Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro and Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic, everything you need to know.

From 1^st September 2022, Microsoft has changed the way Microsoft Teams Rooms are licenced. Here are the official blog and docs.

This is what we had before:

Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard – $15 per device per month
Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium – $50 per device per month

	Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard	Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium
Microsoft Teams	X	X
Teams Phone	X	X
PSTN Audio Conferencing	X	X
Intune	X	X
Azure AD P1	X	X
Microsoft Teams Rooms Management Console		X
Room Planning / Inventory Management		X
Remote Managed Operations, security, and support from Microsoft		X
Price	$15 Per device per month	$50 per device per month

Microsoft Teams Rooms features were identical in Standard and Premium. Premium gave you the additions of the management portal and managed service (a dedicated to this service team of people at Microsoft doing remote email/chat support).

The new model from 1^st September 2022 is:

Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic – $0 per device per month, basic features, limited to 25 devices per tenant. Basic experience, limited features.
Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro – $40 per device per month with an annual commitment or $48 per device per month, month to month. The full experience, management portal, monitoring, alerting, reporting and new features. Unlike Premium, no dedicated people-based Microsoft-managed service team.

Note it is not a 1:1 feature mapping between Standard and Basic and Premium and Pro. Basic is something new. Pro removes the Microsoft people-based managed service team but will add new features too. There are important changes to understand.

Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic vs Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro feature comparison

	Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic	Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro
Meeting join	X	X
Join Teams meetings with 1-touch, proximity, and meeting ID	X	X
Start ad hoc meetings from the room	X	X
Direct Guest Join for Zoom and Webex meetings	X	X
Join meetings across Microsoft clouds (commercial to GCC)		X
Teams Panel (room check-in)		X
Share and collaborate
Share and view all Teams content types	X	X
Content Capture Camera – webcam to capture content from physical traditional whiteboards		X
Meeting engagement
Teams video gallery with multiple layout options	X	X
Front row		X
Chat, Loop content		X
Together mode		X
Large gallery (up to 50 videos)		X
Split gallery across 2 screens		X
Calling
Make and receive peer-to-peer and group calls (VoIP)	X	X
Microsoft 365 Phone System / Teams Phone		X
PSTN Calling		Add on a Calling Plan, Operator Connect or Direct Routing
Intelligent audio & video (features may require additional specific peripherals)
Intelligent Speaker live transcript with speaker identification		X
Multi-stream people feed for intelligent cameras (roadmap)		X
Multi-camera support		X
Panoramic room view		X
Remote PTZ controls (roadmap)		X
AI noise suppression		X
People counting		X
Security & Compliance
Secure operating system	X	X
System level security (Secure boot. Assigned Access mode, etc.)	X	X
Azure AD Conditional Access policies		X
Device management
Teams Admin Center enrolment and inventory	X	X
Automatic software updates	X	X
Detailed system and configuration information		X
Peripheral health management		X
Remote configuration		X
Device history and activity		X
ITSM integration		X
Custom health alerts		X
Device analytics		X
Application updates and Al-powered remediation service		X

Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic Key Points

Basic is free for up to 25 devices
Basic is, as the name suggests, Basic. It does not include a lot of “advanced” features such as Front Row, Chat, intelligent cameras and speakers, dual screens, Teams Panel, Azure AD Premium P1 and It does not include a Teams Phone licence to allow the room to make/receive PSTN calls
The Basic license covers MTR Android devices with a touch console as one device sharing one account
Microsoft positions Basic as for the SMB or for smaller organisations who do not need the management or advanced features and as an easy free on-ramp to get started with Microsoft Teams Rooms
Basic licences support MTR Android, MTR Windows, and Surface Hub
To get the full Microsoft Teams Rooms experience, you need Pro

Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro Key Points

This is the licence to get all the Microsoft Teams Rooms features, management portal and monitoring/alerting/patching management
Pro includes access to the Microsoft Teams Rooms Managed Services portal which includes advanced health monitoring
Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium previously included remote managed operations and support from Microsoft, a team of remote support people. This people-based managed remote service will no longer be offered by Microsoft. Partners will offer managed service options on top of Pro.
If you were buying Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium for the management tooling more than the Microsoft remote managed service, you can now save $10 per room per month.
Pro will add more automated monitoring and dashboards
Further features and value will continue to be delivered in Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro. Look out for more feature announcements soon. Subscribe to my email update to hear about all the new features first.

$40 a month will be a big cost jump for lots of customers who have gone with Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard ($15) licencing today and want to maintain the features they have today and have the future advanced features.

There is no getting around that.

With Pro, you are getting more functionality than what Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard offers, especially around management, but you now must move up to Pro to maintain all features (at the end of your contract term).

A lot of functionality has been added to Microsoft Teams Rooms since the Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard licence was introduced many years ago. Microsoft will point out that $40 per room compares well to the competition and that I think they are the only vendor with a completely free (reduced functionality) option with Basic.

For comparison Zoom is $49 per room/per month/or $499 a year, also another $499 a year if you want SIP/H.232 support “Conference Room Connector”. Cisco Webex Rooms might be $29 per room per month, but I can’t find a Cisco link to confirm, can anyone help me understand the Cisco pricing?

Will I have to change my existing Microsoft Teams Rooms licences?

Any existing licences will be valid until the contract time ends (typically a year from the initial purchase if buying directly from Microsoft). Larger customers with volume licence agreements will be able to continue using and buying Microsoft Teams Room Standard licences until their licence agreement expires.

However, most new features moving forward will not come to Standard or Premium, only Pro. So Microsoft will be encouraging you to look at Pro.

Standard will not lose any features it already has today. Look out for more feature announcements at the upcoming Microsoft Ignite event (I will cover all the new feature news in my monthly email update here).

For customers without an enterprise agreement, who buy direct from Microsoft or a CSP, you will not be able to buy new Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard or Premium licences; for new rooms, you will have to use either Basic or Pro licences. Once your licence term expires for your existing licences, you must move to Basic or Pro.

Does Microsoft Teams Room Pro include Teams Phone PSTN Calling?

Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro includes the Teams Phone licence, which is the ability for the room to also be a Phone, but you will need to add a phone number and connectivity via Microsoft Calling plan, Operator Connect or Direct Routing. This allows the Room System to have a phone number and make and receive straight PSTN calls (that are not meetings).

Microsoft Teams Room Basic does not include Teams Phone. Note this does not mean it does not have PSTN dial in and out for meetings. That feature is called (PSTN) Audio Conferencing and is related to the person who schedules the meeting having that licence.

Do Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic and Pro include PSTN Audio Conferencing?

Yes, both Microsoft Teams Room Basic and Microsoft Teams Room Pro includes Microsoft’s PSTN Audio Conferencing (in markets where the service is available). Meaning when a meeting is initiated from the Room (Meet Now), there will be PSTN Phone numbers to dial into and out of meetings.

This is subject to the regional availability of PSTN Audio Conferencing.

Can customers move from Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard to free Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic?

Yes, customers with under 25 Rooms could move from Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard to Basic and save $15 per device per month, but only if they are happy with the basic feature set.

Can I have some Basic Rooms and some Pro Rooms?

Yes, you can if you want, but the functionality will be different for the users which might be confusing. More importantly, the management and admin experience will be different for the Rooms. You are still limited to a maximum of 25 Basic Rooms/devices.

How do I get the Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic licence?

The licence will be a $0 licence you can order from the Microsoft 365 admin portal. You will be capped to 25 of these licences per tenant.

How do I licence a Teams Panel?

Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro includes the licence for a Teams Panel for that room.

If you have a use case for Panels without Microsoft Teams Rooms, a low-cost (i.e. same cost as CAP license) license which can be used with Panels standalone is coming very soon.

What does it mean that Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic cannot “Join meetings across Microsoft clouds”?

This is a corner case. It won’t affect typical commercial customers. Microsoft Teams Room Basic can join meetings on other commercial tenants (most organisations worldwide are on Microsoft’s commercial cloud, so if you have E plans or Business plans you are on this cloud). Microsoft has specific “clouds” for US Government (Government Community Cloud, GCC High and DoD). Only approved US Government agencies you are on the GCC cloud your licence will be a GX licence. If you need to call between GCC/GCC High/DoD and commercial tenants, both organisations’ rooms will need a Microsoft Teams Room Pro licence.

Can you add a Teams Phone licence and/or AAD P1 licence to Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic if you don’t want to jump to Pro but needed Teams Phone/AAD on your MTR?

Yes, You can “stack” multiple licences on a single account to have Teams Rooms basic plus Teams Phone or Azure AD P1 and/or a Teams Panel with a Basic room.

Can I use user licences (for example E3, E5) for Microsoft Teams Rooms instead?

No, this is not supported/against terms of service (reference). E licences are not for shared devices.

It does technically work today, and I know of some organisations doing it. If you are doing this, you will need to move to the new Basic/Pro licencing. Accounts with user licenses will be blocked from sign-in in on Teams Rooms systems after July 1st, 2023.

If you are running an Android device for personal use, for example, a Teams Display in a personal office, this is OK to run signed in as a user with a user licence (E3, E5 etc.). This will run the device in a personal mode; it won’t be part of the MTR management portal.

Got questions? Let me know

Many thanks to numerous friends at Microsoft, partners and device vendors who helped with questions and answers for the blog. If you have any other questions or thoughts. Please let me know.

Be sure to subscribe for all the updates and look out for more Pro feature news coming at Microsoft Ignite.