Smart displays for Microsoft Teams provide better experience to help employees work more efficiently practically from anywhere. This device can efficiently be used for fast, secure and easy hot desking. Employees may get the most out of their workday by using these personal display panels. For example, on a day when we have many back-to-back Teams Meetings, we can dedicate this device solely to Teams Meetings, while simultaneously using our laptops just for our work.

This will help in reducing the computing memory CPU utilization in our laptops if we are using our laptops for any other heavy backend application or tasks that is been used for our daily operations. Having said that there are multiple Microsoft recommended products listed here in this blog we are going to have a look only at the Lenovo Think Smart View.

While unboxing the product the first look of the product looks like below.

It is powered by a 1x Qualcomm Snapdragon 624 Processor, Memory 2G LPDDR3 and 8GB hard drive.
It has only wireless network, with Bluetooth enabled , One 5MP camera and 8.0″ IPS LCD screen and the device is powered by an AC adapter.

Above configuration will be more than sufficient to run Teams APP on this device. The device is powered with the Android version 8.1In addition it has 1.75″ 10W full-range loudspeaker with two passive tweeters. It also has an inbuilt MIC at the top and not sure about the range , however it must be definitely sufficient for using them as a personal device.

Further more at the top it has the volume control & mute buttons. On the right side there is toggle switch to close and open the camera lens.

When the device is powered on with the AC Adaptor we are presented to choose the preferred language.

Later we are asked to choose the required WLAN Network and connect any Bluetooth device.

Going further with the deployment since its a personal device setting this up is pretty much easy. After setting up the network we are presented with the Microsoft Teams Login as below.

The device can be handed over to the end user. It uses the Microsoft Authentication Broker Service to login to these devices. Use the code and the associated user account from the users laptop.

After successful login we can see the device registration successful information which shows in the company portal.

There is also option to enable the voice assistance of this device with Cortona which might be helpful to call colleagues with this voice assistance feature.

This is the best part where we have option to pair this device through Bluetooth to our laptop where we have the same Teams Account logged in.

On a successful pairing with the laptop on the laptop paired devices we can see Lenovo display panel showing up as Audio device.

In the last setup screen we get the option to setup a pin which helps us to protect this device by locking them when we are away from our desk.

These are the options that is available finally to the end user in the final state after provisioning this device.

The Calendar view looks very nice where we can easily have a look at our agenda view for the day and there is also a quick option to schedule a meeting quickly.

And the scheduled meeting we have an option to join them from the device.

When joining the meeting we also have option to choose the background and blur the background.

From the contacts we have the option to directly search and call people from the directory.

In the more section it has files to access the Teams files stored in the One Drive, access Teams ,Notes and organization.

There is also an option to Leave a note on lock screen Guests can choose to leave audio, video, and text notes, and users can check the notes left by guests and see who’s stopped by

There is also hotdesking option which helps Teams display allows employees to quickly locate and reserve temporary workspaces to touch down and make calls, set up ad-hoc meetings, or sign in to access their personalized Teams experience.

From the administration perspective they can be easily managed from the Teams Admin Center. Could download the device logs, update the software, restart , remove and reprovision them.

They can be used for Common Area Phones or hotdesking where we have an option to bulk provision them completely from the Teams Admin center  Common Area Phone (CAP) license is required for this CAP provisioning these devices. We need to know the MAC address of these devices and uplad them in a CSV file for bulk provisioning multiple devices.

The device comes with Teams Admin Agent , Firmware, Company portal App for Broker authentication, OEM agent and Teams App.

Similar to other android devices we do also have an option to create and assign configuration profiles to these devices. There is option to set default admin password from the TAC which is of great benefit.

Teams displays integrates with users’ Windows PCs to bring a companion experience that allows for seamless cross-device interaction.Since the ThinkSmart View is managed from the Microsoft Teams admin center it makes it easier and unified admin experience to manage and monitor these devices from one admin portal. Microsoft Teams displays are primarily intended for use in the workplace as hot desking or common area phones.

Lenovo ThinkSmart View seems to be the only device that supports both modes Phone and Display modes. Its fine can be a good replacement for Common Area Phones which can be used as Hot Desking panels as well. This Lenovo thinksmart display version does not require POE or an ethernet cable which can fully function on Wifi. Microsoft Teams displays, despite being created for business, let you manage your time efficiently while working from home to optimize your quality time at home.