AI is revolutionizing both how and where we work, as flexible work models grow in popularity. However, challenges like poor in-person coordination persist, with nearly half of global knowledge workers (49%) not meeting key colleagues during office visits and many spending their time in suboptimal hybrid meetings. This has contributed to the underutilization of 65% of global office spaces.
To address these issues, AI-powered workplace solutions like Microsoft 365 Copilot, Teams, and the newly available Microsoft Places have emerged. These tools streamline in-person coordination, enabling spontaneous or planned gatherings and offering IT administrators valuable insights into space utilization. By integrating AI into workplace strategies, organizations can achieve improved collaboration, efficiency, and space optimization.
Making coordination easier
Coordinating in-person connections in flexible work environments is often difficult and time-consuming, referred to as the “coordination tax.” AI-powered tools in Microsoft Places, Teams, and Copilot simplify this process by integrating calendars, location plans, and team guidance. Users can create a recurring work plan through a unified calendar in Teams and Outlook, outlining their in-office and remote workdays. This streamlined system also provides team guidance from leaders to facilitate effective in-person collaboration.
This work plan sets the foundation for workplace presence – a cue within the Teams people card that indicates where you’re working for the day and makes it easy for colleagues to find you in-office.
As your schedule shifts, you’ll want to adjust your work plan. To make real-time changes, navigate to the Places card in the unified calendar – your one-stop-shop to see what’s happening on a given day and take actions like updating your work plan and quick-booking rooms.
Not sure whether it makes sense to go to the office on a specific day? Copilot can help, reasoning across your calendar, colleagues’ schedules, and team guidance to suggest a recommended in-office day.
In one click, you can update your planned work location to the office and see which in-person meetings still need a room. Through quick book, get recommendations for rooms and book spaces for your entire day with just one click.
From the Places card, you can also:
- Update your work plan and workplace presence – changing your work location to remote, in-office, or even a specific office building or floor
- See an at-a-glance view of colleagues who also plan to be in-office
- View and act upon Copilot-generated recommendations on the best days to go into the office
- Get reminders to book a desk on in-office days
- Identify which meetings on your schedule do not yet have a room booked and quick-book spaces based on your requirements
Accessible through both the unified calendar and in the Places app, Places finder makes it easy to book the right spaces – whether meeting rooms or desks – for your in-office experience.
Places finder goes beyond the standard room-booking interface to help you find the right spaces for your unique needs. Whether you’re searching for the perfect conference room to accommodate a large group with specific AV requirements or looking to book a desk for more focused work, Places finder can help.
Within Places finder, you’re able to:
- Filter available rooms by building, floor, capacity, AV configurations and more
- View detailed photos of available rooms
- Book a desk for the day
- Find and book space using maps and floor plans
Once you’ve found and booked the right space for your meeting, Copilot ensures that your booking is continually managed, even as schedules change or room availability shifts. With managed booking, Copilot automatically responds to changes in the meeting time or room availability – rebooking you into a similar room.
Places finder makes it easy to book rooms and desks ahead of time – but if you’ve forgotten to book a desk or your schedule changes at the last minute, you can also use bookable desks. To reserve a desk ad-hoc, simply plug your device into an available desk’s monitor or docking station to automatically book a seat (and, coming soon, automatically update your workplace presence so colleagues can find you at your desk).
Modernizing the workplace experience
Modernizing the workplace involves equipping offices with technology that supports flexible and inclusive collaboration. Tools like Microsoft Teams allow employees to update their workplace presence manually or automatically through features like bookable desks and BYOD rooms, enabling better connections by showing coworkers’ locations in Teams chats. Upcoming enhancements in 2025 will include auto-updating workplace presence via Wi-Fi and tools to facilitate nearby connections.
For hybrid meetings, AI-driven features such as IntelliFrame intelligent cameras improve inclusivity by creating individual video frames for participants and offering cloud-based multi-camera views. Additional upgrades in 2025 will include automatic camera switching to optimize visibility and multi-camera feed selection for personalized views, ensuring seamless integration of remote and in-person participants.Multi-camera view selection captures every single-stream camera in a meeting room, enabling you to choose which camera feed to view
The Facilitator agent in meetings will also work with Teams Rooms in early 2025, capturing and displaying real-time notes for all meeting participants, both in the room and remote. Similarly, you’ll also be able to invite Facilitator to meetings through the Teams Rooms console, bringing the same AI-generated notes value to in-person-only meetings.
Whether you’re in-office or working remotely, you’ll also benefit from features like speaker recognition – available soon for additional meeting spaces, from a Teams Room to a BYOD room – which identifies voices and people in a room so it’s always clear who’s speaking. Speaker recognition also enables Copilot, Facilitator, and intelligent meeting recap to identify the correct speakers, ensuring that meeting notes and action items are correctly attributed.
Optimizing spaces effectively, with AI-powered insights
Not surprisingly, the rise in flexible work models has created novel challenges for IT and facilities administrators. Right-sizing real estate portfolio mixes, office layouts and tech stacks starts with understanding utilization – and, more importantly, what’s driving it. Places and Teams Rooms Pro Management help capture a range of utilization signals, digest these signals into easy-to-understand dashboards and reports, and – with help from Copilot – offer detailed explanations, analysis and recommendations.
Places brings together occupancy and utilization signals from a range of sources to inform decision-making. Bringing together intent-based data points from work plans, workplace presence updates, room and desk bookings alongside occupancy signals from Teams Rooms, Teams devices and partner data sources (like occupancy sensors or badge swipe data) helps create a fuller picture of hybrid work patterns and behaviors.
In late 2024, Copilot will also integrate with Places to summarize occupancy and utilization trends and make recommendations for how real estate and IT professionals can optimize their workplaces for maximum impact.
To better support IT administrators to manage and optimize performance of their Teams Rooms and device deployments across BYOD rooms and desks, Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro Management is an AI-driven service and portal that enables proactive management and custom health alerts.
By combining rich data and insights from across your Rooms and devices portfolio with AI and advanced analytics, IT administrators will benefit from:
- Built-in best practices from thousands of endpoint engagements across industries
- Automated updates, problem detection and resolution at scale
- Actionable insights and analytics through correlated utilization and trend data across your Teams Rooms and devices ecosystem with shared space insights
- Automatic peripheral association using signals from BYOD room devices, with visibility into all devices discovered via the Pro Management Portal
- Access to the new AI Assistant in the Pro Management Portal – an interactive assistant that can answer in-depth questions by combing reference materials and providing clear, concise answers – allowing admins to remain in the flow of work
Start your AI-powered workplace transformation today
The AI-powered workplace ushers in a new era of flexible work: one that’s defined by friction-free coordination, more modern workplace experiences, and data-driven optimization.
Every organization is at a different stage in their AI evolution. No matter where your organization is starting from, Places, now generally available, is a valuable addition to your AI-powered workplace strategy. You’ll leverage the power of AI to transform your approach to flexible work, making it easier to coordinate, collaborate and – ultimately – create an optimal workplace experience.
Today, Places is generally available through a Teams Premium license; some core Places features are also available with qualifying Microsoft 365 licenses. To get started with Places, activate your Teams Premium trial or start a new Teams Premium subscription today (available for a limited time with our introductory pricing).
(Source: Microsoft)
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