Microsoft Place Settings

There are settings in the configuration of Microsoft Places that can be challenging to understand without first seeing what the end user experience looks like. I know that Microsoft are allergic to providing screenshots, so this post is here to help. There are many settings in the Microsoft Places PowerShell that may look like backend metadata but most of these settings will actually change the Places user experience. As a result, it’s important to understand what these settings change on the user interface side of the fence. In this post I’m going to go through the settings that are available and how they surface to users in the Places app.

Note: The Places Explorer/Finder is only available for users that have a Teams Premium Licence. This is most of the functionality that is covered in this post, so keep that in mind.

This post contains all the required PowerShell settings to be able to configure Microsoft Places. However, if you don’t want to waste your time with PowerShell you can always use my Microsoft Places Viewer tool to make these configuration settings:

Get it here: https://www.myteamslab.com/2025/02/microsoft-places-viewer.html

Floor Sort Order

When creating floors there is an attribute called SortOrder which will determine in what order Floors will show up in the Floor list in Places. If you don't set this value then the floors will end up in the order in which they were assigned in the system. Below is an example of how your floor list can end up if you don't set sort order correctly at the time of configuring your floors:

Based on this, I would recommend that you always set the sort order of the floor when you're creating it. This value cannot be changed later so it's important to set this when you're first creating the floors.

Room Finder Features

Room Finder is an experience that you get in the Explore tab in the Places app when you have a Teams Premium license. You get to the room explorer via the “Help me find a room” button:

Room Finder – Device/Capabilities

In the Room Finder you’ll see a list of rooms that are available to book. As part of the information provided about the room you can see what equipment is in the room. The generic equipment types supported are Display, Video and Microsoft Teams Room devices. This gives the user an idea of the level of video conference experience that the room can provide.

 

When the room has been configured as having Display, Video and/or MTR capabilities the user can use the “features” filter to filter the rooms to only the ones with the selected level of feature support. For example, if the user just wants a room with a Display, they can filter for that:

In order for these values to be populated in Microsoft Places UI, the administrator needs to do some configuration. Here’s the way these features are handled in the PowerShell configuration:

Display: If the DisplayDeviceName attribute has any value assigned, then the Display icon will be shown in the Room Finder. Note: In the case below I have configured “Sony 50 Inch” display in the setting. The user does not get to see this additional information though - they just get to see that there is a "Display" device.

Video: If the VideoDeviceName attribute has any value assigned, then the Video icon will be shown in the Room Finder. Note: in the case below I have configured a “Jabra Panacast” in the setting. The user does not get to see this additional information though - they will just get to see that there is a "Video" device.

MTR (Microsoft Teams Room): If the MTREnabled attribute set to $true in PowerShell then the room will have the “Teams Device” icon displayed in the Room Finder.

 Here's the PowerShell for doing this configuration:

Example:

Set-PlaceV3 -Identity "CoolRoom@contoso.com " –DisplayDeviceName "Sony 50 inch" –VideoDeviceName "Jabra Panacast" –MTREnabled $true

 

Room Finder - Amenities

If you want to display custom text to users (as well as filter by them) in Room Finder, you can use the Tags configuration in the Microsoft Place PowerShell. This gives you the ability to give additional information about the room that may be custom for your working environment. Below is an example of how the Tags get displayed in the Room Finder:

You configure tags like this:

Example:

Set-PlaceV3 -Identity "CoolRoom@contoso.com" -Tags "Poly X30", "Good Audio", "Great Mics"

 

Tags also become part of the filtering list of features that the user can use to help find the right room for the occasion. You will want to be studious about the number of Tags you use because you will not want a heap of random things showing up in the filter list: 

 

Room Finder - Capacity

Rooms can have a capacity value assigned to them. This gives the user the ability to filter for rooms that will be suitable for the size of meeting that they’re setting up.

The Capacity filter in the Room Finder in Microsoft Places looks like this:

When the user changes the capacity filter, only the rooms with a capacity larger than the value they have entered will be displayed. 

Capacity is configured in Microsoft Places PowerShell as follows:

Example:

Set-PlaceV3 -Identity CoolRoom@contoso.com -Capacity 10

Room Finder - Wheelchair Accessibility

Another specific tag that Microsoft has allowed in the Rooms Finder is to highlight if the room is Wheelchair accessible. This adds another item to the Amenities section in the rooms details. Here’s an example:

 To configure this use the following PowerShell:

Example:

Set-PlaceV3 -Identity "CoolRoom@contoso.com " –IsWheelChairAccessible $true 

Desk Pool Finder - Features

The Desk Finder in Microsoft Places works in the same way as it does in the Room Finder, however, there are fewer settings that will show up for desk pools than we previously saw with rooms. You get to the Desk Finder by clicking on the "Help me find a desk" button in the Places app:

 

Desk Finder – Capacity

In a similar way to rooms, desk pools can also have a "Capacity" value configured for them. In the case of Desk Pools, the capacity setting has a different function. For rooms, the capacity is used for showing the user how many people they could fit in the room for their meeting. For a desk pool, the capacity value describes how many people can book the space (or desk out of the available desks) for the day. In the desk finder you can see that the capacity displays how many available desks there are in that area out of the configured capacity:

 

Each time a user reserves a desk in the desk pool the capacity will reduce by one until it has reached the capacity and no more can be booked.

Note: If you don’t have a capacity set it will appear in the Desk Finder as being “Unavailable”, which looks like this: 

  

Desk Finder – Tags

For desk pools, you can also assign Tags in the same way as you can for rooms. A difference that I’ve noticed in testing is that the Tags are not displayed in the details of the space as they are on rooms. I imagine that this is something that will be fixed over time. The Features filter displays all the Tags that have been applied to the various desk pools and you’ll be able to filter based on these settings. Here’s an example of the feature filter with Tags being shown in it:

 

Here's how you can configure Tags for Desk Pools:

Example:

Set-PlaceV3 -Identity DeskPool01@contoso.com -Tags "Awesome Space", "chairs", "stuff"

 

 

Building Information

Buildings can have address information associated with them which is useful for helping users to find them in real life.

Here’s an example in the Places Explorer of what an address will show up like:

 

These settings are configured as follows: 

Example:

Set-PlaceV3 -Identity CoolRoom@contoso.com -CountryOrRegion "AU" -City "Melbourne" -State "VIC" -Street "1 Bourke Street"

 

 

Building Links

Each building can have web-based links associated with it so you can link out to things that may be relevant for that location. Some examples of this might be catering or park links for people to know how to access these things:

 

The Services and Amenities links are configured as follows:

Example:

Set-PlaceV3 -Identity CoolRoom@contoso.com -ResourceLinks @{name="Parking";value="https://contoso.com/parking";type="Url"}, @{name="Catering";value="https://contoso.com/catering";type="Url"}

Adding Links to Apps

If you want to link to another Microsoft Teams app you can do so by using the MetaOsApp type in the ResourceLinks setting. Here’s an example:

When adding an app you need to make sure first that the app that you want to add support Microsoft 365, Outlook and Teams. You do this by looking in the Teams Admin Centre under Teams Apps > Manage apps for the three icons in the Supported on column:

 

Once you know the app is supported you then need to find the apps App ID. You do so by looking in the Teams Admin Center Teams Apps > Manage apps > Open an App:

Then in the places PowerShell you can add the Teams App link along with the previous links added, like so:

Example:

Set-PlaceV3 -Identity CoolRoom@contoso.com -ResourceLinks @{name="Access Manager";value="6de4a040-e849-4a16-ab20-a0470312e6f9";type="MetaosApp"}

Room Images

It's a good idea to add images for each of your rooms and spaces so that users have a chance to see what the physical space looks like before they book it.

This can be done in Microsoft Entra (Entra > Identity > All Users > Select Room Account):

 

Click on the Camera icon where the account image is and upload the image:

 Add your image and Upload:

 

Now when the users view the room in the Room Finder they can see a nice image of what the room looks like to help them make the decision on whether to book that particular room.

 

The Wrap Up

Hopefully this deep dive on Microsoft Places settings has left you in a state of pure bliss. You now understand all there is to understand about the settings available for Microsoft Places…. until Microsoft undoubtably release more features at some random time in the future. But don’t think about that, just live in the moment. Enjoy yourself for this fleeting period. Cheers.