Welcome to the Teams Rooms Front Row backlash (sort of)

Microsoft’s Front Row layout for Teams Rooms has fascinated many, ever since the announcement of its rollout at the beginning of last year.

The layout brings a gallery of remote meeting participants right down to eye level at the bottom of the screen. Above them, in the upper part of the screen, is space for presentation content and panels for Loop components, such as chat and raised hands, on each side of the content pane.

This layout option has prompted a revolution in aspect ratios in large format displays, after it emerged that the layout is available in 21:9 format. There has since been a wave of introductions of ultrawide screens to make full use of Front Row’s canvas.

But not everyone is a fan of the Front Row layout, and last week an illuminating discussion kicked off on social media.

Writing on LinkedIn, Corné Hubinger, chief revenue officer at Gaproc Media in South Africa, said: “I’ve been diving into the world of collaboration tools, and I’ve got to say, Microsoft’s Teams Room Front Row leaves a lot to be desired.”

In a post, entitled “Microsoft’s Teams Room Front Row sucks (in its current form) – Convince me otherwise!”, he makes four complaints.

First, he says the new 21:9 screens are expensive. “And for what? A layout that reduces the primary content’s visibility?”

Second, and relatedly, he hopes everyone brings magnifying glasses due to the reduction in size of presentation content from the whole screen to just its upper part.

Third, reducing presentation size reduces the size of the room a screen can fit in and still meet display standards such as DISCAS. “Want to stick to the 6:1 distance-to-screen height ratio for presentations? Better have a small room then.”

Fourth, Hubinger thinks that Loop components on either side of the presentation window present distractions galore. “With so much going on, it’s like trying to watch a movie while someone’s live-tweeting in the corner of your screen,” he said.

It’s not that Hubinger is completely against the Front Row layout, or that his opinion is widely shared, at least publicly. “There’s not many people that aren’t fans, so I’m a small minority,” he added. Even though he currently thinks it is gimmicky, he said he could like the layout in future, with some changes.

Responding to the challenge, Microsoft’s head of Teams Rooms devices and calling, Ilya Bukshteyn, had answers for each of the four complaints.

First, there are now projectors optimised for 21:9, which are far from expensive, he said, referring to an option championed by hybrid spaces consultant Greg Jeffreys who recommends the use of modern ambient light rejecting screens for best results.

Second, presentation size depends on the size of the Front Row gallery which is now configurable as small, medium and large. “We will be doing more optimisations moving forward to auto-hide side panes if there are no raised hands or comments,” Bukshteyn added.

He also respectfully disagreed with the final two complaints. With respect to room size, he added: “We have had fantastic feedback from Front Row, even in focus rooms.”

And as for loop components being distracting, he responded: “Paying attention to meeting chat and/or raised hands is no longer a distraction but should be a necessity in the world of hybrid work.”

Expanding on his reply, he added: “21:9 gives us more room to display key in-meeting content; chat, which is especially important, and coming in the future a selection of other Loop components such as notes, agenda, transcript, etc. Also moving the gallery to the bottom has proven key to getting a better connection with remote participants, especially with our latest feature of background and head size normalisation.”

While Microsoft had received feedback that Loop components were now as important as presentation content in meetings, the company will continue to give users choice, so chat and other components can be turned on or off for a given meeting, Bukshteyn said.

Sharing a graphic from a talk he gave in October last year, Jonathan English, whose Linkedin title is “chief of stuff at Prodd”, said that to be fair to Microsoft, it needed to be acknowledged that Loop components were now configurable or could be turned off but he claimed these distracting components were unreadable.

He recommended that CoPilot be added to Front Row to look at what everyone was doing on the call and provide a “how you’re doing-ometer” report for attention, sentiment and keeping to time.

To read a full range of comments on Front Row, click here and here.