Nov 04 2016 01:44 PM
Excellent! I'm an early adopter of the Surface Hub and we have (5) total right now, also looking to purchase 15-20 more in the next year with some pending features. We have (3) 55" and (2) 84" units, and we use them allll the time. The adoption rate of these units, compared to the typical "smart board" or VTC units in other rooms is crazy - people just walk up and start using it.
There are some day-1 features that are lacking, and we are really hoping to get some updates soon on this as they are pretty significant in our workflow. Please (MS) don't take this as a dig, just as a serious point of interest if not a linchpin in getting our internal customers to purchase these things.
Main item - whiteboard needs some additional functionality and needs to support bi-directional input from all attendees whether the other attendees are on Skype for Business (windows or mac, via that Whiteboard) or via another Surface Hub joined into the same SfB meeting with the whiteboard app. This is so powerful when in the room, but having a collaborative experience when you have other Surface Hub-enabled rooms, or even Surface Pro/Book/Studio attendees that also have touch/stylus capacity; it is just a major issue that needs to be addressed.
There are also little nice-to-have features that would be nice in this Whiteboard app, such more colors in the palette, ability to expand the canvas or move it around with limitless scale or size, or change the brush size or type. Lots of nice-to-haves, but generally the basic out of the box is pretty great and we use it all the time.
We also really want to see the use of MS built-in apps (like OneDrive for Business, PowerBI, etc.) to have the ability to logon with NFC, which other 3rd party apps are already supporting. This would be a huge benefit to saving and interacting with files stored elsewhere on O365 services. Again, not a deal-breaker - we can logon with the keyboard/mouse, but NFC would be a huge win and easy functionality to really Wow people with the ease of use. Those are my opening thoughts, but really I am psyched to see the MS Surface product group reach out and create a community base like this. Who else already has Surface Hubs, and what are you experiences like? Who is 'on the fence' and wants to know more about the capability and how it can deliver on the hype? I'm sure the community can share great stories with you about how they work in our daily lives already, but I'd love to hear what other people are thinking about the products as well. Cheers!
Chris
CIO
Not-for-profit healthcare org in Alaska
Nov 08 2016 01:51 PM
Nov 16 2016 10:31 PM
Jan 10 2017 04:00 PM
Jan 19 2017 12:16 PM
Hello! I found Chris Smith's post and I wanted to chime in that I have exactly the same needs. I am a Technician at a nonprofit biomedical research institute (in Maine, not Alaska, in my case). We have two Surface Hubs installed as "test" units in our IT departments, one here in Maine and the other in our Connecticut office. The object ot the test implementation is to evaluate the product and determine whether it should be deployed much more widely across the institution in our conference rooms.
Overall, the IT users who have used the Hubs have had largely quite positive experiences with the devices. However, like Chris, the main feedback I get consistently is that interactive whiteboarding is a must, and that isn't there yet (it appears).
Much like Chris, we need (roughly in order of importance):
I'd love an additional update on this functionality. When we originally demoed the device in your Cambridge office (back before the devices were shipping) the Microsoft rep indicated that this was the number one request they'd gotten in early feedback. He made, of course, no concrete promises, but indicated that this was definitely being considered on the product roadmap.
It has been quite some time, and the Anniversary update has come and gone without this functionality appearing. And I'm wondering if this is still planned?
At this point, it is probably the main issue that is holding us back from a wider deployment of these devices.
Thanks in advance!
- Ed