Can I create a meeting within a meeting?

[Vanyajain]

Hi, I'm an educator. I have regular weekly 3- hour classes with my students. Once every few weeks, I will have a guest lecture (lecturer from outside the team) which will fall in the middle of my class. What is the best way to create a schedule and invite the guest lecturer to join in at the appropriate time, while the students may already be in the class? Thanks.

[#2]

@Vanyajain ,, Please share some sample data,,, all about regular classes & list of guest lectures,, subject & person then we may try to customize it, because it's not a general issue,, I may show you some method to automate create Time Table!

[#3]

The way I would do it is to invite the lecturer in the usual way - just like the students, but inform them that they need to join at a particular time. E.g. the lecture starts at 9AM and ends at 12PM (3 hours). They get the invitation that the "meeting" (lecture) starts at 9AM but inform the guest lecturer via email that they should present at 10:30AM or whatever the time may be. They join at that time and then starts presenting.

[#4]

@Marius Pretorius thanks for your suggestion. My concern is that many of my guest speakers are not in the same time zone as me. Hence, sending a meeting invite with the correct time for them to join would be ideal, so that there is no confusion. I'm thinking, maybe I should create a channel within my team where I invite guest lecturers and the students at the mid-class time. So the students join the class as usual on the general channel but join the guest lecture in the specific channel at the allotted time and can leave this and rejoin the original class when the guest lecture is over. Not sure if that is the best way though.

[#5]

Thanks @Rajesh_Sinha. Can you elaborate a bit more on what you are suggesting please?

[#6]

What time table you are supposed to create is like a personal data since we have no idea how & what would you like to accommodate. So please share the Time Table you have made so far,,, or the format of the Time Table you are thinking to make & where yo wanna include the guest lecture, will help us to make it !

[#7]

@Vanyajain I understand better what your requirement is, now that you clarify about the time zones. Your proposal seems like a workable solution.

Alternatively, if you know that your Guest is going to present 1 hour after you have started, you can send the invitation with a note that the Guest Lecturer will present 1 hour after the start of the meeting. They will see the starting time according to their time zone and add 1 to it  .

You can try out either way and see which works best and then give feedback here so that the community can learn from your experience.

All the best!

[#8]

@Vanyajain  I think creating the separate meetings and having students move between them will be clunky and disruptive to the timing and flow of the class. I would go with @Marius Pretorius suggestion of inviting the Guest speaker to the regularly scheduled meeting. However, I think there is a way that you can still get what you want in terms of changing the time zone. Instead of creating a separate Teams Meeting, create a regular Outlook Calendar event for the time and date the guest speaker is supposed to join the meeting with the adjustments to the desired time zone. Copy and paste the link to the regularly scheduled Teams meeting into the Description of the event and make the location say: "Microsoft Teams Online Meeting see below for link". This way, the guest speaker can add the event to their calendar and will see it in their time zone, but you will be able to maintain one meeting location for your students.

[#9]

Thanks Marius. I will see how it goes. Trying out the first few lectures with a guest channel and once I'm more comfortable, I will try out your suggestion.

[#10]

@millerblair thanks. I do see what you're saying about moving in to-and-fro. Good idea about the outlook calendar. I'll give it a shot.

[#11]

Thanks Rajesh. I'll write to you separately.