Tom Arbuthnot: Welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. This week we are talking to Damian at BSI about their new office in London, actually, where we're going to host the next London User Group as well. And he talks about the technology decisions they made, which Microsoft Teams Rooms. Why those decisions were made. Really great insights. Many thanks to Damian for jumping on the podcast. He's a regular in the community and also many thanks to Jabra for all their support of the community. Really appreciate their support of the podcast on with the show. Hi, everybody welcome back to the podcast. Really excited to have yet another customer story on the pod. And this is a particularly interesting one. A very impressive brand new building that actually we're gonna have our next London User Group in as well. So for those of you in the UK who come to User Group, you get to see some of this in person. Damian, do you just wanna introduce yourself?

Damian Lewis: Yeah, sure. Cheers, Tom. Thanks for having me back and thankfully this time my background's slightly more acceptable than it was the last time when I was having a house rebuild. So my name's Damian. I work for the British Standards Institution, or BSI, if you want to call it simpler way. And I'm pretty much the lead for everything. Teams, Teams phone, if it's got Teams in it, Teams Room, Teams phone. Teams. So yeah. And pretty much been the

Tom Arbuthnot: Teams user adoption videos I learned about

Damian Lewis: Teams user. Yeah, I'm so glad those Teams user adoption videos, I've put them together in the last couple of days. We've just launched our fifth year of our champ, our digital champions program. And on the fifth year launch, one of the what you call them. The lead that was running the five year launch, said, has anyone got any training videos that they put together and like to share? And I said, yeah, there you go. And it was just like, as if I just made these videos. And so, yeah. No, it was good.

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. You and I could talk for ages on all manner of things, but I wanna zero in on this new building and the kind of the experience you had. It's really interesting how with new buildings, it feels like IT slash AV slash whoever owns that interaction, collaborative experience is getting engaged earlier in the planning and design. There's still some friction there between kind of, I feel like architects and HR and whoever else is involved in the building. But maybe you can take us back even before, kind of what was the plan, when did you get involved and where did you end up?

Damian Lewis: Yeah, I mean, we're talking, we're going back probably a good 18 months back into the end of 2024 when I started, really started to get involved. But before that, there was working groups going on to look at where the new office is and when it started to become involved, it was very much like, oh, right. Why, what are these guys doing here? Type of thing. And it took a good while to get the confidence or like the ear of the right people within that senior stakeholder group of the office move. Because they were very precious about it. They'd been working on it for way longer than I had been. And they had chosen the building. They'd done all the furnishings and all of that. And then I'm coming in and going, Hey, what about this and what about this? And we could do this. And they're like, wow. Hang on, hang on. Just ease up. But we were going from a very, I wanna say, I don't wanna use the wrong word, but antiquated. It was very multiple wires to plug into projectors. We had very few Teams Rooms that anyone really got. And if we had a Teams Room, it was more an exec Room or more of a, not many people got their hands on Teams Rooms. So when we came to The Acre, and every single Room has got an element of Teams, whether that's BYOD or full Teams Rooms. The fact that people were walking into that new space gave us the ability to really push the boundaries because they had no preconception of what it would be to come into a new space. They don't know what they don't know.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. You could start again with what was the

Damian Lewis: ideal scenario and really co things. What, yeah. Why, forget what was going on at the old office people. Here's the new world and one of the real big challenges and one of the big call outs from the requirements was no cables, but we don't want. Like if it's a really, I mean you've been there. Tom's come and seen it once before, but people who come in on the 15th of May, it's a clean office. It's a very clean, super

Tom Arbuthnot: clean,

Damian Lewis: yeah.

Tom Arbuthnot: Really, really feels stylized and like smart and neat

Damian Lewis: and

Tom Arbuthnot: yeah.

Damian Lewis: Look at the size of some of the Rooms we've got and the dynamics of the Rooms we've got. We've got Rooms that can take 20, 30 people and you don't really want a cable being strewn across. I mean, in my old, in the old office, I was forever the people like, oh, this HDMI cable's broken. Yeah. Because people just grab hold of it and pull it, or they pull it out. They want to take over the share so they reach over and pull it out of someone's laptop. And that's gone. When we haven't had, today, we haven't had to replace a cable because there are no cables that users can get their hands on.

Tom Arbuthnot: But give people a feel for, because it's quite a big building. How many Rooms and what different types of Rooms did you have? You know, you've got divisible, you've got kind of huddle type experiences.

Damian Lewis: Yeah, so we've got, so we start with the smaller Rooms. We've got a terminology called hot offices, which are basically dual screens at a desk with a desk setting, and then a small round table in front of a TV. That round table has a cord USBC cord. It's the only cable you'll probably get hold of. You plug that cable in and that becomes your BYOD meeting. Within that works really well. We've registered all of the BYOD, the Jabra PanaCast Bars into the Pro Portal. So the laptop automatically goes, ah, you are connecting to this. So I'm just gonna jump into that shared screen mode. So PanaCast 50 Bars, USBC, BYOD. Just jump straight in. No one really needs to do anything because as soon as you plug it in, your laptop automatically detects it and goes, right, I know what I'm doing. I'm putting it into this mode. Those work really well. Then we've got one Room that was sort of my Room. It was really weird. I kept on, I guess it was just being a real pain. And getting to the point where the senior stakeholders said, just have one Room. If it's wrong, it's your Room. Yeah. It was like, no pressure here, folks.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah.

Damian Lewis: So we've got a Neat Board Pro on the wall, on an adaptive mount on the wall so it can slide up and down. It's a very casual kind of Room. We've got just sofas and chairs and little tub stools that you can sit on.

Tom Arbuthnot: So it's the Neat board on those, kind of like on the gray backing,

Damian Lewis: it's not on the adaptive standard, it's on the adaptive wall mount. So it slides up and down on the wall.

Tom Arbuthnot: Oh, nice.

Damian Lewis: Interesting. And that works, that's really popular. More popular than anyone anticipated really. And then we've got some just medium sized Rooms. Just PanaCast again, running on Windows MTR. They're kind of standardized Rooms, and then we go up into, I guess, medium large Rooms you can call them, that they're Rooms that are just out of reach of what the PanaCast or any of those types of devices can do. Due to the ceiling heights we've got, we've got unfinished ceilings. It's all very much industrial type ceilings. So we've had to put like Huddly cameras in there with uplifted Q-SYS audio. So we have to just give it a bit more than what you would necessarily have straight out of the box if you're just gonna do an express or whatever. Just standard. It's a hybrid type Room. And then we've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 full Q-SYS, ACPR Rooms with three of those Rooms that are divisible into multiple different settings. And there's a lot of cameras in that space for all of those possible settings, like standard meeting settings, small town halls, medium town halls, large town halls. And then we've also taken on, it's now called Vision Suite, but we've taken the old name for it, See Vision. With Q-SYS, which allows, once you stand in a zone, so you stand in a specific zone and it picks up your body schematics or whatever you call it. And if you walk out of one zone where you're standing, the camera will zoom in and pan on you and walk fully. You will walk across. So we've got some senior execs who like to roam. They don't like to stand at a lectern and stay there. They want to roam off.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah.

Damian Lewis: And that gives them the confidence they can roam knowing that the camera's on them and it's gonna follow them. But also from an end user perspective, the end user doesn't have to look at a really wide shot of the Room to allow them to roam. They can be quite niche and quite cut in on the shot. And know that they're still gonna get that same shot all the time. That's awesome. Yeah.

Tom Arbuthnot: You've

Damian Lewis: got a full range of everything.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. You've really got everything going on. You've kind of got BYOD, albeit registered to Teams. You've then got like the boards with the up down motion for kind of like an easy Room into kind of a semi complicated Room with the Huddly and the Q-SYS audio into the full Big Boy Q-SYS, multi-camera divisible tracking everything. Like, it's probably a longer conversation, but like how did you come to assess Jabra for this scenario? Neat for that scenario. For that scenario, because I know you did quite a lot of research.

Damian Lewis: We did a lot of different options. A lot of research. So early days we, because we knew we were leaving, we were exiting the old building. It was right, get stuff in now, get stuff. Get proof of concepts in. We were just throwing it in. And as soon as we put one of the PanaCast into one of the Rooms for probably four or five weeks, and we took it away and people were complaining. Because

Tom Arbuthnot: that's like the best signal you

Damian Lewis: can get from

Tom Arbuthnot: the

Damian Lewis: business, isn't it? It was the best thing. There was an email I remember getting from our facilities lead and said that bar that we had proof of concept that's now gone back. Can we get one? Because we had no there, there was no easy out of the box. It was very much old school. You had a screen and you could replicate your screen up and if you wanted a meeting, everyone sat round. There was no audio, there was no, so as soon as that came in, people were like, this is brilliant. So we just used that ability and space that we had in the old office to just proof of concept bits and pieces. We got a Neat Board Pro delivered for an event, which was like a showcase event for moving to The Acre. People could see that. We started to get the, you can see it behind me, the Logi Panels. So we had that panel operating there so people could operate the panel with the board and they could see how it would all link up. So it was just a matter of choosing the right tool for the right space. And there was a journey that we went on with being able to really hone in on what we needed.

Tom Arbuthnot: That's really cool. And the multi-camera divisible, that's harder to test. Right. So like, how did that come about?

Damian Lewis: That was very much fraught at the end of it because as all builds do they come up against snags and delays. So we had scheduled in a good two weeks of completely clear. No noise, no dust, no. Maybe just completely clear. Those two weeks just got sucked up near the end of the project, to which I had about two days of just clear space. Just it wasn't enough. Two weeks was what we were aiming for, and I got two days at best, so it was accepted that it wasn't gonna be perfect on day one. And we've, as we've gone on and we've grown into it, we've been in the site now six months, it's grown and it's matured. And like I was saying on the top of the call, my video blogs I've put together have helped people understand how to use a Crestron Air Media Park. So yeah, it's grown into. We always knew we were going. We weren't gonna walk in on day one. It was gonna be perfect.

Tom Arbuthnot: Mm-hmm.

Damian Lewis: We had to evolve into where we needed to be.

Tom Arbuthnot: So what are you doing for Room booking?

Damian Lewis: So Room booking we were using the Matrix booking system in the old office, and we've got Matrix across multiple offices at the moment. So where we're working with that is we're using the Matrix system for desk bookings, Room bookings, any bookings within the office space goes through Matrix that will then API across into O365. Every panel, every Room has its own device associated to it. So if it's a Room, the Room's got a pro account, so that's fine. But then if it's a hot office or we've got parenting spaces, multi-faith spaces where people can book out. Those have all got panels there. Those panels have all got a shared device license against those panels just because we need that. So you essentially then get the, you book it into Matrix, it then appears on the panel and it all works seamlessly together. You can still walk up and book it through. The only niggle I've got with that, and it's not a Logi thing, it's not a Matrix thing. It's a when you do a walkup, there's no means of. I'm walking up and it's booked as Damian Lewis. It's just reserved, as reserved at the panel or reserved.

Tom Arbuthnot: Obviously I guess it wouldn't know who you were, whereas

Damian Lewis: No, no.

Tom Arbuthnot: In the Teams mode, we have that kind of push through to the Teams app. So it has a context of who you are. Yeah.

Damian Lewis: So if you scan the QR code, it would then go, oh, you are booking this as, yes, I know that. But if you just walk up and press the reserve button,

Tom Arbuthnot: oh

Damian Lewis: yeah, that's fair. It will reserve it itself. So roadmap wise, anyone's listening from the roadmap, just go reserve. And then who are you reserving this as? I'm reserving it. Yeah, it could just prompt you for a name, couldn't it? Just prompt you with the GAL. Just gimme the GAL. Oh, that's me. I'm booking it. It's only gonna take the user another 20, 30 seconds. But then you know, you get that consistency of who's booked that space because it then flows back into the mailbox, flows back into Matrix, then the whole end to end works. Because if you work it the other way, if you book it in Matrix, it knows who I am. So that would just be a really useful add-on if that could happen, please, for managers within Microsoft.

Tom Arbuthnot: Few people listening. So maybe we'll yeah, maybe someone will hear it. Nice. And do you go into any of the, you mentioned you've registered the BYOD in Pro Portal. Do you use the utilization stats to understand who's using what and have you learned anything between the different types of Rooms?

Damian Lewis: No, I haven't looked to be fair. It's something I, now you've mentioned that you've probably shown me up here because I should really be looking now. It's kind

Tom Arbuthnot: of a new capability, isn't it? Obviously you've got the calendars that you can see the Rooms being booked through.

Damian Lewis: Oh, you can see the Room utilization. Yeah. But I don't think it's something I've ever really gone back and forth. So next time I'm in the Pro Portal, I'll be, yeah. Next,

Tom Arbuthnot: next podcast. We'll

Damian Lewis: break down. Next podcast. Yeah. The only thing we do, we have got like they're called pods. They're frame pods and they're really popular. They're more popular than we thought it would be. Just one person in a, like the phone box type style pods. Yeah. And they're always being used, really popular. So that's something that plays back the telemetry to a central portal and you can see the utilization on those. Nice. And some people are using them up until like six, seven in the evening. So yes, it's good now you can see the bigger picture and start to see what's popular and what works really well.

Tom Arbuthnot: Nice. And kind of going back to that journey story, now we've got context of the space and everything you've done. Like what would you say are some good lessons or thoughts for people listening into the pod that are on that new build journey? Maybe at different stages.

Damian Lewis: I would, if we used a group of people that were known as the influencers. They were kind of the new, the building champions. If there were people that were brought in to really engage colleagues to bring them on the journey as well. So they were there on the first day we opened. It was the influencers in the working group, which came in and they then became the train the trainer. So they got training on day one, and then that training then carried on. So it was, it just liberated down through all of the colleagues and they could just say, right, okay, this is how you use this. So we had a building induction, so it was an online building induction, which gave people a guide of how to use the equipment. And then over the first six months I was running every two weeks I would have a, I stole the ask me anything phrase from Graham and yourself that was, I'd literally have an AV ask me anything where people could just come along and ask the silliest, craziest question ever. And they'd go, oh, alright, I know that. And they would just, it just built up. So it was just the engagement with everyone as they come in and they start to learn that new space was key. And then we learned that from, so we learned it for the Covent Garden and The Acre London HQ. We then deployed the same process for our North America office. When live started the year, so end of December, start of January, saying it worked, worked well in one place, worked

Tom Arbuthnot: mm-hmm.

Damian Lewis: equally well in the next, so yeah, it's a lot of effort. But once you've gone through that initial high demand of getting everyone through the door, everyone trained, everyone comfortable.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Because you were giving a lot of new capabilities as well. To your point, weren't you, like Dave can do everything a Teams Room could do now? Yes. Which they didn't have those capabilities.

Damian Lewis: So yeah, it's just taken a little bit of reeducation. It was a jump from very non Teams centric

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah.

Damian Lewis: environment to a fully functional environment. And people are, it took people, some people got it straight away. Some people just took a little longer to accept it.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. There's a lot of muscle memory there. I think that's interesting. People that, some people might come into that office fairly regularly, probably some less often. So you did the induction in January, you're back in late Feb, and you need to do a meeting and you've got five minutes to go. I know how to plug in. I can't quite remember like that, that getting over that hump I think is interesting.

Damian Lewis: And I guess you learn as well. So we've got an office in Milton Keynes and they've just inherited a Surface Hub that was used at an office that we've just closed down. But they've got equally, they've got not a very Teams centric meeting space. So I've now gotta think, right, okay. This Surface Hub is going into a Room that people have been using for a long time. How do I best get that in there with the least amount of disruption, but the most amount of impact so that people embrace it and go, right, I've got it. Because currently they've got a screen on the wall and an HDMI cable, which comes up to the desk and they just plug in and they just share up to the screen. I'm now thinking, okay, I can't just go and put that in there and expect it's going to work. We need to go through the same user experience, buy in adoption as we did, in a smaller scale than what we did on a larger scale, for the other offices.

Tom Arbuthnot: Which is interesting, isn't it? Because when you get a brand new office, you're kinda like part of the associated budget and implementation is like, we're gonna need to do that. But actually when you are swapping out gear in an existing office, like it's harder to make that time and like you said, I assume everybody who came to that building got some kind of whizzbang induction because it's super impressive. It's the new HQ. But if you're just swapping out three Rooms in an existing building, you wouldn't do the same thing necessarily. No.

Damian Lewis: Yeah. If you've got, scale it correctly, but equally, if it's not done right, it just, people will end up hating it. And it's not the device's fault. It's just the way that it's been handled and put in.

Tom Arbuthnot: And what does your operational model look like? Because you've got quite a lot going on there. Is that all in house? Do you have a partner who does some of the ops and what's that like?

Damian Lewis: No, so it's all in-house. So we cover, meeting Room wise, we're covering from Sydney all through the APACs, all through EMEA and into North America. Not as far as the, well, I guess as far as San Jose, because I've got some just audio only Teams devices out in San Jose. So I've got a fairly wide and vast footprint of devices. And then, I've got local, so I've got APAC and EMEA and got AMAS local. It Teams, they then effectively pick up the front of the first call, and if they can't then resolve it, it's then escalated up. So yeah, it's, and Pro Portal does the majority of it for us anyway. And that's what I was gonna ask is what's the mix of OEM tooling versus Pro Portal? Yeah, so the Pro Portal does the majority of it. It's every now and again, Pro Portal doesn't cover it all. And some of the OEM reporting picks up on it when Pro Portal was saying it's fine, and the OEM's going, no, it's not. And you go in there and we had one in Milton Keynes the other day, and it's like, Pro Portal says it's right, but the OEM alerting says it's completely offline and a technician goes into the Room and says, yeah, it's completely offline. But Pro was saying it's fine. So there's a balance between just relying solely on Pro and then getting the more detailed analytics you'll get from an OEM.

Tom Arbuthnot: That's good to know. Awesome. Well, Damian, thanks for taking us through that journey story. I feel like we need to have a different conversation on divisible at some point. Because that feels like a hot topic. So maybe we'll do something special on divisible and multi-camera at some point.

Damian Lewis: Yep, yep. We can always come into The Acre and do it there. That'd

Tom Arbuthnot: be great. Awesome.

Damian Lewis: Thank you Tom.

Tom Arbuthnot: Thanks for the time and looking forward to having you speak at the User Group. Really good.