Unlock the full power of Microsoft Teams meetings by mastering the meeting options. Whether you’re hosting a small team discussion or a large-scale webinar, customizing these settings can save you time, reduce disruptions, and ensure a more productive meeting experience.
From controlling who can join to managing screen sharing and participant permissions, Teams offers a range of tools designed to make your meetings smoother and more secure. Dive in to discover how these features can transform your virtual collaboration and help you achieve your goals with ease.
About meeting options
Microsoft Teams meeting offers a robust set of meeting options that allow you to customize your virtual gatherings to suit various needs and preferences of attendees. By understanding and effectively using these settings, you can improve your Teams meeting experience.
From the meeting invites, dedicated phone numbers added, controlling who can join your meeting to managing audio and video permissions, meeting options provide total control over the meeting environment. Whether you're hosting a small team meeting or a large-scale webinar, tailoring these settings is important for a seamless and efficient collaboration experience.
Announce when callers join or leave
Organizers can enable alerts to be sent when participants who use dial-in numbers into a meeting using their phones, informing them of both join and leave times.
Who can present?
Organizers can set who is automatically assigned the video presenter role in a meeting.
Who can bypass the lobby?
- Only you: You, as the organizer, are the only one who enters directly. This is ideal when you want everyone to wait until you're ready.
- People in my organization: Only colleagues from your company join Microsoft Teams directly. This is useful if you want external guests to wait for approval.
- People in my organization and guests: Both colleagues and invited guests (with different email domains and call-in numbers) enter directly. This is suitable when you want some external attendees to wait in the lobby.
- Trusted organizations and guests: People from your company, trusted partner organizations, and invited guests can join directly, especially if you're assigning call-in numbers. This is helpful if you want to control access for some external participants.
- Everyone: Anyone with the meeting link or dial-in number directly, including those joining by dedicated phone number options. This is best when you don't need to approve anyone beforehand and enable conference bridges.
Reactions
Microsoft Reactions is a feature that allows users to quickly express their feelings live reactions or opinions in a Teams conference without sending a full reply. It's similar to the reaction feature on many social media platforms. You can choose from various emojis or icons to react to what is being said.
Allow attendees to unmute
To manage larger meetings effectively, organizers can disable the automatic unmute feature. This setting requires participants to request speaking time by raising a virtual hand. Organizers then have granular control over who can speak by manually unmuting and muting participants. While this approach demands more active moderation from the organizer, it significantly reduces unexpected interruptions and background noise.
By granting speaking permissions on a case-by-case basis, the organizer can maintain a structured and focused meeting environment in the Teams app. This method is particularly beneficial in larger groups where managing multiple participants simultaneously can be challenging.
CART Captions
The meeting organizer can activate CART captioning for a meeting, which creates a shareable link for the captioning provider to join.
Meeting chat
Meeting organizers can limit phone numbers or prevent chat messages to focus discussion. This is a viable option if you need to quickly update the team about something that won't take up much time.
Accessing Settings for Meetings
When scheduling a new Teams' meeting within Outlook, or Teams Calendar, you will find a "Meeting Options" link associated with setting the meeting details. Additional access points to meeting options are available within Outlook.
Teams Call
To find Meeting Options during a Teams conference, call:
- Click the three-dot icon at the top of the meeting window.
- Click "Settings".
- Select the "Meeting options" icon.
Through Microsoft Outlook
To access Meeting Options in Outlook, launch Microsoft Outlook web app or the desktop client app, and navigate to Settings, then select the Meeting Options link.
All the meeting details
You can find the "Meeting Options" under all the meeting invite details information in your email invite for Teams.
Teams Calendar
Open the desired meeting in your Teams calendar and locate the "Meeting Options" on the right-hand side of your screen.
Default Microsoft Teams options
Your Microsoft Teams admin center sets default meeting options that can impact access to your meeting security and available features.
If you experience a Microsoft Teams network outage, your meeting settings might revert to these default options. To ensure your meeting settings are as desired, review them before the meeting starts. Once the network issue is resolved, your settings should return to normal.
If you continue to have problems, contact your IT admin support.
Change meeting options
As the meeting organizer, you can customize your meeting settings. Here's how:
For scheduled meetings:
- Open your Teams calendar.
- Select the meeting or conference ID numbers you want to change.
- Click "Options," then "More options." This will open in a new browser window.
During a meeting:
- Click "More actions" in the meeting controls.
- Choose "Settings," then "Meeting options."
Lock a meeting
To prevent unwanted participants from joining your Teams meeting, even with dedicated phone numbers, you can lock it. Once locked, no one else can enter can't bypass the lobby with a dial-in number.
To lock a meeting:
- Click the People icon in the meeting controls.
- Select More Actions and then choose Lock the Microsoft Teams meeting.
Note: Locking a meeting doesn't prevent attendees from accessing the chat, recording, or other meeting information, it only prevents trying to bypass the lobby.
Conclusion
Unlocking the full potential of Teams options for meeting details can significantly improve your virtual collaboration, making your sessions more productive and engaging. Recording meetings, especially when at least one person is sharing their screen, is crucial to ensure that important details are captured and can be referenced later.
Bluedot excels in this area, offering seamless recording and transcription and additional features like auto-generated emails, meeting templates, and secure storage for your Google Meet sessions. With Bluedot, you can focus on the conversation while it handles the rest, ensuring every detail is preserved and easily accessible for future use.
%201.svg)
