Welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. This week we have James Robinson. James has just broken out to be an independent AV consultant, but previously he worked at BT as head of Audio visual and Office Technology. And he takes us through a massive Microsoft Teams rooms and Surface Hub rollout. How BT dealt with the program and gave us really good insights into how to approach a Microsoft Teams Rooms project. Many thanks to James for taking the time to do the podcast, and also thanks to AudioCodes, the sponsor of this podcast. Really appreciate their support on with the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I've been looking forward to this one. James and I have been going back and forth, I think for a couple of months. Try to find a slot. James has a big history in deploying rooms in BT, so we're going to talk a lot about that. And now he's independent as well. James, welcome to the show do you want to introduce yourself. Thanks for having me, Tom. yeah, I'm James Robinson. I, I'm now, audio visual, consultant and designer, amongst other things, running, Aventure Audio Visual. finally braved it, enough to go out on my own after being in the, big corporate world for, for a long time. So I exciting. Congrats on going independent. It's, it's fun journey. Yeah, a bit scary, perhaps. but, yeah, it's, I'm enjoying already. I'm enjoying so far, so. Yeah, with your history in your network, I suspect you'll you'll be in demand. so. So talking of that, can you kind of introduce us to what your role was at BT and, and some of the kind of the, the amazing scope of the project? Absolutely. I mean, BT I had hundreds of job titles, traditional, you know, large corporate, but essentially, I finished my time there as, as, as head of audiovisual, looking at everything that, from a technology point of view that a colleague would interact with when they went into an office. So that's starting it. You know, the monitor's on the desk, visitor management systems, conference rooms, digital signage, you know, all of that sort of stuff. but where it all started, well, I used to work in IP voice originally. and how I, how I transitioned into sort of this sort of stuff is, enterprise voice in Skype for business. or. Well, Lync 2013. Skype for business 2015. so I was brought on board by, by BT's Teams of UC guys to to focus on voice. Really. And then it's just, evolved from there. I think and I don't want to be quoted on this, but I think BT had the largest, certainly in the UK and maybe in the EU, but the largest Skype for business on premise estate. at least that's what people kept saying. Whether it's true or not, I don't know. servicing sort of 120,000 users at peak, I think, and you know, time went on. So Lync became Skype and, you know, broke my heart a little bit. But Skype, Skype obviously became Teams. and we were to transition from being, you know, nerdy server engineers to, to sort of being service engineers and looking after a looking after cloud based. So it's quite the change, isn't it? Going from like knowing servers really well and rolls and Windows and ad and physical infrastructure to working around a giant cloud service. Yeah, it was, it was quite, unnerving really. but you know, you have to adapt to these things or you get or you get left behind and, like most large corporates, I think we dabbled in Teams. I certainly had Teams, pre-pandemic. But, in that old fashion, Islands mode, where I, you know, had both, and, and everyone we'd given Teams to, we might have even gone or acquired by then, but there was a lot of resistance, to that changing way of working and, I'm sure you've heard it time and time again, but the pandemic is what forced everyone onto it. Yep. because, you know, we're so much of our Skype infrastructure wasn't fit for purpose. you know, a lot of people still required, VPNs to do their jobs, and it couldn't handle our VPNs, couldn't handle that video traffic. no. No, it was never designed for that scenario, was it? It was like, never anticipated that everybody would be external coming into those data centers. Really? No, no, I think we had something like 8 to 10,000 users on VPN pre-pandemic. And then overnight we went to something like 60 to 80,000. obviously at BT a lot of people, a lot of people have engineers, so they're not really using the tools. A lot of people are call center agents, not necessarily using the tools. or if they are, they're potentially still in the office. But the vast majority of that information worker, workforce went, went home. And, you know, we had to throttle people on Skype for business to like 240p video and, you know. It just wasn't really what people wanted. So, you know, we forced that transition in a very aggressive timeline. Yeah. I think it was about three months in the end for 100,000 people. including 30,000 enterprise voice users, having to go from, you know, on premise status, data center audio codes, spikes up into virtual ones in the cloud for direct routing and stuff as well. it was, it was a it was a difficult journey. And, obviously that had massive implications from a, from a room point of view. Yeah. as well, you know, for, well, the two things kind of happened simultaneously. in late 2019, BT announced its Better Workplace program. So consolidating 300 offices to 30 offices in the UK, and bringing everyone together, you know, to collaborate and work together and, and the pandemic hit as well. So, and before all that sort of whoever, you know, director of this, director of that MD of this. So they had some cash, they just went out and they bought some stuff. Right. So you'd have, you might have aPolycom 650, 100, you know, the round, the, the newer round table. 360 degree one with a built in speakerphone, in one room. But you might have a Cisco spider phone in another room. to to God knows what. You know, some offices, you had to go to reception and borrow a projector from the security guard. And, you know, you get on the list, and if you didn't give it back, you'd be in. You'd be in trouble. so we aggressively moved to a centralized technology model where you went right IT or digital workplace. You are now in charge of audiovisual for the entire company. people can't just do what they want. We need a corporate wide strategy, and we're going to implement it, at pace, because we're going to build or refurbish these 30, you know, brand new offices. So we we started Covid with maybe 50 Skype rooms, perhaps, so Surface Hub Gen one. Yeah, the old original stuff. Yeah. With the big speakers on the side. and Skype Room System version two, instead of the Lenovo Thinksmart 500 first one to market, I think. And a couple of those Logitech docks where you had some image, a Surface Pro four and stick it inside. And yeah, I think we can all agree in hindsight, that was a bit of a pain, right? Dedicate hardware is involved with that. Yeah. And you don't have to worry that someone's going to steal the tablet ever. Yeah. All the batteries going to, pop out after being on charge for a year. Right? Yeah. And we didn't have very much of this stuff. So transitioning that to Teams wasn't a big problem. But we had to sort of overnight define what our conferencing strategy was going to be. And then, you know, roll that out with very limited amounts of community feedback because people weren't allowed in the office. so yeah, it's interesting. You couldn't you don't you don't have the opportunity to set up multiple different offices and test scenarios and all that stuff that typically we would have done in that kind of project. Yeah. So we couldn't do a proof of concept. We couldn't say, you know. Right. These five rooms are getting Surface up two and you're getting, Skype room system as it was. And you're getting this and then actually saying, well, what do you prefer? we just had to roll with it. and I think that, you know, we made a lot of correct decisions. We made a lot of incorrect decisions in hindsight. You know, we I say we I'm going to say that a lot throughout this podcast. I worked for BT for 12 years, and I'm struggling with the pronouns. so I'm I'm not there anymore. But what did that look like in practical terms like, but you've got various OEM options. You got various room types. Did you, did you write a document? Did you do a PowerPoint? Did you test them all in a lab? What did that look like? yeah. So I had I had a lab, in a ancient telephone exchange where I used to live down in Surrey. and, whoever from the OEMs would work with us on testing, you know, got into that lab. So if you were a partner that said, oh, no free samples, sorry, then you were pretty much off the list. so. and, and we leverage the strong commercial relationships that we already had as well. so, you know, unless they’ve changed since I left, all, all MTR in BT were Lenovo. not only were they, it made sense for many reasons commercially and support wise, but, you know, we were a Lenovo house for laptops. You know, we had a we had 100,000 Lenovo laptops in a four year refresh plan. so, you know, business wise. So already they a key compute partner already chosen by wider IT to be the partner in that space. I was. Yeah. And you know, and I think for me it was more about the tooling that sits behind that necessarily than, than the vendor. but so all all of the kit came in to the test lab and we played with it. And the sounds crazy now, but there was a lot less to test. back in 2019, 2020, you know, far fewer options on the market that there were. No, there were no Yealinks there were no Max Hubs. Neat all of that, you know, there were no Android Teams systems even. You know. I was going to ask, was that was there a conscious decision there between Windows and Android? But I guess at that time it was primarily Windows was the the choice. Then? Yeah, absolutely. and I think I'd still make probably still make that same choice now, although I think Android is getting, getting very close depending on what your priorities are. you know, one, one thing and BT that was an absolute priority down from, H.R. Really? Who were the sponsors of this refurbishment program? Is we we want, as part of our principals to brands, our meeting rooms and wanted to do that on the device rather than necessarily, I mean, of course, they painted in color schemes and had furniture swaps that matched. But you know, corporates like corporates like to change their logo. I mean, I think BT, since I've been there since I was there, did 3 or 4 logo refreshes and color scheme changes. And if you've got to repaint all your offices, that's a huge expenditure. If you've got to flip a switch and change a background on a Teams room is a is a bit easier. so it's, you know, something that sounds so minor, like having your own backgrounds, you know, wasn't available on Android. yeah. And I believe it. And I think it's still just a roadmap option today. Yeah. You should be. yeah. It's imminent. It's, kind of August on the roadmap at the moment. And finally, digital signage is coming through, but again, initially for Windows, then then for Android side. I don't think I've had corpse ask for lorries. We've got these massive screens in the offices. Why can't we use them for digital signage when not not in use. Yeah, not then. That would be fantastic. I think that's a really positive step, but essentially we sat down as a larger community. So not just IT but HR IT various other departments as we sort of looked at this refurbishment strategy, facilities and property and people like that, and we essentially defines the experiences we wanted people to have. so in the meeting room space, we had a, what, what we called a connect room experience. So that's which is just internal lingo. But that sat down having a traditional meeting, and then a huddle room experience, which in BT lingo meant actually that's, that's stand up furniture with, with high stools and interactive, devices, like it, like Surface Hub, for example. So we had this framework of what, what do we want people to be able to do in these spaces. And we mix and match the technology, appropriately, right, as it was at the time. So, yeah, the most basic experience we defined was just local presentation. So we actually rolled out, a couple of hundred Microsoft display adapters, the, you know, the little HDMI dongles that just generic Miracast thing. you all you can do is name them, and there is nothing else you can do to the device. and then we had the essentially the next level up, as we viewed at the time, which was MTR was and then like the more premium experience as we thought, you know, the Surface Hub rooms. So we're going to be getting up and interacting. Maybe it's a training space, maybe it's a more creative type environment. so the top two spaces would run Teams with various peripherals. And obviously the, the bottom one wouldn't. And as we roll these out where we'd the first three offices we did, no one moved in for like nine months. So we fast forward to doing, they're doing BT’s 18 floor, HQ in London and a 17 floor in Birmingham. so those two offices opened before we really started getting feedback and, the two big learned learning we had there was the local presentation spaces are great, but we just started adopting. Well, everyone wanted Teams in those spaces. But there was a price point, you know, issue there of getting of getting too many Teams rooms. but the other learning was, well, BT starting to adopt Mac devices and, you know, Apple devices and, and there were Miracast only rooms. so everyone wanted to Airplay as well. Yeah. So although completely not required in our call centers or, you know, smaller offices, certainly in, in London and Birmingham, we were seeing, you know, maybe a 5%, usage of us of MacBooks, but that's still quite a lot of colleagues just couldn't use those spaces. And the other thing was not a lot of people in BT anyway really jumped on board with the Surface Hub. you know, the whole touchscreen and using the apps and the whiteboarding was quite popular. But no one was editing Office 365 files. People would Miracast to it, but what most people were doing was just standing up and pushing join meeting and sitting back down again. Yeah. so what you gave us was a really expensive room That seems right. Yeah, that seems to be the experience in a lot of places had Surface Hub is kind of getting less unique now. It's just going to become a giant MTR because Microsoft looked at the stats, and most people just use them as a giant meeting room rather than this, this vision of having dedicated apps and dedicated experience, it just didn't seem to land at scale. Yeah, and the and the mics and speakers, while the speakers and the mics were more tuned for the person doing the collaboration on the device than it was picking up the entire room. You know, the 85 inch device in a, I don't know, eight meter meeting room. And it would struggle, quite rightly, to be fair. You know, it's not really a criticism. that's just designed for people see a big screen. So they assume if I can see the screen from this far back, it should work for me like this. That's that's how people think, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, and don't get me wrong, BT didn't abandon Surface Hub, but it was certainly refocused into, you know, dedicated training type environments, more than it is a traditional meeting room. And the other thing we thought would be really, really popular is, well put Surface Hubs everywhere on wheels and people will just wheel them around the office. to do Teams meetings, you know, ad hoc, which, you know, sounded great on, around the design table, but it just annoyed people because, if you wheel a Surface Hub around. So your bank of six desks, because you've got a Teams call, the people in the next bank of six desks don't want to listen to it. you know, you want them to be quiet. They want you to be quiet. It just didn't really work. And we were transitioning that to be more sort of. Well, yeah, let's let's put a display out with Miracast and Airplay, but let's just leave the Teams a bit to one side because. Yeah. So they could use it for like a Team huddle rather than a full on conference. Yeah. You know, you're in a you're in a, you're in an open plan environment and, and even if you invested in expensive sound masking and stuff, it's not really going to going to go where we thought it might go. So yeah, a lot. Lots of learning as that journey went on. and I think we ended up with was roughly 1200 Teams rooms in total, about 7 to 800 of those were MTR and then the remainder. So what 4 to 500 would have been Surface Hub, by both Gen1 and Gen2. There's still to this day Gen one Surface Hubs working fine in BT I mean they’re out support, but they're not broken. and a very large investment. I mean, those gen1 Hubs MSRP are like 27,000 pounds. So, it's not something you want to throw away. Yeah. What were the practicalities of rolling out that many? I mean, that's a lot of devices, both from a like logistics point of view or a deploy point of view and a management point of view. What what did you find there for. The vast majority of them were done on large, large scale projects. so, you know, if you open a large office, you're doing 3 or 400 meeting rooms at a time through the various different options. And, that that wasn't particularly difficult. You know, you work with a construction contractor who typically appoints an AV Integrator. We did all of the design in-house in BT so that those AV integrators were just doing installation work, and then we were doing our own commissioning as well. So, you know, they would throw a Teams room together, and then we would come back and set it all up. One of the key things was, remote management for me. I had a very small Teams of amazing people, but very small Teams. yeah. And you can't just teleport around the country, I mean. Well, and we were operating out of 64 countries, I think, but the vast majority was in the UK. And so one of the key reasons why we chose Lenovo as well as commercials and the fact that I thought their products were very good was, ThinkSmart management platform, that we purchased at the same time. Now, I know Teams Room Pro has released this is releasing this yeah. Very much day 2 or 3 months out of date now, but. Yeah, very recently we've got remote control on and you like, you have to install a particular browser agent and it kind of works. But there is still some you know, the OEMs had it first. Crestron had it, Lenovo. Lenovo have got a really good remote story as well. And I think they use the vPro technology as well. Don't they think some of that stuff. So but there was nothing. Yeah. So like from a Microsoft point of view. Yeah. So, yeah. Intel vPro remote management via Lenovo's portal revolutionized the way my Team both deployed and supported these devices. It you know, you just had instant, instant KVM access. All the on site engineer had to do was scan a QR code and throw it in the portal, and you could do most things remotely. so they had a configuration wizard so you could without even using the KVM thing, you could you could send the room credentials and, various settings that you wanted to use. anything you couldn't do realistic was custom themes. You still had to use KVM for deploying custom themes, but. And that just meant, you know, if you're if you're deploying aPoly camera with it, you could sit there from the comfort of your own home and installPoly lens and update the drivers and set the speaker tracking modes. You want ads and or if it's a biamp DSP, you know, log on and do some audio programing or something. That was a lifesaver because the way the way we went with our offices and BT was everything was what we called red side internet. There was no exposed corporate LAN to 99% of the devices that were in that office. You couldn't just do old school remote desktop on VPN. right. Yeah, yeah, because I was just on the internet, you know. They were just there. They were just on the internet, inbound ports and stuff, relatively strictly controlled. And it's the same. It didn't really matter what tech we were deploying, but that consistency sort of ran through the fame. So we had one display vendor for the entire time, so we could have one remote management tool for doing firmware updates and saying, if a fan is blown in a screen or whatever. I think the most complicated thing for me was every year I redesigned our standards because you couldn't sit still and just roll out 2020 standards for four years because your rooms would be ancient. so every year, you know, the MTR changed if it needed to. We moved from, all in one devices on the desk to modular solutions, where you touch panels and you and your PC is a separate, bigger and better cameras. this is the tension of vendor choice, right? Isn't it? Because you you quite rightly articulate that if you have a certain if you minimize the number of vendors in play, your operations support your supply chain, it becomes easier. But you also, you don't want to be deploying the same four year old model. You want to rev models within within your partner. So even if you stay with the same OEM, the models are probably going to change over. The life cycle of the game. Is evergreen, isn't it? Over the lifecycle of the project? Absolutely. I mean, the last project I did with BT, we were technically speaking, Lenovo's fourth iteration of MTR but they all they all use that same remote management platform, the same, support process. If you need to report a fault, the same account manager to shout out if something bad happens. Right. which just just makes life a little bit more manageable. but what we didn't we didn't do that with peripherals, but we kept it, so sort of every 12 months. Right. This is just small, medium, large, extra large to BT's definition is not Microsoft definitions. Yeah. Cookie cutter experiences. So, you know, you might have Poly Studio USB, in the good old days and they still make them, in a medium room. But then, you know, we started off with the Logitech rally camera or Rally Plus system in, in our larger rooms, but they didn't do the speaker tracking that. We now, our users told us that they want it. So we moved to, Poly E70 camera and different audio peripherals. you know, by, bars and things. But we wouldn't let people pick and mics. And we were relatively strict with, with those designs. So, you know, we would do the interrupt testing. So, you know, 2020 to 2021’s, MTR was tested with 202i’s fleet of cameras and sound bars and stuff. And then and then we moved on from that in in 2022 and 2023 and so forth. So in theory, there was a limited number of combinations. And the nice thing with the Windows into our model is they're getting the driver update through Windows, aren't they. So there's not that much. Do you did you find you ended up deploying the OEM tooling for things like camera management or micro management as well? Or did you mainly rely on the kind of native update process there? the only, the only OEM tool we used for that was the, Logitech Sync. I don't know if they take from Windows Update today, but certainly even even just before I left was still manually deploying or at least magically scheduling firmware updates after they've been tested for those Logitech products. Yeah, I think everything else, with the exception of like the complex DSPs from Biamp and the like were, Windows Update just just crack on. it was an absolute breath of fresh air when we moved over to Teams Room Pro Management portal to have control of that and sort of ring everything off so we could have a, you know, a development ring and a standard then right at the end to have an executive ring. So what proportions of units did you have in those rings? I'm interested because there's always a conversation in customers is like, how do I split between those rings? Yeah, I mean bear in mind it was only very relevant to MTR So as we're talking about seven 700 devices because Surface Hub didn't really do it or need it. so first off, I had the lab. So every test device that, you know, everything that we deployed live, there was a lab version of, not done nicely. Of course, no one has got the space for that, but. Yeah, yeah, I've got I've got a virtual background because I've got various badly cabled MTR’s behind me, all in various states of disarray for testing. Yeah. I definitely did a lot of cleaning this morning. but, you know, there was, Poly studio plugged in. A Logi Rally plugged into whatever. Plugged it in. So they could take sets of updates first, and we and we could test them for I think we had a two week window on that lab environment. And then I think we had about 50 devices in the next ring up. so an example of every room combination. We had a couple of each in that sort of, guinea pig ring. I can't remember what I called it in the, in the system. And, you know, that's where you would wait for your users to report issues to the helpdesk. And if if everything was fine through there, then, you have a sort of 600 or so devices would, would get it. And then lastly would be things like our C-suite executives. So the CEO, CFO, I actually once had sort of a day one fault that completely knocked out a room. And Microsoft pulled the patch. so we only had like two rooms of 700 that took it before Microsoft pulled it. And one of those was. I can guess. Yeah, it's always the way isn't it? Like it's always someone important yeah. So that that was our boardroom and we had to swap that MTR out, very quickly. But you know, to be in that situation where you were using your most important spaces as your guinea pigs by pure accident because you had no control was was not great from a corporate point of view. So, yeah, once we were given the opportunity to upgrade early from Teams Room standard like most corporate BT was in now like five year enterprise agreement. So Microsoft couldn't take away our standard licensing for another two years. I think it was. But they were like I managed to get a business case through to to go early because we didn't want to miss out on all the pro only features. Make sense. And that was one of the key selling points of that business case. Is that service stability. we can hopefully stop any of these weird and wonderful things from from happening. And if they do happen, it'll be, to a lower priority space at least then from my point of view, I don't have to get up at 2 a.m. and drive magically somewhere to go and sort of out, you know? Yeah, literally physically swapping out kit because, it's got to be done. Yeah. That and the analytics is, you know, slowly evolving and Teams Room Pro is, you know what really made us go over there. Because before that we have very limited insights into, you know, what what people were doing in our rooms or. What would you say, like having all that experience like now now you're out independent helping helping others. Like what do you take away from that in terms of, you know, because, I'm guessing you're going to end up working with some bigger customers as well. What's the what are the big takeaways for MTR for kind of project and ops? I think the key thing I say a lot when talking to people now is. They don't really know what they want. So having a proper strategy of what you're trying to achieve before you spend hundreds or millions of pounds is is really important, you know, just exactly like BT you know, a unique situation in that pandemic. But we definitely bought more Surface Hubs than we needed to because of, you know, that lack of learning and experience, which, you know, when you're ahead, a bit ahead of the curve. Yeah, you can't necessarily avoid. But so, but for certainly the MTR market is much more mature now. So having a, having an actual strategy of what you want to achieve and having standards, I think is really, really important, especially if you're going to be doing your own support. You want to pick a partner and stick, stick with it for a decent period of time and then potentially reevaluate it and and move on you. You don't want to get stuck on the old technology that doesn't support, you know, all the cool new stuff. So you want you probably want Intelliframe this and Intelligent Speak that. And, you know, all this cool stuff. And I'm sure there's lots of AI features that will be released. And you know, you can't you don't want to get left behind, but at the same time, you don't want to create needless complexity. I mean, I see a lot of people posting on LinkedIn and you go, oh, we did a project for this client. And, this room was a Yealink. This in this room was a Lenovo that in this room was Logitech. And you're like, why? You know, not saying any of these vendors is better than the others. And so it's about it. It's about the value of that weird, unique thing they do versus the ongoing operational complexity of that mixing and matching. Yeah. And I always said you should have a really compelling reason to break out of your standards. Right. for example, the new Poly dor HP, I don't know what we're calling them now. HP Poly, Poly HP, G9, I think is called New Windows MTR yeah, I believe they can support four touch panels in the room using that, Android Android controller, but with a Windows MTR you know, that is sort of revolutionary and something that I've had customers asking me for for years. You know, I've got a 18 meter meeting room with 20 grand of audio in the ceiling, but I still have to walk to the other end of the room to, you know, interact with that console. So that could be a very good example of why you might want to jump out of your standards and go actually, yeah, we do use Lenovo, for example. But for this ginormous room. For this use case. Yeah. You know, it's worth all the hassle. complications of maybe having to write a load of new support procedures and whatnot that it's actually worth doing. Whereas if you're just having, oh, there's a Logitech tap in this room, but Lenovo IP controller in that room, you're like, well, they literally do the same thing. why would you want to run two management platforms. And but then some people will turn that around and they'll say, well actually James, if what if Lenovo or Logitech send out a really bad driver update and you lose every single room, or you lose 100 of your 1000 rooms in one software update, and if you're more diverse, you that potentially wouldn't happen. Quite unlikely. But some people like to. Yeah, on the side of caution. But yeah, I feel like you're more likely to operationally trip yourself up like and shoot yourself in the foot versus the vendor actually doing it. And if you're if you're patching through the ranks, theoretically you should catch it. But yeah, it's a there's a there's a counter argument to be made there I suppose. Yeah. And I think consistency is key for the end user. So they probably won't notice a difference between a Yealink MTR panel and a Lenovo one, because it's the same UI, which is one of the best things about Microsoft making the the software. you only have to learn it once and in six months later you can learn it again when all the buttons move around. But then if you're bringing in, you know you've got MTR in one room, you've got Surface Hub, maybe on the legacy experience. Then someone sells you third party provider that can, oh, this room can be Zoom or WebEx or Teams, but as a completely different user interface. I think that is something that should be avoided at all costs. Really. BT was was is a tech company, but the standard tech proficiency of of an employee is not. you still use this, right? And that's the thing people forget they see even inside of like Microsoft and Google and Amazon, the users, users, they're not necessarily the hardcore technologists, the salespeople, the salespeople. So that that that definitely applies everywhere. Yeah. And it's I think it's really easy for the IT Teams to go, oh yeah, it's easy, but it's not easy for everyone. So yeah, having, you know, you probably can't get away with having the same experience in every room because, you know, MTR on Windows is probably not fit for purpose everywhere. Surface Hub is definitely not fit for purpose everywhere, although it will. Yeah, it is missing the Windows now. But yeah, you'll you'll miracle scenario now would probably be a BYOD Teams scenario potentially like because Microsoft kind of semi embrace that scenario as well. Yeah it was so one of the biggest not complaints but the amount of thoughts that we would have raised someone in an MTR room going Miracast isn't working. You know, it doesn't have Miracast, but they they've walked out of a Surface Hub room where it does work, and then it doesn't work in a an MTR room. Yeah. You know, so now it's actually better to teach people to cast through the Teams client using the, you know, the the ellipses and going to cast the sharing. Yeah. which is obviously the same across Mac and Teams. And there is a mobile version of it as well. But even something as minor as that, people get confused. You know, you're not going to be able to have a one size fits all, but it's just keep it as simple as. Possible as as close as you can or have a good reason to break out of it. And, and I guess be conscious you're embracing some potential pain when you have different options. Yeah, absolutely. you know, for some organizations, the right solution might actually be a one of these third parties that will integrate with everyone. You know, you get an Airtame Hub or one of the Mago devices or or whomever where you can just rock up and send it a Zoom meeting, send a Teams meeting. the downside you're going to have there is they're never going to be, fully feature parity with, you know, with the native platforms. Yeah. But you get a bit more flexibility. So last time I tried to join a Zoom meeting on an MTR room using a native guest join, it was it was not very good. No, no, the the direct guest join story hasn't really panned out to be as good as it we hoped. And definitely I don't know if you saw, but, Yeah. Now with Teams Rooms Pro and Pexip you'll be able to do that the calendar scraping click to dial on SIP. So hopefully that'll be a better experience. But you're right. Like there's, there's times even in MTR rooms when you're going to need to do a, a Zoom meeting, or a WebEx meeting because the customer is on that platform. Yeah. And I think one of the things I'd love to see it's probably not going to happen, but, you know, lots of time the hardware for these things is identical. You know, you can buy a Zoom version of it or a Teams version of it. Why can't you just, like, swipe your finger and go into the Zoom? I mean, it would mean an organization would have to support both, which would be a massive undertaking, perhaps. But, you know, I'm an end user as well, and there's lots of things, you know, I would love to see. Yeah, that direct guest join was was not great. It's not put everyone off. I mean, I was amazed when Cisco announced that they were going to support native Teams from on Android. If you'd have asked me that three years ago, I would have said, you're absolutely crazy. Yeah, I agree, the world has changed quite a lot and the Teams are just so, so dominant that Cisco wanted to meet their customers where they were. In that case, I think credit credit to them for kind of meeting in the middle and Microsoft as well. yeah. It'd be a I'm with you. It was a big shock when I first heard that they were working on it. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, James, thanks for sharing that. Like there's so much takeaway from that journey and, yeah, congrats. Going independent. if anyone if anybody wants to find you and get some more of this knowledge and experience, it might be easy for their projects. Where's the best place to find you? well, link LinkedIn. I'm a prolific LinkedIn. you can always find me on LinkedIn or, or the website, which is, Aventure-AV.co.uk is an adventure without the D. but it is a word in French, so I'm not going completely rogue. So yeah. but, yeah, I'm I'm always on LinkedIn. I've got open federation on Teams as well. or the website has got, you know, contact form and telephone numbers and things like that. So awesome. Thanks, James. I'm going to come come back to you in, six months or a years time and see if you're, being on the outside of working on multiple projects. See if that changes any of your opinion. So I think everything you've shared today has been so, so useful in understanding the scale of that BT project. Just just amazing. thanks very much for having me. All right. Thanks a lot. Talk soon