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Set up Coordinated Meetings with Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows and Surface Hub

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If you have one or more Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows devices or Surface Hubs in a meeting room, you can set up Coordinated Meetings. Coordinated Meetings lets you set up your Teams Rooms on Windows devices and Surface Hubs so that when you join a meeting on one device, the other devices in the room are also joined to the same meeting. You can configure your cameras, speakers, and microphones so that the ones that give participants the best experience are enabled while others are disabled. This avoids the dreaded echo and feedback noise participants can experience when adding multiple devices to a meeting.

To set up Coordinated Meetings, you need to make sure your Teams Rooms on Windows devices and Surface Hubs are already correctly configured to participate in meetings. Most importantly, each device needs to have its own Exchange room mailbox. For information on how to set them up, see the following articles:

After you've confirmed that your Teams Rooms on Windows devices and Surface Hubs can automatically accept meetings and join them successfully, you can set up Coordinated Meetings.

The following steps should be completed for each meeting room separately.

Step 1: Plan your Coordinated Meeting experience

Before you make any configuration changes, you need to decide which devices will do what in each meeting room. That is, for a given meeting room, you need to decide which device will have the active microphone, camera, and whiteboard. How you configure your devices depends on your specific environment, but here are some general recommendations to start with:

  • Microphone Teams Rooms on Windows device
  • Camera Teams Rooms on Windows device (on by default) and Surface Hub (off by default, but allowed to be turned on by participants)
  • Whiteboard Surface Hub

Important

Make sure you enable the microphone only on one device. If you enable it on more than one device, you'll experience audio echo and feedback.

Step 2: Get your devices' UPNs

When you set up a Coordinated Meeting experience in a meeting room, you need to tell the Teams Rooms on Windows devices and Surface Hubs in that room which devices to coordinate with. This is done by adding the user principal name (UPN) of the devices it should coordinate with to its configuration. If you don't know the UPNs for each of the devices you want to set up for Coordinated Meetings, you can find them using the Microsoft 365 admin center.

You need to be assigned an admin role to access the Microsoft 365 admin center. For more information, see About admin roles.

To get the UPNs of your Teams Rooms on Windows devices and Surface Hubs, do the following:

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center by visiting https://admin.microsoft.com.
  2. Go to Users > Active users.
  3. Find the name of your Teams Rooms on Windows device or Surface Hub in the Display name column (you can use the Search box if you have many users).
  4. Find the UPN in the Username column (it'll look something like alias@contoso.com or alias@contoso.onmicrosoft.com).
  5. Repeat this for each device that will participate in Coordinated Meetings.

Step 3: Create a deployment worksheet

After you've planned your Coordinated Meeting experience and gathered a list of your devices' UPNs, it's a good idea to create a deployment worksheet. A deployment worksheet will help you visualize the configuration you want to set across all of your devices, allowing you to validate your choices and check for errors.

In a spreadsheet app, add rows for the following in the first column:

Setting Description
Audio default Determines on which device the microphone will be active when a meeting starts. Only one device (typically a Teams Rooms device) can have this field set to true while the rest of the devices must have this field set to false to avoid audio echo and feedback.
Audio enabled Determines whether participants in a meeting can toggle the microphone on or off. Devices on which Audio default is set to false should have this setting set to false so that participants can't accidentally turn on a microphone and cause audio echo or feedback.

If Audio default is set to true, this setting is ignored and participants can mute or unmute the microphone.
Video default Determines on which device the camera will be active when a meeting starts. For the best experience, we recommend that only the Teams Rooms device be set to true while all other devices are set to false.
Video enabled Determines whether participants in a meeting can toggle the camera on or off. You can set this to true on any other devices in the event participants want to share different video perspectives (such as if a participant is using the Surface Hub whiteboard). If you don't want participants to turn a camera on or off on a device, set this to false.

If Video default is set to true, this setting is ignored and participants can turn the camera on or off.
Whiteboard default Determines whether the Teams Rooms device will display a whiteboard shared by one of the meeting participants. We recommend that you set this to false if you have a Surface Hub and true if you don't have one. This setting has no effect on Surface Hubs. Surface Hubs will always display a whiteboard shared by meeting participants.
Trusted accounts This is a comma-separated list of UPNs for each Teams Rooms device or Surface Hub that the device should accept meeting join requests from, or to which meeting join requests should be sent.

In subsequent columns, add each of your Teams Rooms on Windows devices and Surface Hubs. In each column, fill out the values that correspond to the experience you want for the meeting room. Here's an example with one Teams Rooms on Windows device and one Surface Hub:

  • Teams device
    • Audio and video are turned on when a meeting starts. Participants can toggle audio and video on or off.
    • Displaying a shared whiteboard is turned off.
  • Surface Hub
    • Audio is turned off when a meeting starts. Participants can't toggle audio on or off.
    • Video is turned off when a meeting starts. Participants can toggle video on or off.
Setting Teams Room Surface Hub
Audio default true false
Audio enabled true false
Video default true false
Video enabled true true
Whiteboard default false false
Trusted accounts hub@contoso.com room@contoso.com

Step 4: Configure Teams Rooms on Windows device or select Surface Hubs

  • Applicable Surface Hubs: V2S running Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows 11, V2S with a Surface Hub 3 pack (cartridge), and V3

You can either set up Coordinated Meetings on a Teams Rooms device using the device's touch screen or, if you need to set up many devices and want to do so from a central location, you can use an XML configuration file.

Use the worksheet you created in the previous step to help you set up your devices.

Use the Teams Rooms device's touch screen

To set up Coordinated Meetings on a device, do the following:

  1. Select ... More > Settings.
  2. Enter the Administrator password and select Yes.
  3. Select Coordinated Meetings.
  4. Under Options, set Coordinated Meeting to on.
  5. If Audio default in your worksheet is true, set Turn on this device's microphone to on, otherwise leave it off.
  6. If Audio enabled in your worksheet is true, select Let people enable when joining a meeting under Turn on this device's microphone. This option can't be turned off if Turn on this device's microphone is set to on.
  7. If Video default in your worksheet is true, set Turn on this device's camera to on, otherwise leave it off.
  8. If Video enabled in your worksheet is true, select Let people enable when joining a meeting under Turn on this device's camera. This option can't be turned off if Turn on this device's camera is set to on.
  9. If Whiteboard default in your worksheet is true, set Turn on whiteboarding on this device to on, otherwise leave it off.
  10. Under Trusted device accounts, type each UPN listed in Trusted accounts in your worksheet. Separate multiple UPNs with commas.
  11. On the trusted device, turn off proximity and room remote.
  12. Select Save and exit.

After you select Save and exit, the device will restart and it'll be ready to participate in Coordinated Meetings.

Use the Teams Rooms XML configuration file

Coordinated Meetings can be set up using the Teams Rooms on Windows device's SkypeSettings.xml XML configuration file. The SkypeSettings.xml file isn't a static file. When the Teams Rooms on Windows device starts, it checks in C:\Users\Skype\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeRoomSystem_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState for a file named SkypeSettings.xml. If the file exists, the device reads and applies the configuration specified in the file. After it's done applying the configuration, the file is deleted. For more information about the SkypeSettings.xml file, see Manage console settings with an XML configuration file.

The following is the syntax of the Coordinated Meetings settings in the configuration file:

<CoordinatedMeetings enabled="true">
    <Settings>
        <Audio default="true" enabled="true"/>
        <Video default="true" enabled="true"/>
        <Whiteboard default="false" enabled="false"/>
    </Settings>
    <TrustedAccounts>hub@contoso.com</TrustedAccounts>
</CoordinatedMeetings>

To set up Coordinated Meetings on a device, do the following:

  1. In a text file editor, such as Visual Studio Code or Notepad, paste the above XML into a new file.

  2. Set each of the XML elements to the corresponding true or false value in your spreadsheet. For example, if Audio default is true, set <Audio default="true">.

  3. Be sure to change TrustedAccounts to your list of UPNs.

  4. Save the file with the name SkypeSettings.xml.

  5. Place the file in the Teams Rooms device's C:\Users\Skype\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeRoomSystem_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState folder. You can do this a few ways:

    • Copy the file to your Teams Rooms on Windows device You'll need to enable file sharing and create a network share before you can copy files to your device. After you do that, you can connect to network share and copy the file to the device. For more information, see Microsoft Teams Rooms maintenance and operations.
    • Use a Group Policy Create a group policy to copy the file to device. For more information, see Group Policy Overview.
    • Download the file on the Teams Rooms on Windows device You can log into the device using Admin mode and then copy the file to the device from a network share or USB drive. For more information, see Switching to Admin mode.

  6. Restart the device. You can do this a couple ways:

    • Remote PowerShell You can run the Shutdown command on the device using Remote PowerShell. For more information, see Remote Management using PowerShell.
    • Run Restart-Computer You can run the Restart-Computer cmdlet on your local computer and specify the computer name of the device you want to restart. For more information, see Restart-Computer.

Step 5: Configure Surface Hub

  • Applicable Surface Hubs: V1 and V2S running Windows Team Edition

You can use Windows Configuration Designer to create a provisioning package that you can use to apply Coordinating Meetings settings to your Surface Hubs. You'll paste the XML file you created above into Windows Configuration Designer to create the provisioning package.

Create Coordinated Meetings XML configuration file for Surface Hub

Both Windows Configuration Designer and Microsoft Intune are used to apply the Coordinated Meetings configuration to your Surface Hubs. The configuration is defined using XML. Before you go further, you need to create the XML that will be applied.

The following is the syntax of the Coordinated Meetings XML configuration file.

<SurfaceHubSettings>
    <BluetoothAdvertisementEnabled>true</BluetoothAdvertisementEnabled>
    <AutoAcceptProximateMeetingInvitations>true</AutoAcceptProximateMeetingInvitations>
    <CoordinatedMeetings enabled="true"> 
        <TrustedAccounts>room@contoso.com</TrustedAccounts>
        <Settings> 
            <Audio default="false" enabled="false" />
            <Video default="false" enabled="true" /> 
        </Settings> 
    </CoordinatedMeetings>
</SurfaceHubSettings>

Do the following to prepare the XML for Windows Configuration Designer or Microsoft Intune:

  1. In a text file editor, such as Visual Studio Code or Notepad, paste the above XML into a new file.

  2. Set each of the XML elements to the corresponding true or false value in your spreadsheet. For example, if Audio default is true, set <Audio default="true">.

  3. Be sure to change TrustedAccounts to your list of UPNs.

  4. Windows Configuration Designer requires that the XML be on a single line. Remove all the line breaks between each line so that the XML looks like the following:

    <SurfaceHubSettings><BluetoothAdvertisementEnabled>true</BluetoothAdvertisementEnabled>...

  5. Save the file on your computer.

After you've created your XML configuration file, use the steps in Manage Microsoft Teams settings on Surface Hub to apply it to your Surface Hubs.