Microsoft Teams & Teams Rooms–A New Level of Collaboration

Even before the pandemic forced all work at UMass Boston to be done remotely in March 2020, Associate CIO Apurva Mehta wanted to find a way for people to collaborate that improved upon simply using email, in-person meetings, and file shares. Fast forward to remote operations brought on by COVID-19 and collaboration was largely limited to e-mail, and even that was mostly used to see when colleagues were available for virtual meetings. The tools available campus-wide were inefficient and limited productivity. Mehta knew that there had to be a better way.

So, late in 2019 Mehta approached Ray Lefebvre, Vice Chancellor and CIO of Information Technology Services, and suggested that the department adopt a relatively new platform offered by Microsoft called Microsoft Teams. Mehta noted that as a “collaboration and communication tool,” Microsoft Teams offered several advantages, the most significant of which being how it combined all the important features people rely on into one program. Teams includes calendaring, file sharing, chat, and video conferencing features— to name a few—all in one powerful package. Collaboration would seldom require anything else. It also didn’t hurt that Microsoft Teams was integrated into the Office 365 package the school already got from Microsoft, so there was no extra charge for it.

Lefebvre agreed with Mehta and approved rolling out Microsoft Teams at UMass Boston campus wide. Microsoft offered valuable assistance, including a grant that allowed a team to come out to UMass Boston to help with training and implementation. Things were moving along nicely until Spring 2020, when as Mehta said, “the project had to be put on the back burner due to COVID-19.” But the folks in IT were encouraged by what they saw and by September 2020 things again kicked into high gear. Lisa Moriarty was assigned as project manager and a goal was set to have Microsoft Teams completely up and running across campus by June 30, 2021.

The new deadline stepped up the pressure a bit, but the Teams’ team answered the call. A soft launch of sorts was held and allowed Lefebvre and others on the IT staff to get practice using Teams, and it was obvious to everyone how useful a tool it would be. The chat and file sharing features were great, but the video conferencing made it the complete package. Zoom was being used for that, but the feeling was it was more suited to be a virtual classroom tool. For administrative work and group projects Microsoft Teams quickly became the popular choice.

Teams went fully live by the summer of 2021, bringing us to the second part of this story. The next generation of Microsoft Teams is called Microsoft Teams Rooms, and since Teams was such a success the IT team decided to install Teams Rooms too. The concept behind Microsoft Teams Rooms is that it turns a suitable room on campus into a physical location to host in-person and virtual meetings simultaneously with the simple click of a button. Microsoft provided A-V equipment specifications to outfit two rooms, and UMass Boston selected the Bayside IT conference room and the McCormick 3rd-floor conference room to be pilot Microsoft Teams rooms. Work on the Teams Rooms was completed in time for the start of the Fall 2021 semester with plans to share lessons learned with other departments across campus as the pilot unfolds.

Bringing Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Teams Rooms to UMass Boston is just another example of how the Information Technology Department is pursuing opportunities to make the university more connected, efficient, and productive through a whole new level of collaboration.