Microsoft Teams Insider

Damian Lewis, Digital Workplace Specialist at BSI, shares the story of designing and deploying Microsoft Teams Rooms across BSI's new London headquarters, the Acre.

• Moving from an antiquated AV setup to a fully cable-free, Microsoft Teams-centric environment

• The spectrum of room types: from Jabra PanaCast BYOD “hot offices” to Neat Board Pro casual spaces, and full multi-camera divisible Q-SYS rooms with presenter tracking

• How proof-of-concept testing in the old office helped shape vendor selection for Jabra, Neat, and Q-SYS

• Room booking with Matrix integrated into Microsoft 365, including scheduling panels across hot offices, parenting spaces, and multi-faith rooms

• User adoption lessons: building champions, online inductions, and fortnightly AV "ask me anything" sessions to bring colleagues up to speed

• Managing a global Microsoft Teams Rooms footprint from Sydney to San Jose using Jabra Pro Portal and OEM tooling

• Replicating the adoption playbook at BSI's North America office and planning for smaller-scale rollouts at existing sites

Thanks to Jabra, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud

MVP Tom Arbuthnot shares all the latest Microsoft Teams and Copilot news and announcements in less than 15 minutes for April 2026.
Many thanks to AudioCodes for their continued support.
PowerPoint Deck
Places Insider Live​
Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork Updates​
Anthropic Models for Copilot​
AI Flex Routing in EU and EFTA​
New SharePoint Experience​
Microsoft Teams & AI Powered Workplace News and Roadmap​
Teams Devices News & New Devices​
Upcoming Events​

Useful Links:
Briefings
NEW Neat Board 32 & Neat Pad Pro: Full Product Walkthrough & Key Features with Darin Worthington
Microsoft Places Deep Dive with Microsoft - Customer Feedback, Deployment, Licensing with Chris Fitzsimmons, Brennan McReynolds & Craig McClellan​
Enterprise Voice Infrastructure Options On-Prem. Private Cloud and Cloud-Native with Ribbon and AWS with Gordon Eddy (Ribbon Communications)
Multi-Platform UCaaS at Scale with NUWAVE iPILOT with Tony at NWN

Teams Insider Podcasts
Frontline Workers: Market Opportunity and Enterprise Mobility with Patrick Watson (Cavell) & Stewart Wright (Spectralink)​
Teams Queues App Explained — Shared Call History, Copilot, and What's Next with Sean Gilmour (Microsoft)
Novo Nordisk's Microsoft Teams Rooms Journey — Thousands of Rooms with Christopher Amdi Mark (Novo Nordisk)
Work IQ, Agent Types and the Road to the Frontier Firm with Alev Tamer & Chris Wheeler

Patrick Watson, Director of Research at Cavell, and Stewart Wright, Business Development Director for Spectralink EMEA, discuss the untapped opportunity in enabling frontline workers with Microsoft Teams.

• 80% of the global workforce is classified as frontline, yet many organisations neglect these workers in their Microsoft Teams migrations.

• Frontline workers are often forgotten, given devices not fit for purpose, or left on legacy on-premises systems running in parallel with Microsoft Teams.

• Spectralink's DECT and Wi-Fi solutions, including the Versity smartphone and 8440 feature phone, are designed for challenging environments like healthcare, manufacturing, and retail.

• Unique features include Man Down alerts, pull cord alarms, hot-swappable batteries, disinfectant-resistant builds, and the AMIE cloud management platform.

• Market research highlights massive potential: nearly 2 million frontline workers in UK healthcare, 2.6 million in UK manufacturing, and 7.5 million in German manufacturing.

Thanks to Spectralink, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Sean Gilmour, Principal Lead PM for Advanced Calling Experience at Microsoft, discusses the evolution of the Microsoft Teams Queues app — from its origins as a purpose-built workspace for collaborative calling to the latest capabilities, including shared call history and some of what is coming next.

• How the Queues app was designed for "citizen agents" — workers who handle customer calls alongside their primary roles, from HR and internal help desks to healthcare professionals and financial services

• Supervisor capabilities including delegated admin, monitor, whisper, barge, and takeover — traditionally higher-end contact centre features now available in the native Microsoft Teams experience

• Shared call history: why giving agents and supervisors visibility of all calls across a queue, including missed calls and shared voicemails with lightweight management, is a significant step forward

• How the Queues app fits into the broader Microsoft Teams Phone ecosystem alongside Dynamics 365 and certified contact centre partners through Teams Phone Extensibility

• The role of Copilot and AI in enhancing call queue intelligence, from in-call assistance to proactive insights for part-time supervisors

• Endpoint support across desktop, web, and IP phones, with a mobile-first experience in development for frontline workers

Thanks to Luware, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Christopher Amdi Mark, Senior IT Architect at Novo Nordisk, shares how the global pharmaceutical company transformed its meeting room estate — from traditional Cisco room systems and telepresence to over 2,500 Microsoft Teams Rooms with plans for more

• How the shift from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams during COVID changed what users expected from meeting rooms

• MTR Windows with Logitech and Lenovo, and the early challenges of scaling too quickly

• Why Cisco's Android-based Microsoft Teams Rooms brought Novo Nordisk back to a trusted partner

• Why BYOD is "Bring Your Own Disaster" — and how that might evolve

• Managing a mixed estate of Cisco MTR Android, MTR Windows, and traditional Room OS devices with Cisco CVI across thousands of rooms

• Replacing Cisco IX5000 telepresence suites with immersive front-row MTR experiences at a fraction of the cost

• Where AI fits in — from intelligent camera framing to Microsoft Copilot Facilitator in the meeting room

Thanks to Cisco, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.