Disable Lobby in a Teams Meeting

[Deleted]

Is there a way to turn off the "lobby" feature when creating a meeting in Teams? I don't want to have to "admit" each person as they join the meeting.

[#2]

In the Teams Admin center, under Meetings > Meeting Policies. In the policy at the bottom is option for Participants & Guests, "Automatically admin users", try changing that to Everyone I believe will auto admit anon users to meetings.

[#3]

If that doesn’t work I know I’ve heard this feature is coming soon

Adam

[#4]

Hi Chris,

I had already done this thinking it would do the trick as well, but alas, it did not.

[#5]

Yes, it does not appear to be working.  Need to get this fixed soon.  Not sure why Microsoft is pushing teams so hard when there is still much to fix and get ready.

[#6]

I have asked for similar settings as we have for Skype for Business, where end users can override the default policy for lobby settings, please vote for it: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/36427201-have-end-users-change...

[#7]

This really needs to be fixed. 

[#8]

Hey Microsoft, any idea when the "automatically admit users" will work like Skype? When someone is stuck in the lobby because they dialed in before someone started the meeting with a computer everyone is automatically added with Skype. In Teams everyone stays stuck in the lobby even though this setting says to admit "Everyone" automatically.

[#9]

Just tested mine which has had everyone set, and I can get in no problem as an anonymous user. I didn't use the default org wide policy thou, I set a custom one and applied to my user starting the meeting. That could be the difference, but I can verify that it is working at least in my instance.

[#10]

Are you dialing in to the meeting over a phone or connecting with the app? When I dial in with a phone I am stuck in the lobby until someone uses the app (mobile, desktop or web) to start the meeting. In Skype when that happens I am then automatically added to the meeting. In Teams I am still in the lobby until the person admits me. If I dial in after the meeting has been started by someone using the app I am still waiting in the lobby until I am admitted. At no time am I automatically added to the meeting without getting stuck in the lobby. My tenant is not on first release, it is on standard release.

[#11]

Ahh, dial in I missed that part. Let me see, but that's probably why, sorry bout that :P.

[#12]

No problem! Thanks for testing it.

[#13]

Just to make sure I understand correctly, the policy to allow anonymous join either has to be applied tenant-wide or at the user-level? That's a bummer, this is something that our users would like to allow for some of the meetings they setup but would prefer to disable for some specific meetings that are a little more sensitive.

[#14]

I got the news that this is being worked upon by Microsoft:

Thanks all for voting on this!

@Deleted 

[#15]

Thank you. Just to post an update for my comments, the issue that I was referencing was that the setting in the global meeting policy did not appear to be working. We disabled the lobby, understanding it was disabling it globally with no opportunity to override at the individual meeting level, but it was still forcing people to wait in the lobby. We discovered that for some reason a good share of our Teams users were not set to use the global policy but instead were set to an older policy that had the lobby enabled. Once we set all of our users to the global policy it appears to be honoring the setting. Will be glad to see the setting allowed for individual meetings but wanted to clear up my comments about it not working globally.

[#16]

@Joost Koopmans 

Thanks Joost!  This is actually preventing me from scheduling 70+ MSFT interviews in the next three weeks, since I'm currently working off my vendor domain until late summer.  Without this ability, the candidate and MSFT interviewer are both considered external users (as they should be), and are shunted into the lobby.  With the number of overlapping interviews, I cannot realistically admit everyone from the lobby.  We're currently looking at other options, but it's definitely more of a "work-around" than a process update at this point. 

[#17]

Currently your only option if you don't want external users to wait in the lobby is to turn it off as @Chris Webb wrote earlier in this thread. Change the Automatically admit people to "Everyone".

[#18]

@Linus Cansby 

Acknowledged, and thanks for the response.  Unfortunately, I am not one of the O365 admins, and isn't that a "global setting?"  Since my vendor supports multiple employers (not just MSFT), having them change it for all their Teams meetings is not realistic.  I'm in the process of submitting a request for a custom user policy, but that may fall outside the scope of our contract agreement.  As a security fan, I'm not big on "one-off" solutions like that either, since they tend to snowball into an avalanche of problems down the road.

[#19]

It is a Policy so you could have different policies for different users, so you don't have to change it for all users.

[#20]

@Linus CansbyCorrect - however, if my company decides that creating said policy falls outside the scope of our contract agreement, it may not get done (unless Microsoft agrees to amend their contract to include it.... for an additional fee, of course). 

It's all the loopholes and stuff that techy folks like us tend to avoid like the plague - and why there's so many lawyers!