Yesterday I had a video call with a construction executive. When interacting with construction people it is a safe bet to use Microsoft Teams as they standardize on the Microsoft platform and teams is part of their IT environment.

Here are a few problems that we had and the choices we decided to make to resolve the issues.

First problem is I had sent the meeting link and he was driving in the car so wanted to join with an audio bridge. He could not find the audio bridge, and that is when I realized I had not added the audio bridge service to the Microsoft Teams environment. This gives you the toll free number and meeting id, etc. to join. Digging through the documentation and how to add the audio conferencing service. But, chatting with one of our other team members who is also a system administrator, we decide not to add the audio bridge.

Eventually the executive got to his home office and was able to join the Microsoft Teams meeting. All was good. And in discussions he wanted to share pictures of construction work that he had on his phone. He has an iPhone and Windows PC so he has does not the ease of sharing pictures on his phone to a Teams call. so he was holding up his phone to the PC camera. The next day realized what is much better is to have his iPhone join the Microsoft Teams call and he can share directly from his phone and use the camera on the phone to show other things. And this is how he can use the audio only feature when he is in the car.

Microsoft Research had developed the phone device joining a Teams call feature 3 years ago and here is their Youtube Video

When I was chatting about this feature to a Microsoft employee they said oh most of us cannot use that feature because only managed devices can join the internal Microsoft Teams environment. No personal devices can join, iPads, iPhones, Androids.

Luckily my construction friend should not have this problem. So If he has Microsoft Teams on his iPhone he can click on the link and join audio only or add screen sharing and camera sharing. This makes so much more sense to young people who would be puzzled why would you try to dial in a number to get in a meeting. Just get the app on your phone and click on the link.

Gen Z looks at phone calls and email as old school. And an audio bridge seems a strange way to join a call.