Creating the Future of the Hybrid Conferencing Space
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Legrand Solutions Enhance Microsoft Teams Rooms at Microsoft HQ
Maybe it’s a cliché to say the world has indelibly changed due to the pandemic, but that doesn’t make it any less true. One of the biggest shifts in everyday life has been in how we approach conferencing and collaboration. Legrand has been working diligently to meet the new challenges hybrid conferencing brings.
A predominant player in this new online collaboration environment is undoubtedly Microsoft. The Microsoft Teams conferencing and collaboration platform has made incredible advancements in a relatively short time. Interestingly, Microsoft’s vision for hybrid conferencing goes beyond the software and into the surrounding environment. Microsoft Teams Rooms are all-inclusive experiences that provide a blueprint for better conferencing. The path to getting there required a lot of testing, and integrating key solutions from across the brands of Legrand solves many of the challenges presented.
Creating the Future of Hybrid Conferencing at The Hive
At The Hive, Microsoft's working lab for Microsoft Teams Rooms development, the Microsoft Digital Team comes together to brainstorm, test, and validate meeting room scenarios. Everything and anything is up for rethinking. This can include moving walls, bringing in new furniture, or even cutting a table in half. They work quickly and without having to do the costly task of structural redesign.
The pandemic simply took this process and put it in warp speed. The new end-user expectation for flexible meeting spaces that can better accommodate both in-person and remote attendees drove them to rethink previous assumptions. They came at the problem in new and interesting ways. One example of this was the idea to re-orient the focus of the space from the people at the table to the camera and display. People in the room are no longer just focusing on each other, but on all the attendees. This seemingly simple shift dramatically changes the interactions and engagement between everyone in the meeting, no matter where they are.
How Do We Make the Office Desirable?
The challenge everyone in the industry is working to overcome is to provide a value proposition for working at the office. Employers and employees alike want the office experience to be worth the commute. When staff are in the office, they should have a workplace experience that they can’t get from their home office. At the same time, it’s important for those joining remotely to feel the meeting environment has been optimized for them as well.
Microsoft wanted to create a meeting environment that enhanced both the in-room and online experience. To implement this vision, either for new construction or retrofits, they had to develop new equipment and standards. This involved changes to the room layout, furniture, audio-visual equipment, and Microsoft Teams.
Everything was reimagined, from how the space itself is arranged, to the shape of the furniture, to lighting and materials choices for the spaces.
Building Better Conferencing with Legrand Solutions
Legrand, likewise, has been preparing for and enhancing the hybrid work environment since before the start of the pandemic. The breadth of solutions available through the many brands of Legrand stretch across AV infrastructure, building controls, electrical infrastructure, lighting, and acoustic solutions. Bringing all these options to the table made Legrand an ideal partner for Microsoft to build out their meeting rooms.
For two of the showcase rooms, Legrand supplied nearly everything other than the primary displays and camera solutions, thus simplifying the order, delivery and integration experience. Legrand’s team has been hands-on throughout the process to achieve the results Microsoft wanted to reach with the spaces.
Legrand understands the unique challenges of hybrid meeting spaces and has developed innovative solutions like the Forum Collaboration Suite that are purpose-built for the cause. Products from Legrand combine elegantly, ensuring these spaces are inviting and inclusive in design. They also accommodate the speed and global scalability of deployment required by Microsoft.
Acoustically absorptive materials in Middle Atlantic’s Forum Collaboration Suite, and Acoustic Solutions on the wall from Focal Point, provide a cohesive aesthetic, visually unifying the AV equipment with the entirety of the room’s interior design. For a finishing touch, each space has multiple power solutions from Wiremold to keep everyone’s devices connected and charged.
Standardizing Conferencing Solutions for Mass Deployment
Microsoft has created global AV design standards that enable deployment of hybrid meeting room experiences at scale across Microsoft’s facilities world-wide. Floor-supported display mounting and storage solutions from Chief and Middle Atlantic save significant time by eliminating the need for wall inspection and remediation across multiple sites.
Thanks to new meeting room layouts, improved technology, and better integration with Microsoft Teams, collaboration has never been smoother.
Integrators have to get these spaces right in order to make everyone in the meeting comfortable. It’s not about perfect parity between remote and in-person experiences, it’s about improving and fine-tuning each experience to be as good as it can be. Once you have that, better productivity is sure to follow.
To see exactly how the solutions from across Legrand’s brands come together to create ideal Teams Room solutions, see our case study.
For more on the partnership between Legrand and Microsoft, see our Industry Collaborations page.
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Solving Hybrid Meeting Challenges
Forum Collaboration Suite
Adaptable Spaces
