Forum Discussion
'Meeting Room' license vs 'Common Area Phone' license vs 'E1+Phone System' license
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.
Jeff_SchertzMicrosoft needs to fix this license nightmare. It is way too confusing to understand which license applies to which purpose and it keeps changing as seen by these threads. I have confirmed that a meeting room license does not work for a Trio conference phone. It will not accept a meeting invite. I was also unsuccessful using a common area phone but it works with an E5 license. The E5 of course is overkill but I was able to use a phone system - virtual user license to get it working instead. Yet I am told by the support team that it should not work that way.
Why not provide exchange/mailbox connectivity for all phone related licenses and include the audio conferencing within that license so we don't have to select multiple licenses for each purpose? It's too granular. Why have both a CAP and Meeting Room license? Make those the same with mailbox enabled and audio conferencing included. Even common area phones should have voicemail capabilities. Why block these device licenses on a user account? Does it matter whether it is a room account or user account? Otherwise, don't allow the license to be assigned at all so there is no confusion.
