How to set up Teams client for a use without account only (join as guest only with the client)

Copper Contributor

Hi, we are investigating switching from Office 2016 + Cisco Webex to Office 365 + Teams, everything is new to me.

The way it should work :

- Every user will have their personal account on their personal computer (no issue here).

- We need to have some "neutral" conference room (which will be used by different service or sometime companies) with Office 2016 & Teams installed, the issue right now is that some user just log on with their account but forgot to log off, resulting in some potential data leak, we managed to disable log in on the Office 2016 suite but the user can still connect on Team, the intended use of Teams in our situation is only to join a conference as a guest (with a link) without using the web based version with limited functionnality and stability.

I am aware of Microsoft Teams Room devices but this is not a good solution for us because we still need access to regular Windows software in local without using multiple computer.

 

I would like to know how can we prevent the user to log on Teams (to prevent data leak/someone using their account) and to still use the client to join as guest some conference (provided by a link).

 

Thanks a lot

3 Replies

@quentincc How will they get the link though? Normally that's from a calendar and you'll need someone logged on for that.

 

Why not create an account for the room, just like you would for a Teams Room System but use it to log on to a regular PC, then give it a Teams policy to prevent chat, not join any teams, hide all the icons apart from calendar. Then all that logged on user can realistically do is access meetings the ''room user' has been invited to.

 

 

@StevenC365 Thanks for your response.

As for now, user need to send the link to the admin that will join the meeting.

We thought a bit after your response and we might implement a dedicated mail address on which user will send their invitation link along with an account for the room as you said.

So with Teams Policies we could prevent user to log on with their personal account and do something else than joining a conference call ? What about attachement in the chat ? can we prevent attachement at all ? only allow chat in case someone have a defective microphone ?

 

We don't already have Office 365 for now, do you know if there is a demo of the Admin panel ? Or better, a way to trial every functionnality ? 

Thanks you

@quentincc you can trial Office 365 including Teams, sign up on Microsoft.com

 

I suggest you have a Teams account for the room, and perhaps connect that to how the machine in your meeting room logs in. You can't easily prevent someone signing out and then back as another user, that really a security training requirement that folks shouldn't use their login in an insecure manner.

 

Teams policies applied to the room account could disable chat, and the room account wouldn't be part of any teams. If files were attached to the meeting request there are settings that can be applied to rooms to remove attachments and meeting content.

 

This is basically how we set up an account for a TMR, it's really a locked down window environment with a Teams app that focused on being a meeting. It support HDMI in so you could use it for meetings and have a room PC there as well for these other apps.