At least 30% of work days in the United States are remote, indicating a continued need for efficient and equitable hybrid work experiences. To ensure users remain productive in the hybrid workplace – remote or in the office -businesses are realizing interoperability via a standard solution experience that supports all meeting use cases regardless of platform, will improve agility, security, and user experiences.

Organizations will need interoperable AV and UC solutions to deliver everyday experiences. Not exploring an interoperable hybrid workplace limits meeting platform connectivity and the total meeting value during calls. These limitations reduce flexible communication and collaboration between departments and customers.

Cisco directly connects teams to prominent hybrid meeting platforms by introducing interoperable meeting capabilities via RoomOS. The digital communications technology conglomerate also partnered with Microsoft to support seamless native Microsoft Teams platform control on Cisco devices.

“We want to make sure that those users get to their work and get their work done as quickly as possible.” – Patrick Eustace, Cisco – How Cisco RoomOS Power Native Webex Meetings & Microsoft Teams experiences.

And now, Cisco is pairing its RoomOS technology with powerful AI to enhance user experience and meeting equity in video-enabled meeting spaces.

Cisco’s intuitive capture software and AV solutions elevate meeting equity

An auto-tracking video bar can focus and shift from person to person. But remote hybrid meeting viewing experiences can still be uncomfortable. And for in-office teams, video bars mounted on one side of a room can limit the visibility and voice of participants. Meeting attendees in the middle or at the back of a room can be forgotten. And depending on where microphones are placed, some individuals may not be heard as clearly as others.

Video-enabled meeting spaces require multiple cameras to capture every angle of a meeting effectively. But cameras must know when to capture each interaction. And AI-powered technology advancements are making that possible.

And for those times when you need to ensure the people in the room are the only ones seen or heard, Cisco’s Meeting Zones can help.

New office layouts can offer interesting meeting space challenges as organizations like yours modernize designs. When glass is used as meeting space walls, your camera, and remote viewers can pick up passers-by.

Meeting Zones lets you or a third-party support team set virtual borders in your collaboration spaces to ensure distraction-free meetings. The system maps and understands your workplace and only captures the voice of attendees – keeping your hybrid meetings focused and productive.

Elevate video capture to ensure everyone is seen and heard

In an office or remote meeting, participants want to be seen and heard equally, regardless of their room position. Cisco’s Room Bar Pro is an easy-to-deploy video bar that uses artificial intelligence to capture and frame individuals. The camera’s 48MP lenses capture a broad view to keep everyone in sight. And depending on the setting, the camera can zoom and frame individuals.

From a tablet or Cisco’s Room Navigator device, you can:

• Manually adjust the video bar camera
• Shift to automatic group overview
• Switch to dynamic speaker view
• Enable AI direction to crop and frame participants or groups

Room Bar Pro uses spatial audio detection with a tabletop three-channel stereo speaker array. The video bar also features a 16-element microphone array. Spatial audio projects sound from specific speakers to make it feel like virtual attendees are in your space. In addition, Room Bar Pro supports AI-powered noise removal and acoustic echo cancellation. Background audio suppression ensures that meeting audio focuses on each person’s voice.

Room Bar Pro is compatible with Cinematic Meetings. And it will soon be available for Microsoft Teams Rooms.