Manage Meeting Options in Teams App

 

You can now manage the meeting options through the Teams app in the meeting itself (rather than the web page management link we used to have to do). To do this from within the meeting, click on the ellipses (...)  button at the top of the window and then select Meeting Options

Now we can see, and change any of the default settings:

Who can bypass the lobby:

Here we can alter the default setting which was set at our tenant level. We may need to open the lobby to others by default in instances where the meeting owner can't make the meeting or want to allow guests join this (or recurring) meetings.

We can chose the following options here:

 

Who can bypass the lobby?	What happens	Recommended when...
Only you	As the meeting organizer, only you can get into your meeting directly. Everyone else will wait in the lobby.	You want everyone else to wait in the lobby until you're ready to admit them.
People I invite*	Anyone who receives the invitation, including those to whom it's forwarded, will join the meeting directly. This doesn't include distribution lists—people must be invited individually. If you don't want people to forward the invite to others, turn off Allow Forwarding in the invitation.	You want a specific, limited group of people to join the meeting directly, and everyone else to wait in the lobby.
People in my organization	Only people within your org can get into your meeting directly. Everyone else will wait in the lobby.	You want all guests and external people to wait in the lobby so you can approve them one by one.
People in my organization and guests	People in your org and guests (including those who have different email domains than yours) can get into your meetings directly.	You want all external people (anyone outside your org, except guests) to wait in the lobby so you can approve them one by one.
People in my organization and trusted organizations, and guests	People in your Teams org, external participants from trusted organizations, and guests can get into your meetings directly.	You want some external people to wait in the lobby so you can approve them one by one.
Everyone	Anyone who has access to the meeting link gets into the meeting directly, including people who call in.	You don’t want anyone to wait in the lobby. You want everyone to be able to join your meetings without specific approval.

 

NOTE: Trusted organisations are those you specifically list in your "Allowed Domains" under Org-Wide Settings > External Access

 

Next we see the option to Always let callers bypass the lobby. If we enable this setting, then people calling in by phone will join your meeting without having to wait for someone to admit them.  We definitely want this disabled in most cases for security, especially if the Announce when callers join or leave?  feature is disabled also. This setting announces the number of the caller when they enter or leave the meeting. This only applies to users calling in by phone.

 

Who can present?

By default, your organisation may limit presenters by default to Everyone in the organisation, but users can override . If you are overriding this to allow guests or everyone.

 

Who can present?	What happens
Everyone	Anyone who has access to the meeting link will join the meeting as a presenter.
People in my organization	Only people in your org will be presenters. External participants will join as attendees.
Specific people	Only people you choose from the list of invitees will be presenters. Everyone else will join as attendees.
Only me	Only the organizer will be a presenter. All other participants will join as attendees.

 

It is important to note at this point what extra permissions the Presenter has over the Attendee, its not just about presenting their screen or a PowerPoint:

 

Capability	Organizer	Presenter	Attendee
Speak and share video
Participate in meeting chat
Share content
Privately view a PowerPoint file shared by someone else
Take control of someone else's PowerPoint presentation
Mute other participants
Prevent attendees from unmuting themselves
Remove participants
Admit people from the lobby
Change the roles of other participants
Start or stop recording
Start or stop live transcription

 

 

I am advocating for a new role here "Sharer" whereby a user could share their screen but not control the rest of the functions of a presenter like kicking people out of a meeting or recording etc... Think education here!! You can support this idea too on Uservoice

 

Now we can also Allow mic for attendees and Allow video for attendees to be enabled or disabled. This is a great feature if you want to hold a webinar with some management over what users are doing. A bit in between a meeting and a Live Event.

 

At the same time we can chose what happens in Chat during meetings, handy to control DLP and ensure chat messages stop once the meeting stops either!

 

 Finally we can chose to enable or disable the Reactions during meetings.