Microsoft Teams is getting this new look on Surface Hub | ZDNet

Microsoft is ditching its old Surface Hub Teams app and is rolling out a new experience via Teams Rooms for Surface Hub with a bunch of feature updates to enhance collaboration in hybrid work arrangements. 

Microsoft has kicked off the rollout of the new Teams experience for Surface Hub, its interactive whiteboard for conference rooms that is built to play well with Teams. Surface Hub 2S is available with a 50-inch and 85-inch display with built-in Windows 10 and Teams. 

The new Teams Rooms for Surface Hub will replace the legacy Surface Hub Teams app globally over the next four weeks, according to Microsoft. It’s available to customers in Commercial, GCC and GCC High environments.

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Microsoft is bringing features from the desktop and Teams Rooms into the meeting space via Teams Rooms for Surface Hub. It delivers a new meeting stage, improved meeting controls, and Teams features like Together mode scenes, large gallery, chat bubbles, live reactions, PowerPoint Live, and Whiteboard.

Separately, Microsoft this month released a major revamp of its Whiteboard brainstorming app for Teams to give it a cleaner, more modern look. Whiteboard has become essential for some business users who need to collaborate with team members in the office and others at home. 

“Teams Rooms on Surface Hub enriches collaboration for the hybrid workplace. You can easily access your Microsoft 365 files and leverage a richer Whiteboard experience to confidently present and collaborate,” Microsoft says. 

The alignment of Teams Rooms on Surface Hub with Teams on the desktop aims to create consistency for users who use the collaboration platform on different devices, such as mobile, desktop and the Surface Hub. 

A redesigned agenda page gives fast access to meetings, Meet Now, and a Dial-Pad to fire up PSTN calls for easier switching between agenda items. 

Later this year, Microsoft will release “Teams Admin Center”, a self-managed platform to remotely monitor and manage the Teams Rooms experience on Teams devices. It will be available to Microsoft Teams Rooms customers at no additional cost, according to Microsoft.

It’s also going to release a Microsoft Teams Rooms managed service, which Microsoft bills as an “AI-driven, cloud-based IT management and monitoring service that keeps Microsoft Teams Rooms devices up to date and proactively monitored.”

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The managed service is available to customers with a Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium license.

To get the new experience, admins need to ensure the Surface Hub has the latest Windows Version 19042.1202. 

Then Teams Rooms on Surface Hub (KB5004196) will install Teams Version 1.4.00.14501 and “will automatically upgrade to the latest available version during regular maintenance hours,” says Microsoft.