Using Polycom Trio and Group Series with Microsoft Teams

Polycom Trio 8800 — A Teams Conference Phone

There would seem to be some misinformation going around that Microsoft are in some way banning Polycom’s previous Skype devices from connecting to Microsoft Teams meetings. Organisations that made large investments in Trio Visual+ and Polycom Group series VC may be feeling that they are losing out as Teams replaces Skype Online.

I’ll start here with the answers, as that may well be what people are looking for

• Teams will allow Trio/Visual+ and Group series to join meetings with full video, screen sharing and audio functionality using a Cloud Video Interop service such as Polycom RealConnect, Pexip Infinity or BlueJeans.
• Polycom will soon offer a Trio firmware update that will allow it to be a fully support Teams phone, connecting directly to Teams service as a conference phone (no video).
• Trio can also behave as a USB speakerphone and they will work with Teams Rooms, Surface Hubs or just connecting to a laptop. Polycom suggest replacing the Visual+ with the HP Slice to upgrade to be a full Teams Rooms solution.

The previous ability for Trio/Visual+ or Group series to join a Skype meeting directly will not be possible with Teams. The CVI option above is the recommended and fully supported solution for any products not running a Microsoft provided client connecting to Teams, and despite many opinions these products were never certified as Skype or Teams compatible.

Wait, what’s that about?

Polycom introduced the Trio in 2015 as a smarter replacement for its successful range of conference phones. Running a tailored version of Android gave it great flexibility and upgradability, built within a ‘spider phone’ chassis that offered remarkably good audio. Even today, 4 years on, it remains one of the best in its category. At the time it was introduced someone was super-clever to devise an add-on to allow it to support Video and screen presentation in the Visual+. While the Trio itself made absolutely no compromise from being a conference phone, a software only solution allowed it to ‘pair’ across a fast network link to a separate device that provided a display connection and camera input.

Polycom had worked for some time on building their own clients to connect to Lync (the previous name to Skype) in their range of video conferencing solutions, and they extended that to work on the Trio/Visual+ platform. At this time Microsoft and Polycom had various discussions, I suspect that Microsoft already had a fair idea of the changes that would come to their cloud platforms, Teams development was starting out internally. According to Ilya Bukshteyn, Partner Director for Microsoft Teams, “we warned them could and likely would cause issues down the road”. It wasn’t resolved, Polycom launched the Visual+ without certification from Microsoft, while the standalone Trio was certified as a conference phone. This was certainly confusing to customers; I know I was under the impression that this Trio/Visual+ solution would be great with Skype Online until a contact at Microsoft pointed out the lack of certification.

All was not actually perfect, in early 2016 Microsoft introduced a new way of screen sharing to Skype Online called VBSS to vastly improve the responsiveness, if anyone remembers the old RDP based sharing it was painfully slow. Trio/Visual+ didn’t support this initially and the only solution was to disable it on client or for the tenant if using Polycom’s Skype devices. It took until December 2017 for Polycom to add VBSS to the Trio/Visual+ and February 2018 for Group series video conferencing.

It’s clear to me that Microsoft were right that this isn’t a sustainable model for their cloud-based services, it’s an aggressive marketplace where they need to compete against Cisco WebEx, Zoom, Lifesize and many others. They need to ensure that their solution remains competitive and being held back by 2 years due to the device compatibility would be fatal. As Microsoft Teams launched it was decided that compatibility would be supported with one of 2 options

1. Microsoft to provide native clients for phones and meeting room devices to natively connect to Teams.

2. Microsoft to work with multiple vendors to provide an interop service that allows other devices to join Teams meetings using VC standards

The native options are either an Android app or a Windows 10 app. The Android app is what runs on native Teams phones, and that’s what Polycom are finalising now to allow Trio to behave as a speakerphone. The app itself can run a screen and camera in meetings, however there are limitations for sending a local screen. If you have a look at the upcoming Yealink VC200 you can see this phone app being used to drive a very small meeting space, the ‘phone’ being nothing more than a unit that sits on top of the screen, not dissimilar in features to the Trio/Visual+.

It would seem that Polycom were not able to make this work with Visual+, I imagine that the combination of devices just made it too far from running the Android app that Microsoft provide. My personal experience is that Polycom are a fantastic partner to their customers, both the issue and the solutions are within their power so I really hope that a constructive dialog will solve this in a way that is fair and equitable.

So, should you not buy Trio’s anymore? Well certainly if you are looking for speakerphones they will be a top solution with the new Teams app. If you want a room device that works well with Teams but also other services such as Zoom, WebEx then using a Trio/Visual+ through RealConnect is a pretty good solution as long as you factor in the ongoing service costs. Alternatively, Teams Room systems are excellent, and have a fantastic upcoming roadmap e.g. proximity services between laptops, mobiles and rooms, Cortana Voice integration, and device fleet management through the Team admin centre.