Meeting Templates

Meeting templates will help users create meetings with the correct settings in meeting options as the template applies those setting automatically. The meeting templates also help with governance as they enforce the meeting options set in the template. Templated meetings published to the user show up on the New Meeting button in the Teams client, which is what the Community Meeting option shown in the image below is.

Create a Meeting Template

To create a meeting template, in the Teams Admin Center choose Meetings > Meeting Templates and select Add

Add a name and description then select settings as desired, before saving the template. The normal restrictions on which options can be set in combination apply within the meeting template. e.g. Meetings using end-to-end encryption cannot be recorded.

As well as configuring the default settings for each option, the chosen setting can be locked so it cannot be edited by the meeting organiser.

Some settings can also be hidden, effectively making them unavailable for users

Whilst hiding an option may seem like a good thing to do and minimise the options available to users, it can lead to confusion with users familiar with the meeting options and a lack of clarity as to the features available in the meeting. When users are aware that settings have ben configured for specific security or governance reasons this avoids the belief that there is a bug or problem.

Options are grouped into categories:

Security
Audio and Video
Recording and Transcription
Roles
Meeting Engagement

Security Options

Applying a Sensitivity label to a meeting enforces settings for the other options and those options set by the label will be greyed out (unavailable to set, hidden or locked) in the meeting template.

Templates which apply sensitivity labels would be expected to lock the label in place, so it cannot be removed and the options altered, unless the label is a recommended setting. Sensitivity labels are created and managed in the Microsoft Purview Compliance Portal. Available labels will depend on the configuration of labels within your tenant. The sensitivity label option cannot be hidden, but can be locked once set.

Lobby options include all the settings for the lobby in standard meeting options. This option can be hidden and also locked once set.

The option to permit People calling in by phone from bypassing the lobby is controlled partly by the lobby bypass setting chosen. If this option is set from the lobby bypass it cannot be locked nor hidden, if it can be set manually then it can be locked and/or hidden.

Enable meeting end-to-end encryption, watermark for screenshare and watermark for video can all be locked and hidden.

Audio and Video Options

Both disable mic and camera for attendees can be locked and hidden in the template

Recording and Transcription Options

Recording and transcription options can both be locked or hidden.

Roles Options

The caller join notification option can be hidden and/or locked.

Meeting Engagement Options

Attendee chat option includes standard chat availability settings and can locked and/or hidden.

The remaining three options in the Meeting Engagement category, Reactions, Q&A and manage what attendees can see toggles, can all be hidden and/or locked.

Once the meeting template is saved it needs to be published.

Publishing a Meeting Template

To ensure the availability of a meeting template, in the Teams Admin Center go to Meetings > Meeting Template Policies. By default new templates are automatically added to Global meeting template policy.

Custom meeting template policies can be created and used to give different users different sets of templates.

To create a new meeting template policy select Add. Name the policy and include a description.

To hide a template from the policy, select the template and choose Hide

To move a policy from hidden templates to viewable templates select the template and choose Show

Save the policy and assign to users. Meeting template policies do not support assigning to a group.

New templates do take some time to populate through to users. As with some other policy driven settings this can be between 10 minutes or up to 24 hours.

Create a Meeting from a Meeting Template

To create a new meeting from a template, select the arrow nest to the New meeting button in the Teams calendar and choose the required template.

Create the meeting with title, invitees and other details as normal. In the image below you can see the Closed Customer Meeting template has applied a sensitivity label and is showing the options applied by the label in the options pane.

In this case the label is not enforced, so it can be removed and the settings changed.

Licensing

Meeting templates are only available to users who are assigned a Teams Premium license. Any user can join the meetings created with the template, subject to the meeting options defined in the template.

Platforms

Templates are supported across web, windows desktop and MacOS apps for Microsoft Teams, but not yet mobile apps

Admin and Set up

As a Teams admin, you will create templates and then publish them via a template policy to the users. This process is detailed above in this article. Templates including sensitivity labels will require the meeting organiser to also be assigned a Microsoft 365 E5 license, as part of the licensing requirements to use sensitivity labels in meetings.

Meeting Templates