Forum Discussion
I am the meeting organizer, but Teams will not allow me to access Meeting Options
I want to take the time to document all this nicely, but I never find the time. So here is a brief, I cannot be sure if it is the same issue as yours, nor have I time to carefully verify all this, but I thought I’d share it anyway in case it is helpful. Please let me know!
If my assumptions are correct, I believe that this issue arises because of a bug in the "Teams Meeting add-in for Microsoft Outlook".
How it happens
It occurs when you schedule a meeting using the Outlook desktop calendar, and in Outlook desktop you have more than one Microsoft 365 Organization account (Exchange Online “EO” account). You also have the Teams desktop app installed, and signed into your primary account. You have a default EO account, but you create a Teams calendar meeting in a secondary account (or any other than your default).
Symptoms
When you create a meeting in this way, you create what I “technically” call a “dud meeting”. With a dud meeting:
- If you try to join it at any time you will get the message “When the meeting starts, we’ll let people know you’re waiting.” – even though you may be the meeting host.
- If you try to change the dud meeting “meeting options” you will get the message “Only meeting organisers can make changes” – even though you may be the meeting organiser. It will even state there the correct username.
Workaround
The workaround is, to avoid the use of the “Teams Meeting add-in for Microsoft Outlook”. A simple way to do this is to only create Teams meetings using the calendar within Teams itself (when logged in to the relevant account), using Teams web app, or perhaps the desktop app.
Why it happens (maybe)
I believe this issue occurs due to account-specific data that is transacted and compiled between the Teams desktop app and the “Teams Meeting add-in for Microsoft Outlook” at the point it attempts to schedule the meeting. Somewhere there is an assumption that connects the identity information to your default Outlook org / EO account. Even if you have a secondary EO calendar set up in Outlook desktop and you create the Teams meeting in that Outlook desktop calendar, the Teams meeting that is created in that secondary EO calendar has some kind of identity meta data that is from your primary account, not the secondary account. Thus “primary account” is the “organiser” (regardless of what it says). That account does not belong in this secondary organisation, so it is invalid. You can’t join that meeting, or administrate it.
- Well documented!
- Having been experiencing this issue with a client where some people work within multiple 365 environments, there does appear to be some correlation between meetings where Organiser rights are lost after being created via the Outlook Calendar, obviously via the Teams add-in. We've done significant diagnostics and testing after clearing the Teams cache (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/troubleshoot/teams-administration/clear-teams-cache) for 'multiple 365 org' users, which hasn't resolved it, and I am tending towards your conclusion re the Teams Outlook add-in. I can say that people who create meetings in Outlook definitely appear to have more issues with lost Organiser rights than those only using Teams, but at this stage I don't have the data to confirm that Teams-created meetings always work, and it's certainly true that some Outlook-created meetings are fine, so there does seem to be some path through the Outlook Teams add-in which causes the problem. It would be nice to feel that Microsoft were investing as much time and energy in trying to understand this issue as many in this conversation, especially as they are the ones with the power to resolve it! It's astonishing that this thread has a reason to remain live after over 2 years...
You are absolutely correct about the phenomenon. This is exactly what happens to me. And I suspect your assumption about the bug in the Teams Add-On for Outlook is also correct.
A year and a half later and Microsoft hasn't fixed it. I still have the same problem.
JimbotronInteresting to see your experience reinforcing that of @StevenMunden !
I think the fact that the Teams client doesn't allow more than one enterprise O365 account is an indicator of the root of the problem.
Microsoft assumed people will only ever use Teams with one and only one enterprise O365 account. So, the Outlook add-on just assigns the meeting organizer based on the account you've used to log in to the Teams client, rather than the account/calendar where you create the meeting in Outlook. The weird thing is that the correct account shows up as the organizer when you view the meeting in the Teams client, but it tells you you're not the organizer if you try to change settings, and it won't let you start the call. This has led to many frustrating experiences for my customers, and is not a good look.
In the end, I uninstalled the Teams client. I use teams only from within Edge. And I create calendar meetings only from within Teams within Edge. Until they fix this bug, it's the safest way to avoid having a meeting with all of your clients waiting and you can't start it.
