Until now.

To address this challenge, the Microsoft Teams product group worked with Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, to create Microsoft Teams Rooms Express Install for compact meeting spaces. This “room-in-a-box” solution quickly transforms small spaces into versatile, modern collaboration hubs.

And now the product group is working with our commercial partners and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to extend this small meeting room solution to all customers.

Express Install is a modular meeting room solution that requires little to no physical modifications to a room, which makes it more affordable. Installation involves putting lightweight hardware into a room, turning it on, and connecting it to our Teams Room technology that comes baked in.

Optimizing for efficiency

The Express Install for Microsoft Teams Rooms story began in 2019. That’s when the product group and our team here in Microsoft Digital used The Hive, our 20,000 square-foot innovation lab, to engineer, architect, and design all the variations of our Teams Room product that are now available.

We’re now using this solution extensively across Microsoft, and it has made our small meeting room spaces much more useful to our employees.”

Roy Sherry, principal technical program manager, Microsoft Digital

After tackling high-end executive conference rooms, meeting halls used for all-hands and major company gatherings, and large “workhorse” rooms where typical team meetings are held, it was time to take on the plethora of small rooms at Microsoft. These are the rooms where individuals and small groups of people go to collaborate and do the work that powers the company.

However, the huge number of these types of rooms here at Microsoft (and at other enterprises) often made them too expensive to invest in upgrading.

“We knew we needed to find a way to solve this, to come up with an affordable, modular solution that was easy to install,” says Roy Sherry, a principal, technical program manager for AI-Enabled Meetings in Microsoft Digital. “We worked with the product team to build and test a solution that became Express Install. We’re now using this solution extensively across Microsoft, and it has made our small meeting room spaces much more useful to our employees.”

As Customer Zero for the company, the role for Sherry and the rest of our team is to not only be the first to deploy the technology and services that we sell to customers, but in some cases to help our product teams build them—including these Teams Rooms and our Express Install solution.

We initially installed Express Install 70 times as part of a pilot, and after seeing extremely positive results, we expanded to 700 more rooms across the company. Now our plan is to gradually install it in all of our suitable small rooms.

Bringing the solution to customers via OEMs

After we got Express Install working internally here at Microsoft, we shifted to extending it to our customers.

We wanted to give them the same features and benefits we were seeing here at Microsoft, including:

• OEM availability: Customers can now access Express Install through trusted hardware partners, expanding reach and accessibility.
• One-hour deployment: They can get their small rooms up and running quickly with a streamlined process.
• Enhanced, AI-enabled audio visual (AV) rooms: We’re bringing the full Microsoft Teams experience to Express Install, so even the most budget-conscious organizations can outfit small spaces with the latest meeting technology.

Our partnerships with OEMs have produced a range of Microsoft Teams Rooms products, packages, and systems.

“Our customers are excited about the cost savings. They highlight how many more rooms they can refresh with Express Install.”

Raven Vasquez, senior IT service manager, Microsoft Digital

These designs were created by different OEM partners for a variety of scenarios. So, if a customer has a specific preferred hardware partner, they can work with them to build an Express Install room.

Because the rooms are simpler and easier to build, even organizations with fixed budgets can set up more rooms. That sentiment is reflected in the feedback we get from customers.

“Our customers are excited about the cost savings,” says Raven Vasquez, a senior IT service manager in Microsoft Digital. “They highlight how many more rooms they can refresh with Express Install.”

The Microsoft Teams product group began to work with OEMs who specialized in mounting and furniture solutions. Together, they developed stands and housing kits for Teams Room Express Install, giving customers flexible modular options to create intelligent AV and hybrid meeting experiences.

“If a company moves, they can bring the room with them, because it’s so portable. Nothing sticks to the walls, nothing needs to be ripped apart. That’s how easy it is to deploy and maintain.”

Sarika Kesavan, senior program manager, Microsoft Teams

Customers who have started using Express Install are starting to see some of the same efficiency gains that we saw here at Microsoft, which were significant.

“We saw a 40% savings in our cost and time,” says Sarika Kesavan, a senior program manager in the Microsoft Teams product group whose role includes bringing solutions that the company builds at The Hive to customers.

The big wins were that it could be installed in an hour and it wasn’t necessary to pay general contractors to modify rooms or pull cables through walls.

“If a company moves, they can bring the room with them, because it’s so portable,” Kesavan says. “Nothing sticks to the walls, nothing needs to be ripped apart. That’s how easy it is to deploy and maintain.”

Traditional conference room setups and upgrades often require permits, construction, specialized wiring, and weeks (or more) of disruptions. As a result, we and many customers have been hesitant to deploy advanced meeting technology, especially for small spaces.

With Express Install, that complexity disappears.

Deploying Express Install

Each Express Install kit is pre-engineered for fast delivery and setup, with flexible configurations for different scenarios and OEM devices.

 For smaller rooms, the package typically includes:

• Teams-certified compute device and camera, combined into a single unit for compact spaces
• Modular display or monitor, sized to fit the room
• Integrated microphone and speaker-bar system
• Simplified tabletop or freestanding mounting solution (no wall-mounting required)
• Pre-installed, preconfigured Teams Rooms software

“Express Install reduces the complexity of a traditional room setup while providing the same experience as a typical Teams Room scenario, but at reduced cost,” Kesavan says.

Gaining insights with the monitoring portal

There’s nothing more disruptive than discovering the in-room technology isn’t working just minutes before a meeting. That’s why it’s vital to be able to check whether your Teams Room is online at any time.

“The monitoring optimizes productivity. If I can receive an alert and fix the issue before someone else tries to use the room, we’re all saving time.”

Divya Tiwari, senior product manager, Microsoft Digital

The Microsoft Teams Pro Management Portal allows you to monitor the compute device and all connected peripherals (such as the display and camera) in a meeting space, giving you full visibility into room status.

Instead of discovering issues only when someone tries to use the room, the portal proactively sends alerts—for example, if a display stops working—so problems can be resolved ahead of time.

“The monitoring optimizes productivity,” says Divya Tiwari, senior product manager within Microsoft Digital. “If I can see the alert and fix the issue before someone else tries to use the room, we’re all saving time.”

The portal also provides insights into room usage and component performance, highlighting underused spaces and helping organizations improve meeting room efficiency.

Accelerating the future of meeting spaces

We launched the initial pilot of Express Install after recognizing a clear gap in the market: organizations needed a smarter, faster way to equip small meeting spaces for collaboration. And we continue to innovate as we roll out this solution to all Microsoft customers.

“As technology evolves and our OEM partners introduce new innovations, our room designs will evolve right alongside them. This ensures that organizations always have access to the most modern, efficient, and intelligent meeting room solutions.”

Roy Sherry, principal, technical program manager AI enabled meetings, Microsoft Digital

The simplified Express Install design gives organizations the power to scale quickly. If our customers have meeting rooms that need to be up and running fast, Express Install offers a cost-effective path to a fully AI-enabled Teams Room. Their AV budget goes further without sacrificing the modern, Copilot-powered experience that elevates every meeting.

“When we began working with OEMs to bring channel partners and AV integrators on board, we started with small rooms,” Kesavan says. “The value and the cost savings are even greater in larger spaces, so our next phase is to develop solutions for medium- to large-room setups.”

This is just the beginning.

Express Install is opening the door to a new era of fast, scalable, AI-powered collaboration, and we’re excited for our customers to see what’s possible.

“As technology evolves and our OEM partners introduce new innovations, our room designs will evolve right alongside them,” Sherry says. “This ensures that organizations always have access to the most modern, efficient, and intelligent meeting room solutions.”

Key takeaways

Here are some tips for getting started with Express Install for Microsoft Teams Rooms:

• Teams Rooms are for everyone: Express Install makes it easy to deploy interactive, hybrid-friendly features at scale. 
• Explore Express Install options through trusted OEM partners: Review room-in-a-box kits from trusted OEMs to find modular setups that fit your needs.
• Standardize small‑room designs with pre‑engineered kits: Adopt Express Install kits as a repeatable blueprint to scale modern meeting experiences quickly across multiple locations.
• Identify underutilized rooms and optimize space planning: Leverage usage analytics from the Microsoft Teams Pro Management Portal to make data‑driven decisions about which rooms to refresh, repurpose, or scale up or down.
• Plan ahead for larger meeting rooms: As OEM partnerships grow, customers can start planning broader deployments that bring the sar.me simplicity and savings to larger spaces.

Try it out

For a closer look at the solution, visit the Microsoft Teams Rooms experience.  

Related links

• Take a virtual meeting room tour.
• Check out Microsoft Teams Rooms: Express Install video.
• Read more about Express Install on the Microsoft Teams blog.
• Watch Microsoft: The Hive 101 video.
• See how we developed the “room-in-a-box” approach of Express Install.
• Explore Microsoft Teams Rooms devices on the Microsoft Showcase site.
• Read about meeting room guidance for Teams on the Microsoft Learn site.

We’d like to hear from you!

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

The post A one-hour solution: Scaling Microsoft Teams Rooms in small spaces with Express Install appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Literally.

We were the first enterprise to fully deploy Copilot in 2024, and now, not two years later, our use of the company’s signature generative AI product is maturing.

That doesn’t mean we’re getting serious—it means we’re having fun!

“Gamification is proving to be one of the most powerful ways to drive the more refined, higher-level use of Copilot that we’re looking for,” says Stephan Kerametlian, a business program management senior director within Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization. “When it comes to getting our employees to find more sophisticated and creative ways to use Copilot, we’re finding that having fun is one our biggest differentiators.”

It all started when we took our employees camping—we didn’t really take them into the woods, but we did so in spirit. 

“We discovered that introducing a layer of fun transforms Microsoft 365 Copilot training from a routine task into an entertaining learning experience.”

Cadie Kneip, readiness business program manager, Microsoft Digital

We organized ‘Camp Copilot’ to bring our employees together in a fun way so we could show them how they could add Copilot to their daily workflows.

“We did things like have a superhero prompt where you got to show everyone your superpowers, you could create your own Camp Copilot pin, and we even had a scavenger hunt where you could win cool prizes,” says Cadie Kneip, a readiness business program manager with Microsoft Digital and the creative force behind many of our employee engagement-based Copilot adoption efforts.  

It was a lot of fun, and it worked—Copilot usage by attendees spiked afterwards.

“We discovered that introducing a layer of fun transforms Copilot training from a routine task into an entertaining learning experience,” Kneip says.

Under the guidance of Kneip—our CEO of fun—and others on our team, we created a companywide Copilot Expo, where we all came together to learn more about how to get more out of Copilot (where a reasonable amount of fun was had).

“Working efficiently and consistently with Copilot and AI requires ongoing learning, especially as capabilities are continuously evolving. Gamification offers an excellent way to keep colleagues engaged—helping them learn effortlessly while having fun.”

Kirsten Bliefernicht, senior business program manager, Microsoft Digital

This three-week immersive program offered 80 role-based learning sessions to fast-track Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption. We made gamification a major theme, which made mastering Copilot feel less like work and more like play.

This time, the uptick in adoption and user satisfaction that followed was companywide.

“Working efficiently and consistently with Copilot and AI requires ongoing learning, especially as capabilities are continuously evolving,” says Kirsten Bliefernicht, a senior business program manager in Microsoft Digital. “Gamification offers an excellent way to keep colleagues engaged—helping them learn effortlessly while having fun.”

Gamification for locked-in learning

Copilot Expo attendee Ramita Singh experienced the transformative effect of gamification. A senior program manager within the Microsoft Datacenter Supply Strategy and Planning team, she’s also a Copilot Champion and a regular Copilot user.

“The sessions and fun activities, like building my own avatar, inspired me. Since then, I ramped up my Copilot use and my productivity has skyrocketed.”

Ramita Singh, senior program manager, Datacenter Supply Strategy and Planning

Copilot Champions are early adopters and AI enthusiasts who help Microsoft peers learn and use AI tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot. For her part, Singh joined the Copilot Champs program to gain efficiency and become more productive.

Even as a regular Copilot user, Singh described her use as limited—until Copilot Expo.

“The sessions and fun activities, like building my own avatar, inspired me,” she says. “Since then, I ramped up my Copilot use and my productivity has skyrocketed.”

Levelling up fun supports engagement

Although the term ”gamification” is relatively new, the practice of including game-design elements in training to increase engagement and motivation and reward behavior has been around for centuries.

Research has shown that incorporating fun into training leads to significant gains in engagement and productivity.

“Seeing Copilot create an image or solve a task is exciting. That can motivate someone to learn more about AI.”

Kaz Takayama, business program manager, Microsoft Digital

Using gamification at Copilot Expo redefined the way people learn. We designed games and reward-based challenges. We awarded points and badges to build interest and increase Copilot use at Microsoft. We created a leaderboard to show the standings and add a competitive edge to the learning.

Participants were represented on the leaderboard by the avatars they created during one of the games. This anonymity meant that competitors only recognized their own avatars and position on the leaderboard.

“People are getting tired of mandatory trainings,” says Kaz Takayama, a business program manager within Microsoft Digital in Japan. “Seeing Copilot create an image or solve a task is exciting. That can motivate someone to learn more about AI.”

Copilot Expo featured diverse content designed to appeal to a variety of people, roles, and workflows. Learning sessions were capped at 30 minutes. Sessions were scheduled at accessible times and targeted to specific roles.

“The result is interactive—you see visuals, you hear music, and the creativity surprises you.”

Ju Bu, business program manager, Microsoft Digital

That personalization allowed engineers, communicators, and salespeople, for example, to learn role-specific uses for Copilot, making the learning even more effective.

During Copilot Expo, games were scheduled prior to training sessions to build engagement. Additional gamified activities followed training to reinforce key concepts and encourage the application of Copilot. Attendees earned points for every Copilot-related task they completed.

“We picked these activities because they only require prompts, and people can practice prompts every day,” says Ju Bu, business program manager for Microsoft Digital in Greater China. “The result is interactive—you see visuals, you hear music, and the creativity surprises you.”

From prompts to play: Gamified activities at Copilot Expo

Activity 1: Practice crafting prompts in Copilot to generate polished images and avatars.

Use the following tips:

• Use clear, descriptive language in prompts.
• Specify style, mood, or format (for example, “cartoon avatar” or “introspective and cinematic” versus something vague, like “make something moody”).
• Experiment with variations to compare and refine results.
• Keep prompts concise but detailed enough.

Activity 2: Use a third-party service built on Azure technology to create songs in any chosen musical genre.

Follow these tips:

• Select a genre that matches the mood you want.
• Provide clear input (lyrics, themes, or tone).
• Adjust tempo and instrumentation for variety.
• Share outputs for group feedback and fun.

Activity 3:  Use Copilot to build quick quizzes that reinforce new information.

One popular format is “Two truths and a lie.” Here are the guidelines:

• Keep statements short and focused on Copilot features.
• Mix one false statement with two accurate ones.
• Use real examples to strengthen recall.
• Encourage discussion after revealing the correct answers.

How it worked: Organizers asked Copilot to create a “Two truths and a lie” quiz by setting parameters (topic = Copilot functionality, number of statements = 3, difficulty = easy). Copilot produced the statements, and participants guessed which were true and which was false. For example:

• Copilot can generate meeting minutes → True
• Copilot can change the meeting organizer → False. Copilot cannot alter calendar details like who the organizer is.
• Copilot can provide real-time transcription → True

The power of friendly competition

According to Tomás Rogeiro Brochado de Miranda, a cloud solution architect at Microsoft based out of Portugal, adding an element of competition is a key ingredient for learning.

“Everyone likes a challenge,” he says. “You might hear someone say they don’t like games, but you’ll never hear someone say, I love to lose.”

Singh agrees.

“For a lot of people, learning feels forced when it’s required,” she says. “But when you add a bit of fun, like a competition, it generates more interest in learning new concepts.”

As organizations race to keep pace with AI, Kerametlian reminds us that learning paths and transformation aren’t one-size-fits-all.

“People learn and grow in different ways,” he says. “Gamification is one of the few powerful tools that other organizations should consider leveraging to maximize productivity and the value they get from Copilot.”

Research shows that gamification not only reinforces habit-building but also boosts positive sentiment about a product—two critical factors for driving Copilot adoption.

We would like our people to use and reuse Copilot, and gamification is helping us make that happen.

We’re also creating a fresh experience for those who’ve stepped away from Copilot. As Kneip puts it, “If someone has a bad AI experience, they won’t return—unless they see a peer succeed.”

When respected colleagues share their wins, it sparks curiosity and people give Copilot another shot.

“After they use AI in ways that matter to them, they often become champions,” Kneip says. “We see that type of turnaround every day.”

Lasting impacts

Months after Copilot Expo wrapped, the momentum hasn’t faded. Many participants are still completing Copilot-related tasks and logging points on the leaderboard—proof that competition continues to fuel engagement.

Copilot adoption at Microsoft has surged, and positive sentiment has increased.

“That’s the opportunity our customers have with AI adoption,” Kneip says. “If you give your organization something that’s relevant, peer driven, and real, they’re going to have a much better experience.”

Post-event, Microsoft engineers have turned the Copilot Expo leaderboard into a template that can be adapted and used by internal teams for their own gamified activities.

“First you need to give people access to Copilot, and then it’s about robust change management complemented by gamification, which significantly accelerates adoption and value.”

Stephan Kerametlian, business program management senior director, Microsoft Digital

Gamification activities continue building excitement around Copilot and AI and what’s possible.

The last two years at Microsoft Digital have been about increasing Microsoft 365 Copilotuser engagement, adoption, productivity, and value.

“When it comes to enabling AI transformation, engaging your employees is everything,” Kerametlian says. “First you need to give people access to Copilot, and then it’s about robust change management complemented by gamification, which significantly accelerates adoption and value. The result? Usage grows, enthusiasm soars, and productivity follows.”

Key takeaways

Here are some tips for using gamification to energize AI adoption at your organization:

• Drive lasting engagement: Gamified activities ignite fun, excitement, and learning that continues well beyond an event.
• Offer experiences: Creative training methods like friendly competition and interactive workshops significantly enhance employee engagement. Engaged employees are more likely to embrace AI tools.
• Foster innovation: Encouraging creative thinking empowers employees to explore AI applications, enhancing their problem-solving capabilities and increasing their productivity.
• Build trust and skills: Peer-led training leverages existing knowledge within teams, making it easier for employees to learn from each other about AI tools.
• Encourage experimentation: A risk-free environment allows employees to experiment with AI tools without fear of failure, which is vital for discovering practical applications.

Try it out

• Start using Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Get step-by-step instructions for creating an engaging Microsoft 365 Copilot training series with our Copilot Virtual Skilling Event Framework.

Related links

• Review our Top 10 things to try first with Microsoft 365 Copilot guide.
• Learn how to get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot with our adoption playbook.
• Check out our Monday morning with Copilot experience.

We’d like to hear from you!

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

The post Powering our Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption with gamification appeared first on Inside Track Blog.