Teams meeting options are how you can control who can do what in your meeting. In the Education sphere this control is essential but they are also very useful in many other scenarios.
Once you are into the meetings option screen let’s look at what the settings mean and which you should choose.
Lobby
The lobby settings allow you to protect your meeting from uninvited guests. The Invited Users setting is probably the best in most scenarios, however at the time of writing this option is rolling out and not available to everyone yet, so the second best is people in my organisation or Just Me. After all you don’t want any ‘Zoom bombers’ invading your Teams meeting.
Callers are people who join via a phone call, if that feature is available to you, and you can also choose to put these dial-in users into the lobby too.
Presenters
Before diving into these options you do need to consider the 3 roles in a Teams Meeting (see https://bit.ly/3qgQ5Yj for full details). To simplify, when you create a meeting you are the organiser and have full control of the meeting and all features, presenters can share content, their video and mute/unmute while attendees only have the ability to unmute if the organiser allows.
| Capability | Organizer | Presenter | Attendee |
| Speak and share video | Y | Y | Y |
| Participate in meeting chat | Y | Y | Y |
| Share content | Y | Y | N |
| Privately view a PowerPoint file shared by someone else | Y | Y | Y |
| Take control of someone else’s PowerPoint presentation | Y | Y | N |
| Mute other participants | Y | Y | N |
| Prevent attendees from unmuting themselves | Y | Y | N |
| Remove participants | Y | Y | N |
| Admit people from the lobby | Y | Y | N |
| Change the roles of other participants | Y | Y | N |
| Start or stop recording | Y | Y | N |
| Set Meeting Options | Y | N | N |
| View Attendance Report During Meeting | Y | N | N |
| Control Breakout Rooms | Y | N | N |
Mute
Often attendees join with a lot of background noise. If you are running a training or briefing style meeting this can be very disruptive, so it may be appropriate to mute attendees and block them from unmuting. This option is also one that is often changed during a meeting.
Chat
Meeting chat is a useful addition to a meeting, but when it continues after a meeting or is abused by attendees then it can become a distractor. Like the allow to unmute setting, this can be changed during a meeting at need. Only allowing chat during the meeting, does not mean the chat disappears after the meeting, but that it becomes read only once the meeting ends.
Reactions
Reactions are visible feedback which show on screen and can be used to engage with the presenter.
Coming Soon – Video Availability settings to block attendees switching on their video is due to start rolling out in April 2021 (see Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365)
To access the meeting options before the meeting use option 1 or 2 below. To access the meeting options during the meeting I prefer option 4 below as you don’t leave the meeting, but option 3 will take you to the same page as options 1 & 2, if you prefer.
- From Teams Calendar:
- From Meeting Invite:
- During the meeting
- During the meeting within the meeting interface
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