What's New

In today's world, meetings are considered indispensable. They play a pivotal role in fostering collaboration, sparking brainstorming sessions, and guiding decision-making processes that shape project and strategy directions. Yet, it's evident that not all meetings are effective. While intended to be drivers of efficiency and innovation, many unfortunately veer off course, resulting in inefficiency and a lack of productivity. Often, the root causes of these shortcomings are elusive, leaving us with limited data to diagnose and understand the underlying issues.

In response to this challenge, we're thrilled to announce a new integration with Microsoft Office 365 Calendars as part of our latest Premium offering on Poly Lens. This new integration streamlines the activation of Meeting Behavior Insights within Poly Lens. The best part? These meeting behavior insights are supported on all major meeting platforms.

Uncover Insights that can Drive Results​

Let's explore a pair of examples showcasing the insights offered by this integration.

Meetings that Started Late

Late-starting meetings often result in wasted time and can disrupt the flow of the workday. This could signal a room technology issue, a training opportunity, or an underlying organizational behavior like back-to-back meeting schedules. By analyzing the reasons behind delayed starts, you can implement solutions that can help correct the issue.

Rooms Scheduled, but Empty

When meeting rooms are booked, but go unused, it reflects a misallocation of resources. Tracking this behavior can help you understand why meetings are being scheduled but not held. It could indicate a need for better calendar management, better scheduling practices, or maybe there is something wrong with the room. Addressing this issue ensures that valuable space and resources are utilized effectively.

Full list of Supported Meeting Behavior Insights

• Meetings that ran long: Meetings that ended after the scheduled time
• Meetings that started late: Meetings that started after the scheduled time
• Meetings that were unscheduled: Meetings that occurred in the room without being scheduled
• Rooms scheduled, but empty: Scheduled meetings that were unattended
• Rooms scheduled in a series, but empty: Repeating scheduled meetings that were unattended

Simplified Path to Meeting Behavior Insights

You can enjoy these new Meeting Behavior Insights in two sections within Poly Lens.

Priority Insights: A curtate newsfeed of your most notable insights. Find the latest insights at Insights > Priority > Rooms.
More details at Poly Lens Help - Priority Insights.

Analysis: Self-guided dashboard that allows you to filter through the data to conduct in-depth analysis on your workspace. Explore the new Meeting Behavior analytics at Manage > Rooms > (Select Room) > Analysis.
More details at Poly Lens Help - Analysis

Getting Started​

1. Enabling the Office 365 Calendar Integration
   To enable the integration, to go the Admin menu > Integrations, select Office 365 Calendar. Allow Access and Authenticate to your Office 365 tenant.

   Once Poly Lens has been granted access, we built in a bunch of neat tools to make linking your Calendars to Rooms in Poly Lens very easy.
   More details at Poly Lens Help - Office 365 Calendar Overview.

2. Linking Calendar to Poly Lens Rooms
   To enjoy the new benefits of this integration, it is important to Link your Calendars to your Poly Lens Rooms. To link your Poly Lens Rooms, Go to Manage > Rooms, select Add Calendar, and link your Room calendar in Room Settings. Once linked via the dropdown or typing in, the calendar will begin Syncing and then show Integrated once all calendar details are linked. Note: Office 365 Calendar needs to be enabled before linking calendars to Poly Lens Rooms.
   More details at Poly Lens Help - Office 365 Calendar Room Setup.

3. Monitoring Integration Status
   Once you have linked your Calendars to your Poly Lens Room, we made it easy to monitor the health and status of the integration. You can view the health status of each Room calendar directly from Room Status or the Room List in Poly Lens. This near real-time visibility ensures that meeting spaces are successfully linked, and the integration is healthy. And if they are not healthy, you can understand what actions you need to take to get them healthy again.

   To monitor Calendar Integration, display the list of Rooms (Manage > Rooms) and use the pencil icon to display the Calendar column.
   More details at Poly Lens Help - Office 365 Calendar Details.

Embrace the Future of Meeting Insights​

Upgrade and access all your Poly Lens Premium Lens Features today and empower your organization with the tools needed to drive productivity, enhance collaboration, and embrace the future of meeting insights. Your journey to seamless Meeting Behavior Insights using Microsoft Office 365 Calendar starts today – let us know what you think by clicking on Feedback in Poly Lens.

Today, we are excited to introduce an innovative capability that allows seamless automatic tracking of any device's public or private IP subnet within a specified range to a designated site. Our enhanced Device Association feature has been crafted to empower IT administrators, providing them with a robust tools to fortify network security and streamline overall management processes. This resourceful feature holds significant value for individuals tasked with monitoring and device management for sites falling within specified IP ranges.

To leverage this feature effectively, consider the following recommendations:

• Define IP Range Parameters: Clearly define the IP range you want to monitor. Tailor the settings to match your organization's network structure, security protocols, and configured Site Policies for Device Families and/or Device Models.
• Any new Sites created in Lens and when accessing the Device Association setting will automatically Default to the new Recommended option to Automatically update devices site association. Devices will automatically match the subnet rule(s) when the device changes it's IP Address and falls into the configured subnet rule.
• The behavior of device site associations for existing Accounts and Sites will remain unchanged and will stay enabled as Update device site association only for newly onboarded and unassigned devices.

To Get Started Go to Manage > Sites > Add New or Select a Site > Settings > Device Association.
For more information search for Device Site Association in Poly Lens Help.

Poly Lens has continually added flexibility to how you can easily manage device software updates at scale. We are excited to announce that as part of our Lens Desktop 1.3.0 release for Windows, we have added support for another device software update policy option as well as a new Lens Desktop version policy. We also have added Acoustic events data collection from supported headsets as part of a Poly + Enterprise License.

Policy Enhancements - Device Software Update and Lens Desktop Version​

We have added a new way for you to have confidence a device software or Lens Desktop version gets implemented for your device end users. This option allows you to send the end user three notices to update to the version you have set in the policy, however if the end user chooses not to update during the three notices Lens will move forward to implement the update after end user PC restart.

Benefits to End User: Gives notice to the end user that an update within Lens Desktop is required and gives them the flexibility to postpone the update three times before the update happens.

Benefits to IT Admin: Gives their end users flexibility on choosing their preferred update timing and also gives the assurance the update will be automatically implemented after the third notice and PC restart.

Acoustic Event Insights & Report​

Lens has added a Lens Desktop setting policy to enable the collection of headset acoustic events since these are turned off by default with select Poly devices. Once data collection is turned on all acoustic events will show in an Acoustic Events report to show any acoustic events that occurred during conversations using select Poly products.

For more information on Lens policy and reporting options, search for Policy Settings and Reports in Poly Lens Help.

Welcome to a new era of seamless device management and monitoring within Lens Rooms, where Poly Devices and Lens are set to redefine your Room management experience. Our latest enhancements bring forth a series of improvements designed to empower you in efficiently navigating and monitoring Rooms. To start, the Side Navigation of your Room Overview will expose your Room detail settings by offering a more user-friendly interface. In addition, we've introduced comprehensive device status enhancements that provide real-time updates on the online, offline status of your devices. Along with getting contextual information if that Room is in a Meeting or Idle. Now, at a glance, you can effortlessly determine the operational state of each device in your Room. Furthermore, our approach extends to the introduction of an updated Device Inventory table, offering a centralized hub to monitor and manage all devices within the Room efficiently. Join us on this journey as we uncover the details of these enhancements, unlocking a new level of control and visibility for your Poly Devices in Lens Rooms.

To get started, go to Manage > Rooms > Add New or Select a Room.
For more information see Poly Lens Help - Manage Rooms.

Side Navigation​

We've improved Room identification by exposing important details on the Room Overview side navigation. The following Room details that are set or added/updated by a Lens administrator are exposed in Room Overview:

1. Room Name
2. Site and Floor
3. Capacity
4. Room Size: None/Focus/Huddle/Small/Medium/Large

Device Status Enhancements: Minimized and Expanded views on Device Online/Offline and Meeting Status.

Minimized View: Get immediate visibility to Devices that are online or offline and Meeting status for the Room. Use the Arrow Icon to expand Device and Meeting status information.

Device Status Expanded View: Descriptions on Devices that are Online and 1 or more devices that are Offline.

Click State on Offline Devices: Provides Device Name information on Device Model(s) that are Offline.

Meeting Status Expanded:

The Device Inventory Table: Includes the following information on the devices associated to a Room. This table can also be minimized with the Arrow Icon.

1. The Device Inventory will list the total number (#) of devices in the Room on the Title.
2. Search Table option to isolate to a single Device.
3. Use the Pencil icon to Expose or Hide device details based on Admin preference.
4. Device Details Include:

   • Date Added

   • Date Last Seen

   • Device Model

   • Device Name

   • Last Provisioning Sync

   • MAC Address

   • Private IP

   • Provider

   • Serial Number

   • Software Version

   • Status (Online/Offline)
      

Poly Lens GraphQL Subscriptions​

At Poly, we’re committed to providing you with all the tools and flexibility you need to create the best collaboration experience for your users and your unique use cases. Our portfolio of nearly 100 officially supported Poly Lens APIs already caters to several use cases such as Inventory Reporting & Management, Device & Room Insights, and Device Controls.

And today, we’re excited to add another dimension to our API portfolio. Announcing, the Poly Lens GraphQL Subscriptions! GraphQL Subscriptions enable you to create web-socket based listeners on fields of your interest so that you get an alert as soon as the value of the field changes. This opens a plethora of new use cases that you can now address using Poly Lens APIs. The first API utilizing the new GraphQL subscription stream focuses on People Counting.

peopleCountStream Subscription API​

The peopleCountStream subscription is a simple, yet powerful and versatile API that enables you to monitor room occupancy in near real-time. It creates a web-socket based listener on people count data sent by Poly devices. As soon as people count changes, the API notifies the API user of the change and provides an updated people count for a particular meeting room.

This simple, yet powerful API is designed to show live room occupancy. When combined with custom applications, a variety of different use cases could be enabled, including:

• Releasing meeting rooms from ghost meetings without waiting for meeting end time
• Adjusting HVAC and lighting as soon as a room is occupied or vacated
• Visualizing live room occupancy to create a near real-time view of your meeting rooms

How to Access the peopleCountStream API​

You can access the peopleCountStream API at the Poly Lens GraphQL Playground. To use this API in your application, you can create credentials in Poly Lens. See How to Get Started.

peopleCountStream API in action on the Poly Lens GraphQL Playground

Note: The peopleCountStream API is available to Poly+ Enterprise customers and currently supports Poly Studio X30, Studio X50, and Studio X52.

We are excited to announce the ability to download Poly device software or Poly Lens application software for offline use and on-premises device management tools through the new Software Versions page in Poly Lens. As Poly and HP integrate, we continue to become better together. Included in the integration is the transition from the support.poly.com portal to the HP Customer Support site. This transition now provides customers with the ability to download Poly device software or Poly Lens application software for offline use and on-premises device management tools through the Poly Lens portal.

To find device and application software to download, follow these steps:

1. Create or use a current Poly Lens account (lens.poly.com).
2. Assure you are an administer on the account.
3. Go to Manage > Software Versions.

Once you are on the Software Versions page, you can search for and select the device or application, select the software version, and download for local use. Only device and application software that is currently supported in Poly Lens is available via the Software Versions page. If the Poly device or Poly Lens application does not appear in your search and is not listed, visit HP Customer Support.

We are thrilled to unveil our latest offering — a cutting-edge tool designed specifically for our partners and the Poly Lens developer community. The new Poly Lens API Credential tool has now been expanded to provide access to multiple Poly Lens Accounts using a single set of API credentials. This is designed to revolutionize the way you access and interact with multiple Poly Tenants through the Poly Lens Management and Insights API.

Key Features​

Our newly introduced Poly Lens API Credentials come equipped with a range of powerful features tailored to enhance your experience:

• Muti-tenant API Credentials: Efficiently oversee access multiple Poly Lens Accounts seamlessly via the Poly Lens Management and Insights API using a single unified set of API credentials.
• Data Extraction and Custom Applications: Extract data from Poly Lens Accounts or craft custom applications to engage with, modify, or generate comprehensive reports using information across multiple Poly Lens Accounts.
• User-Friendly Creation: Easy creation of API Credentials for your individual Account or for multiple Accounts.
• Access Requests Management: Grant or deny incoming access requests, ensuring heightened control over data accessibility.

Why It Matters​

Our Poly Lens API Credentials are designed to enhance versatility and efficiency, empowering you to streamline operations, leverage data more effectively, and foster innovation. This tool enables seamless data extraction from multiple Lens Accounts and facilitates the creation of custom applications for interaction, modification, or report generation across various Poly Lens Accounts, all accomplished using a single set of API credentials.

Whether you're focused on improving access management or exploring the possibilities of data-driven applications, this tool serves as your gateway to simplifying device management and enabling managed service offerings that harness the power of the Poly Lens platform.

Get Started Today​

The Poly Lens API Credentials are now available, poised to transform the way you navigate and utilize Poly Lens. Get started by going to Go to ACCOUNT menu > Manage Accounts, select and Account from the list and select API Credentials. For more information, visit the Poly Lens Help.

On November 10, Poly released our new Poly VideoOS software version 4.1.1. This release includes new capabilities and improvements, all designed to optimize your hybrid meeting experiences while continuing to drive high-quality standards.

Poly DirectorAI People Framing​

This release expanded Poly DirectorAI people framing to Studio X30 and X50 video bars*. Now users can experience the same Poly DirectorAI smart camera technology across the entire Poly Studio X family of video bars. Since Poly DirectorAI launched in 2019, we have continued to fine tune, enhance, and expand our AI-driven camera capabilities.

To level the playing field between remote and onsite meeting participants, it is crucial that everyone within the video meeting is seen and heard equally. People framing is a smart camera mode that identifies participants in the meeting space and uses zoomed-in shots to create a unique layout of frames, showing all in-person participants with an up-close view. This layout of frames is then sent to the video app of your choice as a single video stream so that far-end viewers can easily connect with in-person participants. People in the room feel seen and able to speak up, while remote participants no longer feel they are missing out on the in-room dynamic as they’re able to catch the details previously lost with one single zoomed-out view. This experience helps bring teams closer together and encourages more effective collaboration.

Of course, people framing might not be the answer for every meeting, so camera mode selection is easy and can be adjusted for each meeting via an in-room touch interface. Poly Studio X family video bars also include Poly DirectorAI group framing and speaker framing modes.

Quality Improvements​

We continue to focus on driving high-quality standards and have dedicated much of this release to quality improvements, including enhancements for our recently released Poly DirectorAI Perimeter feature.

Learn More​

For a full list of updates and technical details regarding the Poly VideoOS 4.1.1 release, check out the release notes.

Ensure you have the best video experience from Poly. Check out our demo videos of other features released in recent software updates.

• Poly DirectorAI Perimeter
• Sound Reflection Reduction
• Studio E70 Camera Over IP

*People framing is not available on Poly Studio X30 and X50 while in Poly Video mode.

Since launch, Lens Policy has provided you the ability to easily deploy and manage devices at scale with the flexibility to match their unique business needs. Today, we are happy to share with you that we are simplifying that customization even further through a new experience we are calling Device Families.

Device Families will enable you to group products from HP Poly that share similar settings together into one single configuration policy. This will reduce the number of touchpoints you will have to make when modifying your devices. With this change we have updated quite a few experiences to Lens Policy which you can see below.

Device Family support will start rolling out to customer accounts this week.

Updated Experiences​

• Introducing the Account Policy Layer: Within Lens Policy you will notice that the Device Model Layer has been replaced with Account. We heard from many of you around the confusion of the Device Model naming, so we simplified the terminology to drive a clearer understanding of the impact.

• A New Classification Option for Policies: When navigating into Sites, Device Groups or Account, it may at first appear that all your policies are lost. Worry not as this is not the case, instead they can now be found by selecting Device Models under the ‘Device Toggle’ on each of these Lens Policy layers.

You’ll see that none of your existing Policies have been lost.

We have introduced this new classification to allow you to roll up similar configurations that are shared across like devices, simplifying the work necessary as you deploy multiple models within a family. We feel that this new classification matches how many of our customers are using Lens today, so we defaulted to the Lens Family Policy view going forward.

• Easy Migration to Family Policy: To help you along this journey, you’ll now find that a new option Convert to Family is available when editing a Device Model policy on any policy level when a Family policy has not already been created.

This will migrate all the settings from the current Device Model and create a new Family Policy, applying to all models within a family.

• Keeping Things Tidy: Not only have we simplified the process of moving to Family Policies, but we have also added in intelligence that will automatically reduce redundancy in your Model Policies whenever you save or update your Family Policies. Any duplicative Setting Policy that also exists for a Device Model within the Family that is also within the same layer of inheritance will automatically be removed. This action only happens when an admin saves or updates the Family Policy, allowing you flexibility in settings deployment without worrying about fragmentation over time.

• Extending Existing Behaviors: Just like every other layer of Lens Policy, Family Policies will be reflected in My Settings for a device and can then be navigated to for any necessary adjustments.

• Understanding Inheritance: This new level of classification does not change existing Policy Inheritance, instead, it enhances it by creating an additional layer within each Policy Layer. While Family Policies apply to all Models within a Family, if you define a Model Policy that will take priority over any Family Policy within a particular layer of Lens Policy (Group, Site, Account).

• Limitations of Family Policy: While Family Policy represents a superset of settings across all models, support of the settings will still be limited based on the device capabilities. Furthermore, while you can set software update policy, specific version selection is still limited to a per model view.
  Note: Family Policy is currently only available for network attached devices. Devices connecting through Lens Desktop and Lens Mobile do not support Family Policy at this time.

We're excited to announce the General Availability of Microsoft Teams SIP Gateway Bulk Sign-In Onboarding, in collaboration with our alliance partner, Microsoft. This enhancement initially launched in preview, is a testament to our commitment to empowering enterprises on their journey to a more efficient and collaborative future. With this advancement, we've helped to facilitate the migration process from 3PIP platform for over 500 enterprise customers and tens of thousands of SIP Gateway-compatible Poly devices helping them make the most of Microsoft Teams.  

How This Benefits Your Organization​

This capability streamlines the onboarding of large number of SIP devices, paving the way for a smoother and more efficient transition to Microsoft Teams for enterprise communication. Organizations can save valuable time and resources while delivering an improved user experience. See Teams SIP Gateway-compatible Poly devices here.  

How to Get Started  ​

To leverage Bulk Sign-In Onboarding with Microsoft Teams SIP Gateway, consult our documentation in Poly Lens here and Microsoft's updated documentation here. These resources provide step-by-step instructions, best practices, and tips to get your large-scale migration underway effortlessly.

Feedback​

For any comments or suggestions on this release you are welcome to provide your Feedback from Poly Lens using the Feedback tool in the bottom right corner of the Poly Lens portal. Your input is highly appreciated.