Question Use laptop speakers EXCEPT for Teams calls/meetings?

[Doni49]

I have a laptop I use for my job. We use MS Teams for meetings and calls between employees (landline phone for outside calls).

I keep my headset connected to the docking station to make it easier to answer incoming Teams calls. But I only wear the headset during calls and meetings (I take it off immediately after).

Because of this, I never hear notification sounds (new email arrived, incoming Teams call etc).

I found a way to set the laptop speaker as the default speaker and tell Teams to use the headset for it's notifications.

That works somewhat. But it still wants to send notifications about incoming calls to the headset (since it's generated by Teams).

As an additional wrinkle, I work from home 3 days a week and 2 in the office. Each location has a separate headset that I keep connected to a docking station in each location.

When I'm at home, I want Teams to use the home headset. At the office, use the office headset.

Essentially I'm looking for a way to give it a priority list. If Home headset is available, use it. If office headset is available, use it it. Otherwise use the laptop speakers.

Is there a way to accomplish this?

 

[Ralston18]

You might be able to tinker with Task Scheduler a bit.

Perhaps trigger some change in audio depending on Teams running or not. (Or being stopped and started.)

Likewise you may be able create or find some macro, or script to automate the headset selection.

Powershell for example: Reference - FYI.

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2292318-select-audio-device-with-powershell

[Note I have not tested the script - presented only as an option that may or may not be viable.]

However your requirements, valid by all means, do require quite a bit of logic and processing by what ever code etc, is applied.

Which may become cumbersome. Which, in turn means, that as soon as Microsoft, Team, or some other participating software or configuration changes, then the code may become moot and need to be redone. And that can happen at both locations - home and office.

You may end up continually finding that what was working, suddenly stops working. Then you may have a scramble to get it all working again.

Probably can be accomplished but there is a lot to be said for simplicity and to just keep doing as you have been doing.

As a compromise, consider just a short Powershell script or other bit of code to simply toggle your choice of headset. Forgo any automated/logical selection.

Afterthought:

Click the small speaker icon usually located in the lower right screen corner. A menu of audio related configuration options will appear.

Each menu item, in turn, leads to any number of windows, tabs, and properties allowing control and configuration of audio devices.

Explore the menus. Very likely that, with just a couple of clicks you may be able to access the applicable window and switch headsets/audio ports etc..