SOLVED

How to BCC guests to a Teams meeting?

Copper Contributor

Hi all,

I wish to invite up to 20 guests to a Teams meeting. To my horror, when I added in their non-MS email and sent them the invite to the meeting, the email shows every attendees' email address including the other guests' email addresses! I'm sure I've offended many people with that invite! So the question here: How can I invite external guests to a Teams meeting using BCC so as to protect their email addresses? 

 

In Zoom, we can simply send the guest the room ID or meeting link and password protect the meeting. There is no invite link in Teams (at least it is not obviously available) and I cannot password protect the meeting. 

 

Please advise. Thanks! 

20 Replies

@garyang a couple of ways. After you create a meeting in Teams you will see the meeting link so you can grab the link from there or immediately go into the meeting and grab the "meeting details" copy and send an email.

 

You can also create the invitation in Outlook and put the attendees under resource to create a bcc invitation

 

@garyang if you schedule the meeting using Outlook online, there is an option to "hide attendees" -- I use this when I am scheduling calendar reminders for our users to remember to save their data before an IT update.  It's under Response options.  (Note:  this isn't available using the desktop app)

jhubbard_0-1590072046749.png

 

@Sarah Gant 

Thanks for your suggestion. Sending out the link to the meeting was what I did eventually. But it doesn't inspire confidence in the security because everyone with the link will be able to gatecrash the meeting. Even if I set it that all guests must wait in the lobby, I cannot prevent uninvited people in the organisation to gatecrash the meeting once they get the link. Imagine the link got posted on some forum and was being shared thousands of times, even the lobby floodgate is not going to help much if there are dozens of trolls in it. I think that a link with a password will be a better solution. That is a feature Zoom has. 

 

Using the resources hack in outlook is too much work for a one-time guest. 

 

Thanks for sharing. Appreciate it. But I guess the most elegant solution is a BCC in Teams for one-time guests. 

@garyang- So I think of TEAMS as primarily an internal collaboration tool with external capabilities (others who are connected somehow) and not anonymous people.  I use BCC with "hide guests" because it helps prevent them from "replying to all". 

@jhubbard 

Thanks for your tip! I tried what you meant. It works but it cannot invite a channel of team members. So suppose I have a Team channel with 20 people and I want to invite 10 one-time guests to this meeting. Using your Outlook hack will mean I have to copy and paste the 30 email addresses. 

I tried to create the meeting on Outlook and then go into Teams to see if I can add the channel to it but it didn't work. 

At the first place, why must it be so complicated to do something so simple? 

 

I guess there isn't an elegant solution to a simple problem in a great piece of software. It is like finding a place for the coins in a Mercedes! 

 

Thanks a lot! Stay safe, wherever you are!

@garyang so there are some foundational Teams understanding that is missing from your your last comment.  In order to have a team channel with 20 you have to have set that up as a "private channel"  I am not sure if this has been updated yet but last I saw channel meetings were not available for "private channels".  In order invite anyone to a channel meeting they are suppose to be part of the overall team, however a new update is coming if it has not already where you can add "guests" to channel meetings.  

 

Overall some of your last comment did not make sense to me.  

 

Keep in mind in order to host a Teams Meeting does not mean you have to be associated with a particular team.  You can always use Outlook and distro lists until more features are available.  There is an update coming to Outlook where you can select a team and channel from outlook when creating a meeting I believe.

 

 

@Sarah Gant Here's where I am with private channels -- private channels provision their own sharepoint page, which is not connected to the TEAM -- where as it could have been hooked to the team as permissions-based access if the person was trying to access content in SharePoint -- soooooo, why not have them created as a private TEAM?  Private Channels currently (I say currently, bc MS updates things all the time) causes a hiccup in eDiscovery and records retention and all that good stuff -- that you wanted to protect with limiting the channel to just those people that can see the data to begin with....#notafanofprivatechannels

 

So I think what is needed is just a private meeting - not set in the channel - because if you invite the channel - everyone who is a member of the team gets the invite - and even if you comment "this meeting is just for me and Dave" everyone disregards that and starts joining -- so only host on the channel if you mean the entire TEAM.

@jhubbard  Agree about the private channels, MS could have done way better.  I only mentioned it because what @garyang said in his message did not make sense about having a channel with 20 people (Team channel with 20 people and I want to invite 10 one-time guests to this meeting.) Unless he meant a Team with 20 people.  Again agree about the "private" meeting.  An update is coming out where you can actually invite a team to a meeting so this would be great for his scenario.  Create the meeting in Outlook using my hack, invite the "Team" and the 10 guests.

best response confirmed by ThereseSolimeno (Microsoft)
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@garyang 

 

hope it is useful

@garyang   hope it helps

@mijawidnazir 

Thanks! That is great help! 

Just informed that BCC (Resource line) attendees can see each other if they look at scheduling. How do you turn this off?  

@Melaina_Neschke  Are you users creating the invitation from Teams?  Please ensure they are using outlook and not Teams for the calendar invite.  Only the meeting organizer should be able to see who responded and was invited.  What version of Outlook are your users using?  

 

Here are few other options:

1. Use the web version of Outlook to send the invitation out.  Under Response Options you can select Hide attendee listSnag_936b6df.png

 

2. In the desktop version you could try turning off Request Responses (I have not tested this so would love any feedback if anyone does).

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3. Have them save the calendar invite as an ical, then attach it to a regular email or place it in a shared folder and create a link the email to add to the calendar.  HOWEVER, I encourage you to have them "cancel" the invitation prior to saving the invitation to ensure no-one could go into the scheduling assistant to see who responded.  

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Now if the meeting organizer needs to know who has RSVP'd then depending on the number of invitations being sent out they could do a few things.  Send an email inviting them to the event and then: 

1. Use voting buttons in Outlook and then send the ical to those who respond yes

2. Use Forms and Power Automate to automatically send the invitation.  

 

Lot's of options.  I hope one of these helps you.

 

 

but still this is an EMAIL! not a calendar invite required to go on their calendar! That is what we want. And a website link for peeps to sign up for the meeting and then get a REAL Calendar Invite - NOT AN EMAIL WITH A LINK!

The issue here is that we want to have a web page signup that puts an attendee on the event timeslot as an attendee and they then GET A CALENDAR INVITE that appear on their calendar - not an email that goes missing or requires an attendee step to place on the calendar. 



Without a calendar invite, people DO NOT SHOW UP wasting time and opportunity. 



A simple hide multiple group attendees, but allowing the meeting creator to see attendees and email them as a bcc like hidden group. 



NOBODY HAS THIS THAT I CAN FIND!!!!!



NOT EVEN ZAPIER as a ZAP.  

@jhubbard Not any longer.  I just sent a mtg our to 75 people.  I had no idea they would all be able to see each others info.  All hell is breaking loose now and everyone is upset.  Thanks MS Teams !!!

@Sarah Gant   This is what I see.  I don't have the option to hide attendee list??  I have Version 2104 (Build13929.2029)

 

Any advise?

 

Thanks,

Mark

 

 

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@Mark_Fusina Hello, the "hide attendance list" is only available in Outlook on the web (where you can choose to make it a Teams meeting) as mentioned above. There are a couple of workarounds using Outlook desktop, but when it comes to "true" BCC or hide attendance list in Teams there are multiple UserVoice request for that option and the following UV is the only one updated with status "under review" (they usually merge the similar ones).

 

Ability to use BCC – Microsoft Teams UserVoice

 

 

@Mark_Fusina 

Hide is only available in Online Outlook.  BCC isn't available in invite recipients in Outlook to my knowledge. Teams invite from TEAMS, no BCC either. 

 

So the way I understand it is you can't send an invite to a meeting in Outlook or TEAMS wo more than one recipient without the other recipients seeing the others email addresses, not acceptable at all for privacy reasons.

 

 

Nice one, you can upvote this content to gain MS Teams attention here.
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best response confirmed by ThereseSolimeno (Microsoft)
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