The company I work for has been utilizing the BlueJeans Teams Gateway to allow Cisco Video Endpoints to Join Teams meetings for well over a year. They also have one touch join configured. You can configure Bluejeans to push a join button to the Cisco Touch 10 to make it very easy to join the a Teams or just about any meeting that supports a SIP dial string. Cisco and Pexip also offer a Teams CVI gateway. Cisco was not released when we implemented BlueJeans, otherwise I might have gone that route.
One Button to Join works great, but you need to schedule the room in advance in order to have the button be displayed on the touch 10, so it makes BYOM a bit difficult, especially if you want to enable the ability to utilize a conference room on the fly.
You can also use the dialer on the Cisco Touch 10 but the dial string for Bluejeans looks like this, {tenantkey}*{conferenceid}@teams.bjn.vc, a good example is 601401045*123789632@teams.bjn.vc. This is not an easy string to enter using the touch 10.
Many companies are planning to get back to the office and the old way of meeting PRE-COVID19 is dead (which is a good thing). In the past most went into a conference room that connected to an onsite video bridge to join meetings. This was all setup white glove by AV techs.
COVID-19 has driven the adoption of platforms like Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, Zoom. All of these platforms have become much easier to use and work much better with low bandwidth situations . End users have been forced to adopt and learn these programs. The platforms are also releasing new features, making it easier to use and also adding some great features. These platforms had languished a bit with some innovation, but nothing like we are seeing today.
Now that end users have adopted platform's such as Teams, Webex and Zoom they would to have the ability it to walk into a meeting room and to be able to bring your own meeting (BYOM). (I am starting to dislike the acronyms and buzz words the IT industry generates).
I was tasked with investigating various solutions to support BYOM and this is what I discovered.
Cisco Video Endpoint Leveraging the USB Port for Audio/Video
Modern Cisco Video Endpoints (Cisco RoomKits, Webex 55, Webex70) you can leverage a USB-C port and leverage the in-room Camera and speakers. This is a good blog post that discusses that feature.USB Passthrough Mode on Video Endpoints (cisco.com). This feature works well but you will need to ensure that you extend the USB cable to table or desk to allow for the ability to connect it to the laptop. You also need to ensure that you can change the camera and microphone on your local Local PC or laptop to leverage the room system.
Overall this solution works well and is low cost. The only challenge I see is if your Cisco Endpoint is hanging on a wall and that meeting gear is on a table that is not attached to the wall, you are going to have to investigate leveraged a USB extender.
Barco CX Click To Share
Barco has a wireless solution that can leverage the same USB port on the Cisco Video Endpoints. Barco also works well with other video Solutions. You can find out more about this solution here ClickShare CX-20 - Wireless Conferencing System - Barco. The Baro has USB-C dongle you connect to your device. It will download an application and driver that will redirect the Camera and Audio to the in-room system. I did test this and it worked well. What I don't like about this solution, the Barco application. I never like installing addtional software on a device and I don;t feel this app is designed very well. That is just my opinion. I am also not a huge fan of the Barco dongle. I can see it walking off or someone dropping it and breaking it. I do believe this is a great solution to share content from almost any type of device as it support Airplay, Miracast without the need to install any additional software. It is also a great solution if you are looking for the ability to leverage the in-room audio and Video without having to run additional cables. But for me the Baro Application driver and dongle are a non-starter.
INOGENI 4KX-Plus
I am also going to look at what this device has to offer. It is brand new hot off the presses and at the time of this post, I have not received it yet. It appears to work with the Barco and the Cisco Roomkit series. This might be a great solution to offer BYOM. I will update the blogpost after I review this solution. I believe this gets around the USB-C issue, but that is yet to be determined.
Custom Button on the Cisco Touch 10
Cisco has done a great job of providing macro templates that provide the ability to create custom buttons on Cisco Video Endpoints. You can access the sample macro's on GitHub utilizing this link GitHub - CiscoDevNet/roomdevices-macros-samples: Macros samples for Cisco CE Video Endpoints
I downloaded and modified the Join 3rd Party Meeting Marco to make it easy to dial into the BlueJeans Team Gateway. I chose to name the Button Join Teams Meeting. All you need to do is hit the button and enter the 9 digit meeting ID and it will join the Teams Meeting.
I also enabled the Trusted Room Option, which allows the Cisco Endpoint to Bypass the Lobby and Join the meeting without approval. You will need to contact BlueJeans support to enable this feature and provide the IP range you would like to allow trusted rooms to join from, otherwise anyone anywhere would have the ability to join meetings without requiring approval. You also need to run a powershell script as a Teams Admin to enable this functionality.
I have provided the instructions to enable Trusted Rooms
# TRUSTED ROOMS – Allows VTC units to bypass the lobby and land directly in meetings, without requiring approval {1 command}
Please note that the following functionality requires the Trusted Room feature to be enabled for the Enterprise Group; contact Support for more information.
set-CsVideoInteropServiceProvider -Identity BlueJeans -AadApplicationIds 363e7c1b-ca85-4765-bd62-f77a096c407d -AllowAppGuestJoinsAsAuthenticated $true
I finally got with the modern times and created a Github account, you will find the custom macro I created here. Join Teams Meeting.js You will need to modify constNumber="111111111*" with your BlueJeans tenantid n Join Teams Meeting.js.
Final Thoughts
As more people get back to the office and I believe you are going to see an uptick with office cube and office hoteling. I also believe meeting rooms will need to become much more flexible and need to have the ability to support BYOM. I also believe gone are the days that companies build large complicated integrated video rooms. I believe smaller more flexible spaces will be the norm.
I also hope that Cisco and Microsoft continue to work together. Cisco has a great proximity solution that I did not discuss, but it is not compatable with Microsoft Teams. If it was, it would make BYOM very easy. If you are leverage Webex and Cisco Video Endpoints, I would check out proximity, it will be the Droid you are looking for.
I also know that Microsoft Teams Rooms and offer proximity, but I still feel they are a bit immature. They don't work well when you need to access a meeting on Webex or zoom and I still feel Cisco has superior hardware.
I hope this helps others looking at implementing BYOM solutions. If happen to discover an easy solution that is easy to use , let me know.
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