Master 365: Getting Started with a Microsoft Teams Display (Premium)

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft has expanded the capabilities of Microsoft 365 generally, and Microsoft Teams specifically, to meet the suddenly shifting demands of working and learning from home. Not that Teams wasn’t already in the fast lane in terms of upgrades: Since its introduction three years ago, Teams has exploded from a functionality perspective, growing from a Slack-like chat-based collaboration tool into an extensible platform that some within Microsoft see as replacing even Windows. Either way, today’s Teams is almost unrecognizable as the more humble chat solution that debuted back in 2017.

Buried among the many, many improvements that Teams has received this year is an interesting but potentially confusing hardware peripheral dubbed the Microsoft Teams Display. As I wrote in early July, these smart displays are “a new family of all-in-one dedicated Teams devices that feature an ambient touchscreen and a hands-free experience powered by Cortana. ‘With natural language, users can ask Cortana to effortlessly join and present in meetings, dictate replies to a Teams chat, and more,’ Microsoft says. The Microsoft Teams displays will provide a camera shutter and microphone mute switch, and Lenovo will be first to market with its ThinkSmart View.”

Lenovo was nice enough to send me the first ThinkSmart View for review; indeed, they must have been feeling really nice, because they sent me two for review. Seeing one in person confirmed my belief that Lenovo’s Team Display, at least, is of course based on its early Google Assistant-based smart displays, at least from a form factor perspective. (And as you may recall, Lenovo’s Smart Display is one of my family’s very favorite smart home products.)

But the purpose of the Lenovo ThinkSmart View---like that of any Microsoft Teams Display---is quite different from that of consumer-focused smart displays. And that basic fact might be a stumbling block for many that are trying to figure out exactly what problem this new type of smart display solves. It certainly was for me.

But I’m starting to get it now. According to both Microsoft and Lenovo, these Teams Displays aren’t meant to be put in a common area and shared by more than one person, as are consumer-oriented smart displays. Instead, Teams Displays are managed peripherals that a single individual will use alongside a PC.

“The ThinkSmart View enables users to remain productive on their PCs while the smart office device handles video-conferencing,” Lenovo explained. “The ThinkSmart View is not intended to be a smart home device; it is designed for business use, is intended to be managed and updated by an enterprise's IT department, and it requires a commercial license from Microsoft.”

Setup is simple enough. After finding a Wi-Fi signal and entering the appropriate password---using an interface that looks like Android to these eyes---you simply sign-in to your work account. [As it t...