Joining a Microsoft Teams meeting via a Zoom Room

Pexip Connect for Zoom Rooms enables Zoom Rooms and Zoom-registered Cisco/Poly systems* to make SIP based video calls into any Microsoft Teams meetings via Pexip’s interoperability service.

It provides Zoom users with a familiar SIP video experience when connecting into Teams from Zoom Rooms. The service supports dual screen video and content sharing.

By default this is a guest join experience, therefore someone has to be in the Microsoft Teams meeting to admit you from the lobby. However, if you have Pexip's Teams Meetings Lobby Bypass add-on, your Zoom Rooms can join your Teams meetings directly without having to be admitted from the lobby.

* Zoom registered Cisco/Poly Room video devices require a Zoom Room Connector license to register to Zoom cloud.

This article covers

Supported Room types

The following Room types are supported:

  • Windows, Mac, and Android Appliance Zoom Rooms systems that run Zoom Rooms software version 6.3.5 or later.
  • Cisco/Poly SIP rooms using Zoom One Button to Push.

Licensing requirements

Pexip Connect for Zoom Rooms has the following licensing requirements:

  • Your Pexip Connect for Zoom Rooms license count (minimum 10) must match your Zoom Room plus Cisco/Poly Room count.

  • You can also order optional add-on packages that provide:

    • Full HD (1080p) video and content (see Enabling Full HD (1080p)).
    • Lobby bypass for your Zoom Rooms into your Teams meetings.

Additional information:

  • Pexip's CVI licensing is not required for default Zoom interoperability (this is noted for clarity as Zoom uses "Pexip CVI" terminology in its admin interface to represent the Teams interop functionality via Pexip). However:

    • We recommend also purchasing CVI licensing to ensure that your internal Teams meetings are interop enabled for external guests and internal SIP endpoints that are not registered to Zoom.
    • The Teams Meeting lobby bypass add-on does require that you set up CVI interoperability (CVI and domain hosting licenses are included in the lobby bypass add-on package).

  • To trust Zoom Rooms, Pexip needs to know your Zoom Account Number, so that it can identify your Zoom Rooms and provide trusted lobby bypass (a signed hash of the associated Zoom account number is included in the request to Pexip when a Zoom Room attempts to join a Teams meeting).

    Note that lobby bypass only works for the following scenarios:

    • Zoom Rooms that are integrated with the Calendar Service.

    • Zoom Rooms that join by dialing a contact that is configured with a SIP address pointing to their organization's Teams Virtual Reception (IVR) and set as a Pexip CVI video address:

    Cisco/Poly endpoints that are registered to Zoom are not currently supported for lobby bypass (as the SIP security header does not identify the calling domain/company). If you require lobby bypass you can SIP register your endpoint directly to the Pexip Service.

  • Pexip reserves the right to audit your Zoom Room count twice a year. Such an audit can consist of requesting a screenshot from the Zoom admin center showing license count.

  • If somebody without a valid license plan tries to place a call they are shown a screen saying their call cannot be connected and they should contact their Zoom system administrator to validate their Pexip license.

Microsoft Teams/Exchange settings

The hosting Microsoft environment must be configured appropriately to allow interoperability with Zoom Rooms:

  • To allow Zoom Rooms to join Teams meetings, the Teams tenant that is hosting the meeting must have enabled the "Anonymous users can join a meeting" setting (Teams Admin Center > Meetings > Meeting Settings) or alternatively set up a policy to bypass this restriction.
  • To support One-Touch Join, the invitation must come from a Microsoft Exchange server whose calendar processing settings for room resources have the DeleteComments property set to False, and the ProcessExternalMeetingMessages property set to True.

Configuring Zoom for Pexip interoperability

You enable interop via the Zoom admin portal.

You will need to enter your Pexip customer ID: you must go to this registration page to request your customer ID after completing the Pexip Connect for Zoom license purchase.

For Zoom Rooms:

  1. Go to Room Management > Zoom Rooms > Account Settings > Meeting.

  2. Enable Support Interoperability for Zoom Rooms.

    You have to lock the settings if you want to ensure they are applied to all Zoom Rooms (and thus override any individual room settings).

  3. Select Support joining Microsoft Teams meetings.
  4. Select Support Microsoft Teams SIP (CVI) connectivity on Zoom Rooms.

  5. Adjust the Preferred interoperability meeting connection method so that Use SIP or Pexip CVI to connect is the top priority.

    This reveals the remaining settings you need to configure.

  6. Select Enable Pexip Cloud Video Interoperability (CVI) "SIP Guest Join".
  7. Enter your Pexip customer ID.
  8. You should also ensure that you comply with the Zoom Room firewall requirements.

For Cisco/Poly systems:

  1. Go to Room Management > Cisco/Polycom Rooms and then Calendar Integration.
  2. Enable Parse Microsoft Teams Meetings and enter your Pexip CVI customer ID.

Disabling waiting rooms

We recommend that you disable waiting rooms.

You cannot disable waiting rooms globally, but they can be changed per region via the Zoom admin portal:

  1. Go to Room Management > Zoom Rooms and choose a region.
  2. Within the Meetings tab > Security section you can turn off the Waiting Room for the rooms in this region.
  3. Repeat this for all regions to apply the settings for all rooms. (It can also be set per room, if required.)

Optimizing geographic routing for dial-out

By default Zoom Rooms exit the Zoom network in the US. If you want to change this (i.e. if you are not in the US), you can nominate which geographic region to use when dialing out via H.323 or SIP from your Zoom Rooms and user clients. This will typically reduce the latency as the call to the Pexip Service will stay in a region closer to the Zoom Room placing the call.

We recommend that customers in European countries should set Netherlands as your call-out location.

To do this, from within the Zoom portal you need to enable the Customize data center region for H.323/SIP call-out option, and then select the CRC Gateway you want to use.

The CRC Gateway can be set company-wide in account settings, or in the Zoom Rooms menu (via the In Meeting (Advanced) option) where it can be set in the room hierarchy or on an individual Zoom Room.

We recommend that you organize your Zoom Rooms in a hierarchy (e.g. by country, city, building as appropriate) so that you can the apply routing per country in a simple manner.

Enabling Full HD (1080p)

If you have the Full HD (1080p) add-on then there is additional configuration to ensure your Zoom Room or SIP/H.323 system can use Full HD:

  1. Make a request to Zoom support to enable Full HD 1080p on your account.

  2. Enable 1080p in the Zoom portal:

    1. For Zoom Rooms: in Account Settings > Meetings, set Meeting-HD Video Quality to Full HD (1080P)
    2. For Cisco/Poly systems: in Room Management > H.323/SIP Room Connector, set DTMF Command to 309.

Usability and troubleshooting help

This section contains some usability and troubleshooting guidance.

How to unmute if muted by a Teams participant

If the Zoom Room caller has been muted by a Teams participant, they see "*6 to unmute" at the top of their screen. In this case, the user needs to dial the DTMF code *6 to unmute themselves.

Firewall/ports connectivity issues

The Zoom Room must be able to dial out via SIP. To test this, place a manual SIP call to a known good address, for example test@pexip.me:

  1. Tap Home on the Zoom Room controller.
  2. Tap the arrow to the right of New Meeting.
  3. Tap Call SIP/H.323.
  4. Enter test@pexip.me, tap SIP, then tap Call.

If this call fails to connect, check the Zoom Room firewall requirements, or contact Zoom to troubleshoot before continuing with the Pexip setup.

For Zoom SIP registered devices, it may be necessary to adjust firewall ports to allow RTP media over UDP to the destination IP addresses shown in Pexip's firewall rules guidance.

Pexip Connect for Zoom Rooms meeting experience

The following images illustrate how participants and presentation content are displayed on a single-screen and a dual-screen system.

We recommend the following display/layout configurations for Zoom Rooms with 2 displays:

Similarly for single screen displays, we do not recommend setting the 2 participants layout to Gallery View as this will show your own Zoom Room self view on half of the screen, and the remote feed from Pexip on the other half. The Pexip interop service detects it is a single screen endpoint, thus it will share any content as part of the layout mix, and therefore the endpoint will never enter the "share starts" setup.

Screen sharing settings — important for wireless sharing

Screen sharing settings can be changed globally, and some can be changed per Zoom Room — you need to decide the most appropriate method. We recommend the following settings:

  • How many participants can share simultaneously: select One participant can share at a time.
  • Who can share: select All Participants.
  • Who can start sharing when someone else is sharing: select All Participants (if you are not able to take over presentation with, for example, wireless sharing).

During a meeting you can also access these settings (to apply to that meeting only) via the cog wheel on the Share Content panel.