Schedule Teams meetings for other people without attending

ChristianBergstrom 

I tried this today and it didn't work. I had the meeting set up for "Everyone" and I still had to jump on the meeting, let my boss in and then leave the meeting. There has to be another way unless I am doing something wrong. Please advise. 

SimC-S 

   Wow.   I realize it may seem overwhelming, but there are REAL, well thought out reasons for this. If Microsoft just used the KISS method for everything, it would be a security nightmare, with every individual deciding what levels of rules, practices, compliance, and governance THEY wanted.....which lets face it, would be minimal. I understand user's put their jobs, and needs first, and that is important, but not at ANY COST. The companies that use the products may very well have other needs too, like not getting sued for some user's failure to enforce compliance policies. Thats why these things are typically more controlled in The TAC, and require thought, planning, and development. It's not all about just getting what YOU want done. It's about Much, much more.

SimC-S Sorry for the late reply here. Yes, I agree that there's much to take in when it comes to meeting settings, roles and options.

Basically, to keep it really simple, you can set that "everyone" (anyone with access to the meeting link) can both join and start a meeting. Check with your Teams administrator if you have that possibility.

The above isn't the most recommended approach from a security perspective though hence why we use Teams roles and lobby, see below.

Roles in a Teams meeting (microsoft.com)

Change participant settings for a Teams meeting (microsoft.com)

ChristianJBergstrom Doesn't this demonstrate how overly complex all this is, and the need for huge simplification. Why a meeting organiser cannot simply set the roles for each attendee in the Scheduling Assistant, beats me, e.g. set an attendee, no matter who, as being able to start and host the meeting, and set themselves as non-participatory - for just that meeting. My wife is suffering from this at work, with the change from Zoom to Teams, with the departmental secretaries & she finding it exasperating trying to set up meetings for her to run and outside customers (normally non-Teams users) attending.

It seems Microsoft has never taken on board the mantra "if all else fails, do the obvious", but instead, "let's make it as hard and unintuitive as possible"! It all stems from MS trying to be too clever, which always fails.

ChristianJBergstrom Thanks Christian. In Meeting Policies, under Manage Policies we have 7 (presumably default) policies:

Open Access Yes
AllOn No
RestrictedAnonymousAccess No
AllOff No
RestrictedAnonymousNoRecording No
Kiosk No
Global (Org-wide default) No

I can (and did) only edit the first and last policy. Is there anything more I need to do?

Cheers,

Darryl

DarGar Hello, no worries. I get that this is causing headaches sometimes as it's kind of tricky depending on the tenant config and the user types involved. And there are quite some differences as to what's allowed and not for companies in general (policy, legal etc.) Basically it all comes down to your identity, are you trusted or not, and the lobby options that are set for the meeting.

When you have users outside of your own org. is when you usually have to give it some thought. The co-org. role you linked to will be a great addition, but will only work when being in the same organization. Meaning the co-organizer have to be in your org.

What would be the most seamless approach (not most secure) is to enable anonymous users can join a meeting and anonymous users can start a meeting. The first being under TAC Meeting settings and the latter in the meeting policy. And then set the lobby to allow 'everyone'.

Can also use PowerShell for the above.

Let me add the Lobby option "People I invite" too. See more details here 

Change participant settings for a Teams meeting (microsoft.com)

ChristianJBergstrom Hi Christian. Thanks for applying yourself to this. We are an executive recruitment firm and it's common for us to set up (MS Teams) interviews between third parties (our client and our candidate).

Currently, we impose on our client(s) to create the MS Teams meeting(s), so that we don't have to attend simply to let the participants join from the lobby.

Is there an elegant way of achieving this currently? I've not been able to achieve this with the advice provided in this thread.

If not, will this be achievable with this functional update - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=81391? Is this still slated for release this month?

Cheers,

Darryl

ChristianBergstrom in this instance the user isn't the organizer. Scenario: boss calls receptionist and says,, "Set up a meeting for me and others" - The need is to be able to create the meeting and have to invitees participate fully (presenting, becoming presenter, sharing, etc.). The question is How do you do it WITHOUT participating AND WITHOUT being present to start the meeting/select presenters?

Hello, as already explained this can be accomplished. You can actually use this being rolled out right now https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=68730 and is by far the easiest way to do it! (People I invite)

And rather soon it going to be even easier when the introduce the co-organizer meeting role https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=81391

Anyway, if you haven't got the above setting yet it's all about who you invite (1) your tenant Team settings for anonymous join (2), meeting policies (3) and the particular meeting set up (4). Let's say I want to schedule a meeting with two anonymous accounts (i.e. Gmail) but I am not going to be able to attend, but I have to schedule it as no one else can and no one from my org. can attend either. As I am the organizer I need to configure the meeting options so it fit the scenario and allow "everybody" to automatically go trough the lobby and let anonymous start a meeting. If not choosing that they are gonna end up in the lobby only as there's no one to let them in and they can't initiate the meeting. In this scenario my org. must allow for anonymous join, anonymous can start a meeting and everyone can present in the meeting options "Anyone who has access to the meeting link will join the meeting as a presenter".

For refrence https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-participant-settings-for-a-teams-meeting-53261366-dbd5-45f9-aae9-a70e6354f88e

Note the "You won't be able to select someone from a different org as a presenter." This can instead be changed during the meeting by an organizer/presenter (role).

CaryAbbott We have this too. 

As a recruitment agency, we need to be able to set up all the interviews but not be present. 

Did you ever get to the bottom of this?

ChristianBergstrom 

Thank you for this information. 

When I set up a meeting that I am not attending, it is inputted on my Outlook calendar. If I try to remove it, I'm canceling the whole meeting. Is there another way to schedule others without scheduling myself? I don't want to constantly second-guess which meetings on my calendar I need to attend vs. which ones I do not.

Thanks again for your help.

Yes, you can. Don’t need a bot. I actually explained how to do it above. It comes down to the meeting settings such as lobby and who can present if allowing ”Everyone” or not (or federated, guests if your client is that).