco WebEx*.webex.com*
  • Zoom*.zoom.us*, *.zoom.com*, *.zoomgov.com*

For a complete list of URLs to add to your ATP Safe Links 'do not rewrite' list or third-party URL rewrite exception list, contact the third-party meeting service provider you want to accept meeting invites from.

Caution

Only add URLs that you trust to your ATP Safe Links 'do not rewrite' list or third-party URL rewrite exception list.

Step 3: Enable third-party meetings on device

The last step you need to do is allow each Teams Rooms device to join third-party meetings. Third-party meetings require a username and email address to join them. If the username and email address that you need to use is different than the device's room mailbox, you need to add them to your device. You can do this in the device settings or in the XML config file.

Use device settings

To configure the Teams Rooms device using its touchscreen, do the following:

TeamsTeams
  1. On the Microsoft Teams Rooms device, select More ....
  2. Select Settings, and then enter the device administrator username and password.
  3. Go to the Meetings tab and select Cisco WebEx, Zoom, or both.
  4. If you want to join meetings with the username and email address associated with the room mailbox, select Join with room info.
  5. If you want to join meetings with an alternate username and email address, select Join with custom info and enter username and email address you'd like to use.
  6. Select Save and exit. Your device will restart.

Use the SkypeSettings.xml configuration file

The following settings can be added to the SkypeSettings.xml file located in C:UsersSkypeAppDataLocalPackagesMicrosoft.SkypeRoomSystem_8wekyb3d8bbweLocalState. For more information about the SkypeSettings.xml file, see Manage a Microsoft Teams Rooms console settings remotely with an XML configuration file.

To enable Cisco WebEx meetings, set the WebExMeetingsEnabled XML element to True, as follows.

To enable Zoom meetings, set the ZoomMeetingsEnabled XML element to True, as follows.

Microsoft Teams Rooms Zoom Webex

You can optionally specify a custom username and email address to join third-party meetings using the following XML elements. If the values you provide aren't valid, the Teams Rooms device will default to use room mailbox username and email address.

Note

Microsoft Teams Webex Meeting

To join Cisco WebEx meeting from a Teams Rooms device, the Cisco meeting needs to be hosted using Cisco WebEx web application version WBS 40.7 or later.