Adding Room Resources

Room resources are features that are available in Office 365 Business Premium or higher licenses. If your organization doesn’t have an Office 365 Business Premium or better license, then room resources aren’t available and instead you will need to create a ‘User Account’ for each room that you’d like to schedule and associate with Mira Connect.

Using these instructions, you will need at least two Office 365 Business Premium licenses to integrate with Mira Connect. One license will be used for the ‘service user account’ that is described next, and one will be used for setting up each room. Once a room has been configured as described in this document, the Office 365 Business Premium license can be removed from the room. At the end of the setup process, you will only have used one Office 365 Business Premium license for the ‘service user account’.

Assuming your organization has Office 365 Business Premium or higher licenses, then in the Admin panel, under the ‘Resources > Rooms & equipment’ section, click ‘Add’ and make sure ‘Type: Room’ is selected as shown in the following figure.

Creating a new room resource requires a name and email address. Ensure the Type is set to Room.

In this example, we’ve used the name ‘BoardRoom’ as the name of our room resource. This is the name that will be used by users when the room is being scheduled. While the e-mail address for this room will be created automatically from this name, it can be changed to whatever you prefer.

You’ll repeat adding rooms and these steps for all the rooms in your organization that will use Mira Connect for connecting to calls from calendar invitations.

Click ‘Add’ to add the room resource. You should see a screen confirmation as shown in Figure 116. Click ‘Close’ to close this window.

The result of adding a room resource called BoardRoom.

Activate a License

Next, we’ll need to temporarily activate a license for the new room resource. Once the room has been configured and its calendar shared with the service user account, we will be able to remove its license.

To add the license, under the ‘Users > Active users’ section on the Office 365 administrator portal, click on the room that you just added, then click the ‘Edit’ link next to the ‘Product licenses’ section.

Edit the room resource to assign a service license.

Select the ‘United States’ location if you are in the United States or your location, if not in the United States, and enable the switch next to ‘Office 365 Business Premium’ as highlighted in below. As described earlier, a license is required for room setup and calendar sharing, but after the room’s calendar has been shared, the room license can be removed.

Select the location of the room and enabling the license.

Click ‘Add’ and you should see a status message as shown below. Click ‘Close’ to get back to the mailbox account for the room and then ‘Close’ again to get back to the Active Users page.

The result of assigning a license to the room resource, BoardRoom.

If you have enough licenses, repeat this for each room you have in your system. After adding the rooms and enabling the licenses, the ‘Active Users’ field will show a status of ‘Office 365 Business Premium’ as shown below.

If you don’t have enough available Office 365 licenses, enable one room at a time, following these steps for sharing the calendar, remove the license, and then repeat with the next room.

The list of active room resources that are licensed.