Forum Discussion
'Meeting Room' license vs 'Common Area Phone' license vs 'E1+Phone System' license
Common Area Phone will give you the Skype for Business/Teams capabilities and Phone System licenses, so this is for a basic phone like a Polycom VVX in a common area (like a conference room).
With the Meeting Room license you get more stuff: Teams, Skype for Business, Phone System, Audio Conferencing and Intune. The mailbox you will setup as a room mailbox (no license).
With the E1+Phone system you will get some stuff you won't need and you won't get the Intune and Audio Conferencing that you get with the Meeting Room license.
So Common Area Phone licenses for the VVX and Meeting Room license for the Logitechs. You might need to add Calling Plan license to these if you want to dial out from these devices but that depends on your Phone System setup.
Hello Team
Thank you so much for this. I do have a dilemma though. I have a Polycom Trio 8800 and it is assigned the Common Area license. The meet now is enabled on the phone and it does work, however, I was thinking with that we will be able to have a full audio conference on it, but does not seem to be the case. I am sure am missing something. Do I need to assign the Meeting Room license to the user, if yes, will that give it an audio conference number with PIN ext for users to dial into? Any recommendation and advise will be highly appreciated
DEBEL77 The main difference between Common Area Phone and Meeting Room licenses is that the CAP license does not support Exchange, while the Meeting Room licenses does. Common Area Phones which simply are used to place audio calls are what the CAP license was designed for, and bookable rooms where users join meetings from a calendar are what the Meeting Room license was created for.
Meeting Rooms WITHOUT Audio Conferencing: Is there much difference with this vs. Common Area Phone?
Are you sure regarding the CAP license not supporting an Exchange mailbox? I can't see a reason why you assign CAP to a room mailbox to facilitate meeting room booking. Your own article mentions this should be possible as well.
"There is no special account type like with the server platform as any standard online user account can be used with the new license, meaning that Exchange calendaring is available for phones registered using a CAP-enabled account"
http://blog.schertz.name/2018/05/hot-desking-and-common-area-phones-in-skype-for-business/
Steve Bedwell There has been some back and forth on this topic over time. Originally Microsoft did not intend for the CAP account in Skype for Business to be mailbox enabled and mentioned that Exchange Online might be pulled from that license.
But now that the license will be used by Teams that is likely not going to happen. The behavior I do see currently is that if a Common Area Phone license (or a Meeting Room license) is added to a standard User mailbox account, its mailbox will vanish (but it will return if a regular license is reapplied). But if those licenses are assigned to an account with a Room mailbox and enabled using the CsMeetingRoom cmdlets then the mailbox will be fine.It appears that using those device licenses on a user account causes the mailbox to be blocked, by design.
I'm not sure what you mean with "full audio conference"?
You need the Audio Conferencing license to create dial-in conferences but, when you use the Meet now from the Trio you won't send out an mail invitation, you will invite users directly to the meeting.
If you wan't to create a conference with dial-in you should create it and invite the device to the meeting. You and the device will be able to join using Skype and other user will be able to join the meeting with dial-in. You have to have the audio conferencing license for your account (since you schedule and invite to the meeting), not the device.
LinusCansby While devices accounts are not used to send meeting invitations, the devices still need to be licensed with Audio Conferencing to cover one specific capability: inviting PSTN attendees ad-hoc to an active meeting from the device. Meaning that if someone is in the room, connected to a Skype or Teams meeting and they use the device to 'Add a Participant' and then select a PSTN phone number as the new attendee, the outbound PSTN call placed by the meeting MCU requires that the device is licensed with Audio Conferencing.
Jeff_Schertz "inviting PSTN attendees ad-hoc to an active meeting from the device."
so if I just invite PSTN attendees from any other account that is joined to the conference ID then there is no need for this functionality? they're charging effectively $4/mo as part of this SKU so people don't have to reach into their pocket and make an outbound call from their E5 licensed mobile client instead of the device on a table? that's a bad look.
