Teams Rooms on Windows Home Screen refresh 4.16+

So with Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows 4.16 and later you can enable a refreshed home screen (Which looks very nice !) and you get a calendar for the front of rooms displays and the console gets a new look to with quick access.It also matches the theming on Teams Rooms on Android so if you have seen this then it will look familiar !

This has been available for some time but i recently reset on MTRoW and i need to enable it again so thought id write this quick post.

Before you run off on your quest to enable this but make note of the points below and be sure to read over the Docs article referenced below.

NOTE

Be default you need to enable (Opt-in) for this and be on at least 4.16 software version.

Before jumping to this especially if you have custom background make sure to review the docs article as you may have some update your custom background first !

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/rooms/mtr-home-refresh#custom-background-guidelines

ALSO

There is a note for Exchange Server on premises as well here and you will have to wait im afraid

So I don’t have custom background and i use Exchange Online so im good to go!

Lets ENABLE !

Enable refreshed home screen design

You need to use the SkypeSettings.xml configuration file to enable the refreshed home screen design. You may have an existing copy of a the file if you used this before if not create one in your favourite tool.

In my SkypeSettings.xml file i added this

<TeamsRoomsNewExperience>true</TeamsRoomsNewExperience>

scrneeshot below of my XML file just to enable this as that’s all i want to do but with SkypeSettings.xml there is so much more you can configure if you do then check this out https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/rooms/xml-config-file

I copied the XML in here

C:\Users\Skype\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeRoomSystem_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState

and restart

The XML file if its formatted correctly will apply on restart so im going to this manually but the MTRoW will restart each morning automatically as there is scheduled task.

On my restart mine did not APPLY but i went back to the folder location and if the skypesetting.xml file is removed then it has processed correctly so i will wait a bit time. If the file is still there then check over the xml file as there maybe a typo or extra space somewhere.

I restarted my MTRoW again and its here ! It so pretty (and Fluffy) ! 🙂