Q&A in Microsoft Teams meetings

Question and answer (Q&A) lets you manage questions from attendees as an organizer. Q&A is best for large, structured meetings—like town halls, webinars, all hands, and company trainings—where presenters take questions from attendees and answer them in real time.

As an organizer, you can choose to have a moderated or unmoderated Q&A. In Q&A settings, you can enable replies, anonymous posts, and more. Responses to questions are threaded in a conversation with the original question. As an organizer, you can assign the role of co-organizer to someone in the meeting, and they can also help screen questions as moderators.

Note: Q&A moderation capabilities are limited to organizers and co-organizers. If you want a person to moderate Q&A for your meeting, then add them as a moderator.

How to enable Q&A in your meeting

From Outlook:

Open a new calendar event.
Select Meeting Options at the top of the window.
Go to Enable Q&A and select the Yes toggle.

Meeting Options button in Outlook 2013

From Teams, before the meeting starts:

Schedule a meeting and send it.
Open the invite from your calendar and select Meeting options at the top.
Go to Enable Q&A and select the Yes toggle.

From Teams, during the meeting:

Select More actions at the top of the meeting window.
Select Meeting options.
Go to Enable Q&A and select the Yes toggle.

Notes:

Q&A must only be enabled through Meeting options. If you have used the Q&A app from the Teams app store, then remove the app and instead use Meeting options to enable Q&A. See instructions below on how to remove the Q&A app added through the Teams app store.
Q&A is available to attendees during the meeting through the meeting window and as a tab in meeting chat.

Best practices for setting up Q&A

Choose the following settings in Meeting options:

Choose co-organizers: Co-organizers can manage Q&A settings, moderate, and perform actions such as pinning a question and deleting posts.
Disable meeting chat [optional]: If you don’t want attendees to use the meeting chat in addition to Q&A, select Disabled from the dropdown.
Got to Enable Q&A and select Yes.
Save your changes.

Manage Q&A settings

Meeting organizers and co-organizers can manage Q&A settings and the attendee experience, such as enabling moderation, choosing whether attendees can post questions anonymously, and reply to conversations.

To get to Q&A settings, join your meeting as an organizer or co-organizer and select the gears icon.

Choose between a moderated and unmoderated meeting

In an unmoderated meeting, attendees’ questions will appear in the Q&A feed immediately.

If you have turned on moderation, you will see three headings in the Q&A thread. They are:

In review: When moderation is enabled, all new questions will appear in the In review tab. Any moderator (organizer or co-organizer) can review and either publish or dismiss questions.
Published: Published questions will be moved to the Published tab and visible to all attendees.
Dismissed: Dismissed questions will be moved to the Dismissed tab. Dismissed questions can be published later, if desired.

Attendee Q&A experience

Attendees can engage with Q&A in the Teams meeting on Teams Desktop, Mobile and web. Q&A is designed for meetings that require more structure. Whether a meeting is moderated or not, attendees will only see a single Q&A feed. They can post, reply, and react to questions in the Q&A feed.

If moderation is enabled, when attendees submit a question, they will be notified that the question has been received and will be published once the moderator approves.

Note: Q&A will not be available to View Only Attendees who join past the meeting capacity.

How to post an anonymous question

If enabled, attendees can choose to post questions anonymously when this setting is enabled by a moderator. The posted question is not associated with the attendee. Moderators can turn off anonymous posting at any time. Questions that were previously anonymously will continue to show up as anonymous.

Note: Replies and reactions on anonymous questions are not anonymous.

Teams Q&A app

What is the difference between setting up Q&A through the Teams app store versus using Meeting options?

We have simplified enabling Q&A through Meeting options. Going forward, Q&A must only be enabled through Meeting options. The Q&A app in the Teams app store will be removed in August 2022, so please only use Meeting options to set up Q&A in your meetings. If you are the organizer for meetings where Q&A was enabled through the Teams app store, please remove the Q&A app, and instead only enable through Meeting options.

Why am I seeing two Q&A icons in my meeting?

You’re seeing two Q&A icons in your meeting because Q&A was also enabled through Meeting options. Please remove the Q&A app that was added through the Teams app store using the instructions below. Please do this for all your meetings where you had previously added Q&A through the Teams app store.

Via the Teams desktop app, join the meeting where you previously added Q&A.
Select the second Q&A icon (next to Apps ) in the Teams meeting window—this is the Q&A experience that was added through the Teams app store.
With the Q&A tab open, select > Remove.
A confirmation will pop up Select Remove and you're done. This will permanently remove the app from your meetings.

For more information for admins, see https://aka.ms/QnAadmin