Awingu supports voice and video calling through Microsoft Teams with the new ‘Teams Web Client’. Users securely authenticate into their Awingu workspace on the browser and have Single Sign On access to Teams Online.
At Awingu, one of the frequent questions we used to get was: can we run ‘Skype for Business’ in Awingu. Unfortunately, this was not supported. Running ‘Skype for Business’ in a published desktop or RemoteApp and then translating it into HTML5 didn’t give an acceptable experience. To be honest, Microsoft themselves didn’t support this in RDS/VDA either. Also in the just-launched ‘Windows Virtual Desktop’ service, Teams calling and meetings are not supported right now: “The Teams calling and meeting experience isn’t optimized for a VDI environment”. (source, Oct 10th, 2019)
The only solutions on the market that did offer a degree of support were relying on local agents, plug-ins, etc. This didn’t fit with our ‘non-intrusive’ implementation vision. That, plus the fact that we knew Microsoft was evolving it’s UC portfolio with rich ‘online’ capabilities.
I think it’s fair to state that that moment is now. Microsoft Teams Online (i.e. the HTML5 version which runs inside your browser using the Teams Web Client) is a very rich platform, and it keeps evolving rapidly. You can follow the Teams roadmap here. The experience is not the same for all browsers, but with great support for Chrome, they already go a long way.
Desktop Client vs. Web Client
The first thing you’ll notice is that the Desktop Client and the Web Client have an almost identical interface and navigation.
Let’s run through the main feature sets (in this case Teams Web Client in Chrome on Windows 10 vs. Teams Desktop Client on Windows 10).
TEAMS
FEATURE
DESKTOP
CLIENT
WEB
CLIENT
Online chat (1-1/Group)
Agenda management
‘Meet now’
Voice calls (incl PSTN break-out*)
Video calls
Yes, when ‘Meet Now’ and planned meetings. Not (yet) from chat where only voice and text is supported at this time
Screensharing (full desktop, selected apps, multi monitor setup)
Notifications
Yes (more limited however, browser notifications required)
File access (OneDrive)
* only with eligible subscription at Microsoft
As the summary table above shows, all the main features now are both supported on Web Client and Desktop Client. The differences are a lot more subtle. The voice and video quality – as we played with it – were a bit in the advantage of the Desktop Client still. That said, the Web Client provides a perfectly workable experience and has become my personal default.
About the web client
“The web client is a full, functional client that can be used from a variety of browsers. The web client supports Calling and Meetings by using webRTC, so there is no plug-in or download required to run Teams in a web browser. The browser must be configured to allow third-party cookies.” (source, Oct 10th 2019)
Teams fully supports the following internet browsers, with noted exceptions.
BROWSER
NOTES
NOTES PER BROWSER
Internet Explorer 11
Calling and Meetings aren’t supported. Users who try to join a meeting on Internet Explorer 11 will be directed to download the Teams desktop client.
Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based)
Calling and Meetings are fully supported
Microsoft Edge
Calling and Meetings supported on Edge RS2 or later
Google Chrome
Meetings supported on Chrome 59 or later. As of July 3, 2019, screen sharing is supported without any plug-ins or extensions. Calling is now supported.
Mozilla Firefox
Calling and Meetings aren’t supported. Users who try to join a meeting on Firefox will be directed to download the Teams desktop client.
Safari 11.1+
Safari is enabled on versions higher than 11.1 in preview. While in preview, there are known issues with Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention.
Note: As long as an operating system can run the supported browser, Teams is supported. For example, running Firefox on the Linux operating system is an option for using Teams.
Microsoft Teams online and Awingu
Why this is very cool for Awingu users? They can now link Teams Online in their Awingu workspace, and in Single Sign On, open Teams in a second browser tab. To achieve the SSO, admins can leverage Awingu pre-authentication capabilities (available as of Awingu 4.2) in which they leverage Azure AD as master authentication service. Alternatively, they can use Awingu as IDP (identity provider) and use Awingu’s SSO capability with Office 365.
As a result: users can securely access their legacy apps, desktops, files, Office 365 and Teams from any device, managed or unmanaged in a very consistent and simple way.
Want to find out more and see Awingu in action? Reach out to us!
Note: Teams is not configured in our public demo accounts for security reasons.
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