Microsoft Teams may be struggling to find relevance in a world dominated by Slack, but for those few people using the platform, it can now be utilised on the Crestron Mercury all-in-one console.

The console officially debuted at ISE 2017, and is aimed at transforming meeting rooms into collaboration spaces, combining all the must-have conferencing and collaboration features employees need. This has included applications including GotoMeeting, Cisco WebEx and Slack.

Microsoft Teams is the latest in a long line of chat-based workspaces, with it shipping as part of Office 365. It launched at a time where Slack essentially dominated the industry, especially with large technology companies and publishers.

Despite the competition, Microsoft Teams is supposedly being used by around 30,000 organisations across 145 markets. Setting the software up with the Crestron Mercury is also easy, with users simply needing to plug-in their laptop to get started.

“Unified collaboration is an-ever changing environment, and Crestron Mercury was designed with that in mind,” says Fred Bargetzi, Crestron CTO, in the press release.

“Whatever service you’re currently running on your laptop or tablet, including Microsoft Teams, just connect to Mercury and leverage all the benefits of the room conferencing technology with the user experience you already know.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft also announced support for the CrestronRL 2 Group Collaboration System.

A neutral panel of experts chose the Crestron Mercury from others in its category for the following reasons:

• Conferencing capability: the device features high-definition USB room camera, a full open SIP conferencing speakerphone, and Bluetooth pairing with mobile phones
• BYOD multimedia presentation: Crestron Mercury features USB connectivity for laptops running web conferencing or other software, AirMedia wireless presentation capability, and Crestron Fusion Cloud and PinPoint app integration.
• Quality of sound: the device also has an HDMI input for full-motion HD video sources, HDMI output for room display devices, full-duplex audio performance, integrated 360° quad microphone array, Limes Audio TrueVoice AEC technology, and available add-on mic pods for extra coverage.