New VDI solution for Teams on Azure Virtual Desktops/Windows 365 environments AMA

Call Setup times are drastically reduced, new codecs are now available, Meeting conference servers are now selected based on proximity to the user (and not the VM, like in VDI 1.0), resource consumption on the endpoint is also reduced thanks to GPU leveraging, and dozens of new features!

Not on the hardware – but on the network, yes, please check here. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/vdi-2#networking-considerations SlimCore now handles both Signaling AND Media. In VDI 1.0 (WebRTC), the media engine only handled Media

Yes!!! Teams Admin Center and Call Quality Dashboard are your new best friends. We did not fully utilize these tools with VDI 1.0 because of missing data. But VDI 2.0 changes the game and you can see all the data (Quality of Experience, Networking info, resource consumption, etc). Make sure you get access to those dashboards! You can troubleshoot ongoing meetings, look at past meetings performance, or create custom monthly reports to spot trends (e.g. how many users are not on the latest SlimCore or Plugin?) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/vdi-2#call-quality-dashboard-in-vdi We are also using the VM's Event Viewer to log issues that happened on the endpoint: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/vdi-2#using-event-viewer-on-the-vm-for-troubleshooting

Blogs: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/the-future-of-microsoft-teams-in-vdi/ba-p/4175859 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/new-vdi-solution-for-teams-on-avd-windows-365-environments-now/ba-p/4238620 Playbook: https://aka.ms/teams-vdi-2.0-playbook

How can end-users know they are on VDI 2.0?

Our whole strategy with VDI 2.0 is to align the user experience with the feature set that native Teams on Windows has - VDI is just another platform (like MAC, Web, Mobile, etc). By re-utilizing the same media engine that native Teams has, we expect the feature gap to be significantly reduced, and even future features should come day-1 to VDI. There will be features, however, that do require a rewrite to be VDI-ready (e.g. Townhalls/Live Events).

For a list of new features and what's coming soon, you can find that information here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/vdi-2#feature-list-with-the-new-optimization

ryan_playdoe can you describe maybe the exact environment you have? Windows exact version, Workstation or Server, Single or Multiuser? I believe most of the issues you described have been addressed. First of all, we acknowledge the migration from classic Teams to new Teams has been challenging for VDI customers in non-persistent environments and MSIX technology. We have been releasing KBs to address these issues - please make sure you have the latest ones as described in the Known Issues section https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/new-teams-vdi-requirements-deploy#features-currently-not-available-and-known-issues-in-vdi-with-the-new-teams We are adding more test cases to prevent regressions.

For AVD and W365 customers, the update happens automatically if you meet the minimum requirements (24193.1805.3040.8975 and Windows App: 2.0.285.0 / Remote Desktop Client:1.2.5405.0). Once they launch Teams, the Remote Desktop client / Windows App will install automatically the new media engine (SlimCore) on the endpoint and the user will be upgraded to VDI 2.0 once they restart Teams.

We have been optimizing Teams in VDI for a few years now - and to do that, we used a WebRTC media engine that was part of the Remote Desktop client. We call this VDI 1.0. VDI 2.0 is our next-gen architecture, relying on a new media engine called SlimCore that was carved out from the native Windows Teams client and made available as an MSIX package for VDI customers. VDI 2.0 is officially called the new VDI solution for Teams 🙂