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Meeting options are a group of settings that enable, limit, or turn off certain capabilities during a meeting. Organizers can change meeting options to affect how participants engage and interact during a meeting.

Default meeting options are determined by an org's IT admin, but organizers can change them for a specific meeting.  

In this article

About meeting options

Default meeting options

Change meeting options

Lock a meeting

About meeting options

Meeting option

What it does

When to use it

Sensitivity

Sensitivity labels add security to confidential meetings. Certain meeting options, like recording a meeting, may be unavailable depending on which label you choose. 

Select Sensitivity to choose a sensitivity label from the dropdown menu. 

Use sensitivity labels if confidential information will be shared during your meeting and you want to apply more secure settings automatically.

Who can bypass the lobby?

Decide who gets into meetings directly and who should wait to be let in by using the lobby.

If you use the lobby, you (and anyone else allowed to admit people) will see a list of people in the lobby. From there you can choose to admit or deny them.  

Use the lobby to add another layer of security to your meeting.

Easily manage larger meetings by allowing people from trusted organizations and accounts to bypass the lobby.

People dialing in can bypass the lobby

Turn the People dialing in can bypass the lobby toggle on to allow anyone joining your meeting by phone to enter without waiting in the lobby.   

Depending on policies set by your IT admin, people dialing in might be placed in the lobby temporarily until someone from your org or a trusted org joins the meeting.

Apply this setting in larger meetings to reduce the amount of people waiting and manage the lobby more easily.

Announce when people dialing in join or leave. 

Turn the Announce when people dialing in join or leave toggle on to receive alerts when people calling in by phone join or leave your meeting. Your admin might have enabled these alerts by default.

Use this setting when you want to keep track of who is still in your meeting, and who has already left.

Choose co-organizers

After you invite people to your meeting, add co-organizers to give them most organizer capabilities.

Add co-organizers for more help managing the meeting, lobby, and breakout rooms.

Who can present

See Roles in a Teams meeting for details about selecting presenters and changing someone's role before and during a meeting.   

Note: Meeting rooms are part of your org, so they'll join meetings the same way any other participant in your org does.

Designate presenters before and during your meeting to keep your meeting focused and on-track.

Manage what attendees see

Specify presenters and turn on the Manage what attendees see toggle to show only shared content and people you bring on screen. 

This option will limit attendee mic and camera use.

Use this setting to keep your meeting on-track, professional, and free of distractions.

Allow mic for attendees

Turn the Allow mic for attendeestoggle on or off to change attendee mic permissions.

Use this setting to manage attendee discussion during a meeting.

Allow camera for attendees 

Turn the Allow camera for attendees toggle on or off to change attendee camera permissions.

Turn this setting off to keep focus on shared content and presenters during a meeting and encourage attendee participation.

Record automatically 

Turn the Record automatically toggle on to record your meeting as soon as it starts.

Apply this setting to make sure all your meeting is recorded until you stop recording or the meeting ends.

Meeting chat

Change this setting to let attendees chat anytime, during a meeting only, or not at all. 

By default, anyone invited to a meeting can participate in the meeting chat before, during, and after the meeting.  

Change this setting to limit or open attendee discussion during a meeting or event.

Turn off copying or forwarding of meeting chat

In Teams Premium, turn the Turn off copying or forwarding of meeting chat toggle on to prevent attendees from copying and pasting content from a meeting chat. When this is turned on, right-click to copy, ctrl + C, Forward message, Share to Outlook, and Copy link won't be available. 

This does not prevent screen capture or third-party software from being used. 

Turn this toggle on to make sure sensitive information isn't shared from meeting chats.

Allow reactions

By default, attendees can send live reactions during a meeting to express how they feel about what’s being shared.

Turn off the Allow reactions toggle in larger meetings to limit distractions or keep the meeting recording free from reaction pop-ups.

Provide CART Captions

Turn on the Provide CART Captions toggle to use Communication access real-time translation (CART) captions during a meeting. 

CART captions are generated by a trained CART captioner who listens and translates speech into text instantly. 

Use CART captions to provide accurately translated captions and make your meeting more accessible and inclusive.

Enable Green room

The Green room allows organizers and presenters to join an event while attendees wait in the lobby.

Use the Green room to prepare for an event before attendees are present. Test your audio and video, shared content, and more.

Enable language interpretation

Turn on the Enable language interpretation toggle to add a professional interpreter to your meeting who can instantly translate the speaker’s language into another in real-time.

Break down the language barrier in multi-lingual meetings with language interpretation.

Q&A

Enable Q&A to allow attendees to ask questions, post replies, and post anonymously during a meeting. Q&A can be unmoderated or moderated by  meeting co-organizers.

Use Q&A to make large events more interactive and engaging for attendees. Receive and respond to people’s questions in real-time.

Who can record

In Teams Premium, choose whether to allow presenters to record a meeting in addition to organizers and co-organizers.

Whoever starts a meeting recording owns the recording and can delete it later. Use this setting to manage who can start and own the recording.

End-to-end encryption

End-to-end encryption is available in Teams Premium to help protect sensitive meeting information.  

Turn the End-to-end encryption toggle on to encrypt meeting data at its origin and decrypt it at its destination. 

Use end-to-end encryption for an extra layer of security during highly confidential meetings.

Apply a watermark to shared content 

When you turn on the Apply a watermark to shared content toggle, available in Teams Premium, each meeting participant will see a watermark with their name and email address cast across shared visual content.

Apply a watermark to highly sensitive meetings to add an extra layer of security and deter attendees from sharing unauthorized screenshots.

Allow participants to rename themselves 

Turn on the Allow participants to rename themselves toggle to allow participants to change their display name during a meeting.

Enable this setting to give participants more discretion over how they want to be presented in a meeting.

Allow attendance report

Attendance reports contain meeting attendance details, including how long attendees stayed, and how long your meeting lasted, and more.  

Turn on the Allow attendance reporttoggle to generate, view, and download attendance reports. 

Use attendance reports to gain more insights about your meeting and participant behaviors.

Meeting Theme

Meeting themes, available in Teams Premium, apply visuals from your organization, like logos and brand colors, to your meeting interface.  

Turn on the Meeting Theme toggle to apply your organization’s custom theme.

Apply meeting themes for a more personalized, branded meeting experience.

Default meeting options

Default meeting options are set by your IT admin and may affect meeting security or which features you can use.  

Network outages 

In case of a Teams network outage, your meeting options might revert back to the defaults set by your IT admin. If this happens, check your meeting options before your meeting starts to make sure they’re set the way you want them.  

Your settings will return to normal once the outage is resolved. For more help, contact your IT admin. 

Change meeting options

If you organize a meeting, you can access and change its settings depending on the meeting type:

Scheduled meetings 

There are several different ways to get to Meeting options for a scheduled meeting:

  • In Teams, go to Calendar Meetings button, select a meeting, and then Meeting options
     

    Tip: Meeting options will open in a new window on your default browser. For the best experience, use Edge to open all meeting options.

  • In a meeting invitation, select Meeting options.

  • During a meeting, select More actions More options icon  at the top of the meeting window, and then Meeting options. A panel will open on the right, and you can change your options right from there.     

  • Another way to get there during a meeting is to select Show participants Show participants iconin the meeting controls. Then, above the list of participants, choose Manage permissions The manage participants icon in Microsoft Teams.

Instant meetings 

Once you've started a meeting by selecting Meet now Meet now button from a channel or Calendar Meetings button:

  1. Choose Show participants Show participants iconin your meeting controls. You'll see a list of everyone in the meeting.

  2. Above the list, select Manage permissions The manage participants icon in Microsoft Teamsto go to Meeting options.

During all other meetings, select More actions More options icon at the top of the meeting window, and then Settings>Meeting options. A panel will open on the right, and you can change your options from there.  

Lock a meeting

In Teams, meeting organizers can choose to lock their meetings to prevent subsequent join attempts. Anyone attempting to join a locked meeting from any device will be informed that the meeting is locked.

Once you're in a meeting, select Participants > ... > Lock the meeting (or unlock it when locked).

When a meeting is locked, no additional participants will be able to join, but invitees can still access the meeting chat, recording, and other meeting info.

Image showing the Participants dropdown with lock meeting option.

Image showing the lock meeting screen with "Lock" button at the bottom.
 

Note: Once participants leave the meeting, they will not be able to join again until the meeting is unlocked.

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