Changes to the Microsoft Teams Room on Windows Home screen

Graham Walsh
3 min readDec 20, 2021

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There was a new Message Center update this past week talking about some changes to the Microsoft Teams Room on Windows home screen experience. The main update on this is covered in Message Center ID MC306665. This then links to two Microsoft Roadmap items, ID 89066 and 89069.

Here’s the exact copy of the text from the Message Center ID for reference in case you don’t have access to the M365 Admin center.

Teams Rooms on Windows are making an alignment for Meet now and calling experiences to Teams desktop replacing “New meeting” control on the Teams room console with Meet (aka Meet now) and replacing “Dial pad” control on the Teams room console with Call. With Meet, users can start an ad-hoc meeting with a single tap and invite participants to it. Calling app provides users functionality to dial PSTN calls where available as well as enable entry point for P2P Teams calls, group Teams calls and P2P federated user calls.

This change is only applicable if the Teams rooms are running in Microsoft Teams only or Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams (default) modes. With this change, all P2P calling and group calling functionality that was previously under “New meeting” button is moved under Call. For customers that use SIP URI calling through Skype for Business, Enter SIP URI entry point is available in Microsoft Teams (default) and Skype for Business mode under Call.

Note: If you aren’t using Teams Rooms, you can safely disregard this message.

This is rolling out on Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows only.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID: 89066, 89069

When this will happen:

Microsoft Teams Rooms application version 4.11.xx.0 with these changes, will begin in mid-January and is expected to be complete by mid-February 2022.

How this will affect your organization:

From the home page, users can see the new Meet and call buttons, replacing “New meeting” and “Dial pad” buttons.

Meet and call buttons
New home screen — Meet and Call icons

Users can select Meet button to initiate Meet now which starts a meeting. Users can then add a participant from the roster search control to invite others to the meeting.

Add participants to meeting
New in call experience when you press Meet

Call app provides entry points to dial pad to dial a number (Calling plan required), as well as the ability to search for people in your organization to make a P2P or group call.

Search and add people to calls
New experience when you press Call
  • If you have domestic or international calling plan assigned to your Teams Rooms account or have direct routing setup for your tenant with number assigned to the room account, the dial pad is made available for users to dial a number.
  • Users can also search for users in your organization or a federated organization for P2P calls.

Users can start a group call by searching and adding multiple people to the call.

Search and add people to calls
New Calling page where you add multiple participants before starting a call

SIP URI calling is not yet available in Teams only mode, however you can set your device to “Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams (default)” mode to have SIP URI entry point in the call app.

Set device to Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams (default)
Setting the mode of your Microsoft Teams Room System
  • Users can also “Enter a URI” button is present in the call app and allows users to dial in a SIP URI.

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your users about this updated experience and update your training and documentation as appropriate

Originally published at Graham Walsh [ Blog ].

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Graham Walsh

Product Specialist / Strategic Alliances @neat_no, Dad to my boys Leo & Jake, #F1, #rugby, house music & #Peloton — LB #Graham_Walsh All my own tweets