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Microsoft Teams Blog
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Easily deploy and manage hundreds of Teams Rooms on Windows with Autopilot and Autologin

AlvinTsou's avatar
AlvinTsou
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Jun 13, 2024

Deployment of Teams Rooms on Windows is getting a serious upgrade. As announced at InfoComm this week, Autopilot and Autologin for Teams Rooms on Windows is now generally available. It enables you to deploy at scale and configure Teams Rooms with minimal onsite interaction, which can help save you time and resources.

 

To enable Windows Autopilot and Autologin for your Teams Rooms, refer to the documentation or watch this video.

 

Configuration: What to expect

We’re hearing positive feedback from our customers. Here is what a few of them have to say:

  • "So smooth and it only took 10min. Way better deployment experience." 
  • "We want to register all our existing devices to redeploy and make them manageable with the help of Intune."

 

Configuring requires many steps, but most steps are done only once or very rarely. A simple way to think of the steps are:

  1. Configure prerequisites for Autopilot
  2. Register Autopilot capable MTRs ideally through a partner, or by yourself in Intune
  3. Assign relevant management configurations to the devices
  4. Sync the Autopilot devices to the Teams Rooms Pro Management Portal and assign respective resource accounts to the devices.

 

Why would I use Autopilot and Autologin?

Whether you’re deploying dozens of new Teams Rooms on Windows or redeploying existing rooms, you can realize the many benefits of Autopilot and Autologin.

 

Pre-registration

Pre-registration of devices to your tenant enables management of the device before it powers on. Group the device, assign an Autopilot profile, assign device management policies, and associate the device to a resource account for Autologin. Imagine, you could have the devices registered to your tenant and configured in the cloud before they even show up to the site!

Check registration of your devices in the Intune admin center

 

View your Autopilot-registered rooms from the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal

 

Rapid, touchless provisioning during site installation

Once the devices are on-site and ready for installation, the installer can simply unbox the device, plug in power and ethernet, turn it on, and walk away. The device will provision Windows, automatically, EntraID join, enroll in Endpoint management, update Windows and the Teams Rooms application, and finally Autologin to the associated resource account. From power-up to meeting-ready, touchless and in minutes.

 

Remote redeployment or recovery

By leveraging both the Intune and the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal, admins can redeploy or recover Teams Rooms on Windows with a few clicks (hopefully from a tropical beach)!

 

Firstly, in the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal, assign credentials to the target Autopilot device. This is also true for recovery of the device, where the intention is to Autologin to the previous account. Once credentials are successfully assigned, head over to Intune to perform a device reset with the “Wipe” action (make sure to use the right one!).

The Wipe function in Intune, which performs a device reset. Leave the options unchecked.

 

Logistics

A crucial part of what makes Autopilot and Autologin possible is the device registration process. Partners can register devices for customers if they have:

  1. Access to the Devices page for customers in Microsoft Partner Center, and
  2. Established a relationship must with the customer tenant.

If you currently order devices through a partner, ask if they meet those prerequisites. 

The Devices page for customers as seen by a partner in Microsoft Partner Center

Go try it!

We are excited to offer this new feature, and hope it saves you time and effort. We appreciate your input, so share your thoughts and questions on this blog post!

 

Updated Jun 12, 2024
Version 1.0
  • JoseSetienIO's avatar
    JoseSetienIO
    Copper Contributor

    I love the WIPE for MTRoW! Zero Touch cloud resets for MTRoW's is going to be a game changer. 🛸

  • RajaBoopathy's avatar
    RajaBoopathy
    Brass Contributor

    Hi AlvinTsou - I am currently testing this on an existing MTRoW device (Lenovo ThinkSmart Hub 11H1) by reimaging it and setup via Windows Autopilot. Everything worked well until the installation of Teams room app. It is stuck showing the message "Updating Teams Room, do not power off the device". Been in this screen for nearly an hour and the progress is not moving. 

     

    • Greg_A's avatar
      Greg_A
      Iron Contributor

      I’ve got the same thing on a Surface Hub 2S that’s been software upgraded to MTRoW. It started the Teams Room update about 11:00 AM. The progress bar has been filled and hasn’t progressed. Stuck at that stage at about 4:30 PM when I left the office. Did you do anything? Manually reboot or did it eventually finish for you?

      • AlvinTsou's avatar
        AlvinTsou
        Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

        In our testing on a 1Gb connection, it took 1-1.5 hours to pull and install all the requisite Windows updates. 5 hours seems inordinately long. Are you on a limited bandwidth connection?

        The progress bar can seem stuck as it only progresses as the updates are completed and not reflective of the ongoing % completion (i.e as a download or installation progresses). This is something we're looking into fixing.