Managing BYOD with Teams Pro Management Portal

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) rooms are meeting spaces without native Microsoft Teams Rooms devices and rely on the users' personal laptop or PC for running the meeting. It's a cost-effective way to quickly enable a meeting room for hybrid work. Microsoft now allows BYOD rooms to be managed via the Teams Pro Management Portal (PMP) for inventory, association with peripherals, and usage reporting. in this post we walk through the steps required to enable BYOD management via the PMP.

Pre-requisites
To get started managing BYOD rooms effectively in the Teams Pro Management Portal, there are several pre-requisites:

1. Teams Pro Management Portal Access - administrative access to the portal to configure settings, associate peripherals, and generate reports.
2. Required Licenses - at least one Teams Room Pro license or Teams Shared Device license, which is essential for accessing usage reports and room data.
3. Device Compatibility - Peripherals like cameras, microphones, or speakers must support association through unique identifiers (e.g., Product ID, Vendor ID, or Serial Number).
4. Data Collection Policies - Device data collection must be enabled if you want detailed usage insights or performance reports.

Onboarding BYOD devices
Admins can enable or disable the feature that allows devices (e.g., cameras, microphones) to be automatically recognized and associated with specific BYOD rooms. Adjusting the threshold for automatic associations ensures only non-personal peripherals are linked to rooms. Not that the threshold minimum is 5 and can be adjusted upwards. This means that at least 5 unique users have to use these BYOD peripherals for Teams meetings before it will be automatically associated with a room resource account. These settings are available in the Settings-General tab of the PMP as shown below

Another way to onboard BYOD devices to PMP is to manually add them to your inventory using a PowerShell script provided by Microsoft. The script has to be run on a laptop or PC that will be connected to the devices and the user needs admin rights. Its important not to connect the room peripherals before running the script. When run, the script will prompt for the peripherals to be connected, only then will it collect data about connected devices (like USB devices, monitors, cameras, speakers, microphones) for inventory and management in Microsoft Teams Pro Management Portal.

Steps to Use the Script:

1. Download and prepare the Get-TeamsBYODSpaceDevices.ps1 script.
2. Open the script in PowerShell, run it, and follow the prompts to gather device details.
3. Connect external peripherals when prompted and provide account and folder path details for saving the results.
4. Review the output, save it as an .XLSX file with the first sheet titled PERIPHERALS. Ensure appropriate sensitivity labels (e.g., non-business, public, or general). Sensitivity labels and sheet names must meet specific requirements to avoid import errors.
5. Checking for accuracy of exported data is essential before upload.

Once the .CSV output file has been saved as an XLSX file, we can begin uploading the data into the Teams Pro Management Portal. Under Planning->Inventory-Devices, click "Import" and select the .XLSX file:

Once the import is complete, we can view the BYOD room in the inventory and start to manage it via the PMP as shown below:

Enabling automatic work location updates
​You can choose to activate the automatic work location update feature for your entire organization or specific user groups. This feature improves the user experience by simplifying the process of keeping work locations current and helping colleagues connect when they’re in the office. Top enable this we use the New-CsTeamsWorkLocationDetectionPolicy and Grant-CsTeamsWorkLocationDetectionPolicy Teams powershell cmdlets as example shown below:

Once the policy is enabled, users can turn on automatic updates via the Teams desktop app under Settings > Privacy > Sharing your work location. After opting in, their work location will switch to "In the office" automatically when they connect to a BYOD room—as long as their previous status was "Unknown" or "Remote." The detected location will remain active until their working hours end. If they connect outside working hours, the location will update and stay active until 11:59 PM that day.

Conclusion
BYOD management in PMP ​​allows administrators to enhance room functionality, analyze usage data, associate peripherals, and ensure smooth user experiences. With features like automatic peripheral association, detailed usage reports, and customizable policies, organizations can optimize meeting spaces while maintaining control over data and privacy settings.