Barco announced it has formally entered into an agreement with Microsoft around Teams devices. As a first outcome of the agreement, Barco will enable ClickShare devices to provide data that will be available through Microsoft?s Teams Rooms Pro Management portal, and through tPro Portal to offer IT managers rich insights into room and device utilization. The Barco ClickShare solution enables users to host calls from their own laptop with their preferred video conferencing platform, using the audio and video equipment in the meeting room.

ClickShare has been leading the market with its wireless BYOM approach, as market research company Futuresource Consulting has previously estimated that ClickShare's portfolio makes up over 50% of the global wireless conferencing market. With more than 240,000 ClickShare Conference devices in the field, ClickShare will be a significant data source for Microsoft Teams Rooms management capabilities and will feed into future initiatives. This first step provides valuable insights for IT decision makers without changing the user experience.

When initiating a Teams call, the user's Teams desktop client identifies the connected microphone, speaker, and camera via the ClickShare Base Unit and Button, passing the data into the Teams Pro Portal. Once multiple users have connected to the same ClickShare Base Unit, the information is populated for IT managers as a potential shared space within the Pro Management portal, enabling registration and management of the meeting space.