This guide provides an overview of a phased approach to deploying Mago Room within a customer.  Whether your customer requires a single Mago Room system, or wishes to deploy multiple Mago Room systems across their meeting room estate, this guide gives you a framework to follow from initial trial through to user acceptance and production.

This guide provides the framework for the project.  For more technical details on deploying Mago Room, refer to our Mago Room Pre-Installation Checklist, which can be found on our knowledgebase.

Contents

Page 2.  Deployment Plan Overview

• Phase 1 – Test
• Phase 2- Pilot
• Phase 3 - Production

Page 3.  Overview of Mago Room Suite

• Mago Suite Products
• Mago Room Components

Page 4.  Prepare Your Environment

Page 5.  Wireless Network Considerations

Page 6.  Plan for Operations

Page 6.  Plan for Adoption and Change Control

Page 7.  Mago Service Readiness

• Third party UCC Support & Client Licencing
• Presentation Modes
• Visual Collaboration

Page 8.  Deployment Overview

• Phased Approach
• Site Readiness
• Front of Room Display Settings
• OS & Software Updates
• Testing & Customer Acceptance

Page 9.  Troubleshooting & tips

Deployment Plan Overview

In order to ensure the best possible Mago Room experience, it is important to introduce an end-to-end approach to planning, delivery and operating Mago Room as part of your overall meeting and conference room strategy.

In this guide, you will find planning information covering the recommended approach and key decisions that will need to be made, with links to supporting technical information.  We recommend that you review the Plan, Deploy and Manage sections, even if you are already fully deployed.

It is important to follow these steps to avoid a risk of project failure.

Phase 1 – Test :
This evaluation phase (typically over a trial period of 30 days) after the first demonstration to the customer.  It is recommended to install the test environment on a separate network with no production policies to prevent potential interference while testing the features of the Mago Solution

Phase 2 – Pilot :
This is the most critical phase.  The suggested timeline for this phase should be a minimum of 1 month.  The pilot phase means that the solution is deployed into the production environment where consideration of all project aspects is key.
During this phase, the entire IT department (network, security, Active Directory, O365/ Google architects) should be involved.

Phase 3 – Production
In this phase it is also necessary to identify some key early adaptor end users who will use the system and provide regular feedback to the project team.  The customer acceptance milestone is a fundamental, formal step that enables the partner and end user to prevent failures in the customer expectations.
Only after customer acceptance can deployment through the entire organisation be considered date and supported by all stakeholders.

Overview of Mago Room suite

Mago Room suite provides a complete meeting experience that brings HD video, audio, content sharing and visual collaboration to meetings of all sizes – from small huddle areas to large conference rooms.

Mago Suite Products

Mago Room Components

Mago Room includes the following components to deliver a great user experience.  For each meeting room or space, it is important to understand the use case to ensure you enable the appropriate functions within Mago Room and deploy the appropriate peripherals for the space.

• Multiple control methods – wired or wireless touchscreen console; support for interactive screens; keyboard and mouse
• Support for Windows 10 / 11 computers
• Mago Workspace applications and web-app
• Mago Admin console
• Peripheral components (camera, microphones, speakers)
• External screens (passive or interactive (maximum of 2)
• HDMI Input (optional)

A list of certified Mago Room devices and peripherals can be found here

https://kb.mago.io/requirements/requirements

Prepare Your Environment

This section contains an overview of the steps required to prepare your environment so enable all features of Mago Room.  We recommend that you receive a fully completed and signed ‘Mago Room deployment checklist’ before installation into the environment of any customer.

1. In consultation with the customer, confirm use case scenarios and if room resources are required

                Scenario A.  Room Resources Required
Prepare a resource account for each Mago Room system based on the end users calendar solution.
A resource account is an account that the Mago Room system uses to access features from Exchange (i.e. calendar) and to connect to Microsoft Teams or Google Meet
Supported resource accounts are : Google Workspace; Office 365; Microsoft Exchange

                Scenario B.  No Room Resource Required
Customer will use Mago Workspace App to connect personal calendars and join as a Guest to UCC sessions.

2. Ensure that there is a working network / internet connection for the Mago Room device. 
Mago Room supports direct internet connection or transparent proxy only.
We suggest creating the meeting room device VLAN, isolated from the client's production environment and with outside ports for navigation open.  If customer wants to restrict to only necessary services, please refer to the Network & Ports Requirements.

Important
Mago Room does not support proxy authentication as it may interfere with regular operations of the room.  Ensure that Mago Room has been excepted from proxy authentication before going into production

Important
Be use to use a network connection with sufficient bandwidth.  We recommend 10mbps up/down per UCC and Mago Workspace to ensure smooth performance of your meetings.

3. Check the hardware requirements are completely satisfied.

4. Check the host computer has the latest version of Windows 10/11 and activated

5. Connect the Windows 10/11 instance to a maintenance plan to receive OS patches.  MDM and manual Windows updates are supported.

6. Disable Windows Firewall on Windows 10/11 devices for Mago Room.

7. If customer wants to add Mago Room devices into Active Directory, check there is not a user client's policy In place and create a dedicated Organisational Unit in AD for managing meetings room devices.

8.  Prior to installing Mago Room, confirm if there is a specific password policy for local user accounts.

9.  Allow creation of Local User (MagoRoom) on PC to host and run the Mago Room application.

Wireless Network Considerations

It is strongly recommended that you connect your Mago Room devices to a wired network for greater stability and performance, ensuring a seamless meeting experience.  If a wireless connection is not available, you may opt to use a wireless connection.

Important

Wireless networks can be prone to network interference, leading to quality degradation.  It is strongly recommended that you follow your wireless equipment provider’s best practices when configuring a wireless connection to improve video and audio quality as well as fluid visual collaboration.

Here are some examples of best practices, recommended by various manufacturers:

• Deploy wireless equipment, such as access points and routers, that can handle and distribute the bandwidth load across all connected devices
• As much as possible, use access points and routers from a single manufacturer to avoid further congesting the radio spectrum
• Ensure wireless equipment is installed in a way that reduces or eliminates interference from other equipment
• Ensure the wireless network shows strong signal strength on Mago Room and other device screens
• Default to prioritising 5GHz coverage for devices to optimise the higher bandwidth
• Enable band steering to ensure that 5GHz is always given priority when sharing the same network name (SSID) as 2.4GHz
• Keep wireless channel utilisation below 50%
• Keep access point and router firmware up to date with latest firmware and hot fixes.
• Verify that Mago Room devices and at least one access point see each other with a signal strength of -60dBm or better (a dBm value closer to zero is preferred).
• Implement QoS whenever possible to allow monitoring and resolution of issues in real time.

For additional best practices specific to your network hardware, check your manufacturer’s documentation

You can also troubleshoot wireless network issues using the wireless network report built into Windows10.  For more information, see Analyze the wireless network report – Microsoft Support

Plan for Operations

Your organisation must execute monitoring, administration and management tasks on an ongoing basis, and it is key to agree who will understand these tasks early in your deployment.

Many organisations have an AV team or partner who manage their conference rooms and devices.  Decide who will manage the Mago Room devices to monitor performance and deploy software updates and hot fixes.

Consider which helpdesk queue will handle Mago Room related calls and provide an FAQ to the helpdesk team so they can understand how to use Mago Room and key troubleshooting steps they can take.  A good starting point for this FAW is the user help and Known Issues.

Plan for Adoption and Change Management

Mago Room systems introduce new capabilities to your users It is important that you recognise that this will be a change for your users and you should ensure your internal marketing campaign identifies the benefits that Mago Room will bring to users.

Consider scheduling show and tell events and poster drops at each site to inform users of the new capabilities.  You may also create in-room quick start guides.  Consider nominating a meetings champion and each site who can help others get started.

Mago Service Readiness

To prepare for your Mago Room deployment, do the following key, central tasks

• Choose and define if the customer will use calendar resource accounts and which type (O365, Exchange, Google Workspace)
• If joining Mag Room compute to Active Directory, prepare an organisational unit and AD group to hold your Mago Room system(s) and resource accounts, and – optionally – prepare Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to enable PowerShell remoting and implementing customers mandatory policies

Third Party UCC Support & Client Licencing

If your customer intends to use the Mago Room system to join UCC sessions as a guest, no licence for the UCC is required.

If your customer intends to use the Mago Room system to create ‘instant meetings’ with meet now feature, a related UCC licence must be acquired.

Mago Room uses end user licences rather than Room Device licence (i.e. MTR / Zoom Room licence) Please refer to the UCC licencing policy before trying to deploy into a customer production environment.

Presentation Modes

Mago Room supports several ways for presenting content in a meeting room environment and remote (hybrid) setting.

• Wired content via HDMI Ingest (supported hardware required)
• Wireless content sharing via ChromeCast, MiraCast and iShare
• Wirelessly presenting content via authenticated app (via QR code scan)

Check Security pre-requisites : OAuth scopes

Visual Collaboration

The workspace application is a framework included in Mago Room, Mago Room Essential and Mago Workspace Apps that allow bi-directional collaboration in real time, with digital files, document acquisitions (from paper to pdf) and 3D scanning of real work objects.

Deployment Overview

Phased Approach

Deployment of Mago Room breaks down into phases

• Confirming that your deployment locations (spaces) meet the deployment dependencies
• Creating UCC’s and Calendar Resources (optional)
• Setting up Mago Room in meeting spaces and connecting the peripheral devices required (see 3^rd party documentation relating to your devices)

Site Readiness

While the ordered devices are being delivered to your organisation, work with your networking, facilities and AV teams to ensure that deployment dependencies are met, and each site and space is ready in terms of power, networking and display.  In addition, ensure the physical installation requirements are met/For physical installation considerations, consult with your vendor and leverage the experience of your AV team when installing and mounting screens and routing cables.

You can find out more about these dependencies in the planning guidance links that follow

• Admin.mago.io management and licence console
• Download the latest production or fast channel software build (download section of admin.mago.io).

Front of Room Display Settings

Configure the settings on your Front of Room display(s) to support Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) or enable PC Mode.

If you require the front of room display(s) to automatically switch to Mago Room on wake up, certain conditions must be met.  The feature is optional but supported by Mago Room software, providing underlying hardware supports the feature.  A consumer TV used as a front of room display needs to support CEC feature of HDMI.  Depending on the PC selected (which might not support CEC, refer to manufacturer documentation), a controller such as the HD-RX-4K-201-C-E from Crestron or HD CTL 100 from Extron may be needed to enable CEC.

OS & Software Updates

By default, Mago Room connects to Windows Update to retrieve operating systems and USB peripheral device firmware updates and installs them outside of configured business hours.  You can configure business hours by signing into the administrator account and running the Settings apps.

Before contacting Mago support for assistance, be sure Mago Room is loaded with the latest version of software.

Testing & Customer Acceptance

After Mago Room has been deployed, you should test it.  Check that the capabilities list in Mago Room help are working on the deployed device.  We recommend that the deployment team verify the Mago Room is appearing in the Mago Admin Console (admin.mago.io).  It’s important to make a number of test calls and meetings to check AV quality. 

Troubleshooting Tips

Here are few common issues which may arise during testing.  For a comprehensive troubleshooting and FAQ overview, visit https://kb.mago.io/faq-section/faq

• Meeting invitations might not appear when sent across domain boundaries (for example, between 2 companies).  In such cases, IT admins should decide whether to allow external users to schedule meetings.
• In general, it’s good practice for IT admins to disable any audio endpoints they don’t intend to use
• In the event that a mirror image is displayed in the room preview, the IT admin can correct by cycling camera power or flipping the image orientation using the camera settings
• Loss of console touchscreen access has been known to occur.  In such cases, the issue is normally resolved by restarting Mago Room.
• Loss of local audio when connecting a PC to console via wired ingest has been known to occur.  In such cases, restarting the PC can resolve the local audio playback issue.