Yealink has announced new AI-powered solutions for Microsoft Teams Rooms for smarter meetings.
Yealink says that its 3rd-Gen MVC Series Microsoft Teams Rooms System is the first solution “to collaborate with Microsoft in integrating AI technologies like voice control, identity recognition, and transcription into video conferencing”.
Yealink said:
The new solutions offer smart features for a more equitable video conferencing experience and flexible installation for various meeting environments, from standard rooms to boardrooms, training spaces, and divisible rooms. Elevate MTR journey with unmatched intelligence and versatility.”
The MVCs’ Robust Feature Set
Citing 2023 McKinsey data that hybrid work adoption has grown by 28.2 percent globally, Yealink stressed AI’s potential to significantly boost efficiency, with Yealink claiming it could potentially save 70 percent of work time. Intending to fulfil this potential, Yealink’s MTR solutions attempt to facilitate collaboration with unprecedented levels of meeting equity.
Yealink’s new offerings include Microsoft Copilot integration, allowing voice commands to initiate and end meetings and liberating participants’ hands. Voice and facial recognition pinpoints and displays participant names in meetings and through real-time transcriptions. The system tracks the latest four active speakers through the service’s Multi-Stream People Feed (for regular meeting rooms) or Multi-Camera Intelliframe (for larger spaces).
The solutions also entail flexible deployment options for diverse application requirements. For audio, options range from wired, wireless, and ceiling microphones, and all can be tailored to users’ specific needs. For screen-sharing, wired connections like HDMI or USB-C are supported, as is wireless sharing through Miracast, AirPlay, Google Cast, and Yealink’s WPP30 wireless presentation pod.
For display, the MVC series is supplied with the MCore Pro mini-PC. This comprises built-in EDID recognition for varying display resolutions, removing the need for additional connectors while maintaining optimal display quality.
The MVCs are also Pro-AV solutions.
The complexity of meeting room setups for large businesses often requires an ecosystem of audiovisual devices, including lighting, sound systems, video conferencing, and digital signage. This fosters the necessity for enterprise-grade and customised solutions in the form of a Pro-AV product.
Aiming to address this large business demand, Yealink’s new MTR products create a multi-camera setup for large meeting environments. This leverages multiple cameras to capture various perspectives during discussions. The MVCs also include general compatibility with many third-party audio and control solutions, such as Biamp, Kramer, AMX, and Q-SYS, to cater to the diversity and potential of users’ meeting room experiences.
Yealink also promises to introduce further AI features to the video conferencing platform over the next two years, including advanced facial perspectives and spatial audio, intending to “heighten the immersive quality of remote meetings and boost communication efficiency for businesses”.
Teams Rooms’ Quietly Momentous Summer
Last month, Microsoft updated Teams Rooms with its “biggest release of the year”.
The offering, specifically its Pro version, was upgraded with a suite of new features for Windows v4.18, including Cloud IntelliFrame to help make non-AI cameras more intelligent and improvements to the Front Row gallery. These encompassed a unified background for remote participants to appear in the same room and immersive spatial audio.
In June, this year’s Infocomm included multiple momentous Teams Rooms updates.
As well as the IntelliFrame released in August, the show announced that customers who had deployed the Yealink SmartVision 60 and the latest Jabra Panacast 50 would have access to intelligent speaker capabilities to recognise in-room speakers through voice recognition and automatically name the speakers within the transcript.
A profanity filtering toggle became available for online meetings, which could be turned on or off for live captions, while live caption improvements were introduced.
In June, Microsoft announced it was extending the expiration date for personally licensed Teams Rooms hardware to allow customers more time to transition between licenses.
Initially, Microsoft had stated the cut-off date would be July 1 but had added 90 days of amnesty, extending the deadline to September 30, 2023. Even though the move would provide those affected with price reductions, it was taking customers longer to progress the transition than Microsoft had first expected.
Earlier this month, MAXHUB released its XT series of hardware kits, certified for Microsoft Teams Rooms.
MAXHUB said that the kits had been designed for ease of use, with simple upgrades feasible for transforming meeting rooms of any size into native Microsoft Teams Rooms environments. MAXHUB emphasised that they brought “convenience and efficiency” into the user journey, from procurement, installation, and utilisation to post-maintenance.
