Only owner of the Team to start the meeting call

Copper Contributor

Hi all,

 

Because of the Covid break-out I can no longer teach my students face to face. The schools here are closed and we have to teach using computers and the internet.

 

I noticed that Microsoft teams worked very well for this, and thus I started to make classrooms in teams. There is one thing that I do not understand, so I hope someone can help me with this.

 

The people in the Teams Classroom can all start a conversation with the rest of the classroom. This is unhandy because I can not guarrantee the safety and wellbeing of my students when I am not in the call aswell. Is there a setting that prohibits the students to call for a meeting, and only allow the owner of the Team to make said call?

 

I would like to thank you in advance.

 

Kind regards,

 

Sven

32 Replies

@SvenBakker is there really a safeguarding issue if your pupils can talk to each other? Don't they talk at school?

 

Are you using an EDU Team, if you click on the ... next to the channel name, choose Manage Channel, and you can limit who is allowed to post in that channel. The General channel is a bit limited, but if you add another channel (e.g. by topic) you get some additional options.

@adam deltinger, thank you for your reply.

I have looked at the admin page, but a lot of text is greyed out. Could it be that the schools administrator has locked out these features?

 

This is the first time I'm working with Teams, and you never know whats up with school computers, so is it possible that the schools administrator did something?

 

Thank you again.

@Steven Collier, thank you for the reply as well! Of course the students talk at school. But there is always a teacher around to sort things out if it goes south. I just don't want to give the school 'bullies' another platform to disbehave. That's the reason I want to be in the conversation when they are having one. Just to look out for my pupils.

 

I have found that option, but it only prohibits the students to type messages, not prohibit them to start a mass converation with everyone in the Team.

@SvenBakker There are three types of conversations.

 

Chat - These are 1:1 or groups up to 100 participants. There is a switch that an admin can use to enable or disable this feature on a user-by-user basis. You might want to just turn this off for all students using a messaging policy..

 

Meeting Chat - Available before, during and after a meeting, useful for people to ask questions. Again your admin can turn this on and off in the Meeting Policies for all or particular users. This will only exist if you do not select a channel for your meeting, if you do then the same polices as below apply.

 

Channel - These would be your classrooms, the controls I showed you allow you to control who can start or reply to conversations within your classroom.

@Steven Collier We have recently deployed teams in all schools here in Palestine, this is by far the only problem that many teachers are complaining about, it's terrible and Microsoft knows it! would appreciate if you work on a fix asap, stop calling it a good feature please!

@hhbadarin Hello, this topic goes back a couple of months. As previously mentioned you can control the behavior either with meeting policies or manage it per scheduled meeting.

 

-AutoAdmittedUsers

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/skype/set-csteamsmeetingpolicy?view=skype-ps

 

Change participant settings for a Teams meeting

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-participant-settings-for-a-teams-meeting-53261366-...

@ChristianBergstrom go back to my comment,  i was talking about something different! i know meeting options and i made a tutorial on YouTube about how to change them. As of now, anyone in the meeting is able to start a meeting, students are still able to start a meeting anytime from the team and there's no option available for team owners to stop them! 

@hhbadarin Would you mind describing your issue in detail please. I do not understand this.

 

"anyone in the meeting is able to start a meeting, students are still able to start a meeting anytime"

@ChristianBergstrom imagine you have a math team of 30 students, when the teacher who's also the owner of the team schedule a class for 10 am tomorrow, any student is able to " join" the scheduled meeting anytime now. also any student in the class can click on "Meet now" in the top left corner of the team and start a meeting, you end up having 3 or 4 separate meetings in the team! 

@hhbadarin I understand. This you can control with the Teams meeting policies.

 

Meeting policy settings - General

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/meeting-policies-in-teams#meeting-policy-settings---...

 

Using these https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/skype/set-csteamsmeetingpolicy?view=skype-ps

 

Do note that -AutoAdmittedUsers (OrganizerOnly, if you would like that only meeting organizers can bypass the lobby) is quite new and isn't updated on the official Teams meeting policy page.

 

Let me know if I misunderstand your scenario or if you have additional questions.

@ChristianBergstrom so if i disable "Allow Meet now in channels", does this mean (only team owners ) are then able to start a meeting or schedule a meeting? 

@hhbadarin No. "This setting controls whether a user can start an ad hoc meeting in a Teams channel. If you turn this on, when a user posts a message in a Teams channel, the user can click Meet now under the compose box to start an ad hoc meeting in the channel."

 

To begin with, which I believe is your biggest issue (?) you want to control who can start a scheduled meeting? To do so you need to configure the previously mentioned -AutoAdmittedUsers parameter using PowerShell with the switch 'OrganizerOnly'.

 

Now I'm off to a meeting myself. Hope the info and links helps getting you started!

@ChristianBergstrom You avoided my question and went  back to something totally different! I have classes scheduled for tomorrow 10 am, i wake up tomorrow at 8 am to find out that 3 or 4 meetings have been started by students in the team. The student goes to the team he's part of, clicks on" meet now" in the top right corner and easily starts a meeting! students join other student's meetings thinking it's the intended class meeting supposed to start at 10! 

Do you have a specific answer to how can i stop this as the teacher of the class!!? specific answer PLEASE!

@hhbadarin I do this on my spare time besides my ordinary job. I have no association with Microsoft. I just like to help others out, so I do not appreciate your reply.

 

Several people in this conversation have replied as how to control and manage Teams meeting behavior. I have attached direct links with details and descriptions as how to do accomplish this. Do you really expect us to do all the necessary work for you? I suggest you read the documentation thoroughly and then configure the meeting policies to suit your needs. As you're obviously stressed out go ahead and turn off 'Allow Meet now in channels'.

 

If you are not able to configure the policies yourself perhaps the official Microsoft support are willing to guide you step-by-step.

@ChristianBergstrom Sorry, I thought you work for Microsoft! thanks for your feedback, i still haven't found an answer to my question. 

Thanks again

@hhbadarin No worries. But even if I worked for Microsoft it wouldn't be appropriate. Just turn off the "Meet now" that you attached as a picture previously to prevent users from starting ad-hoc meetings, to begin with. Then while you're in the admin portal you can submit a proper service request directly to Microsoft support if necessary.

@hhbadarin no one here is Microsoft, everyone is giving up their own time and experience, but even Microsoft are just normal folks doing a job.

 

If you do not want your students creating new meetings you can set a meeting policy for them to prevent all forms of meetings, meet now, outlook, scheduled etc.

 

If you want to ensure that students can't enter a meeting before the teacher as already shown this is also now possible by setting so that Owners only can enter directly. You need to set this using Skype for Business Powershell, for example to change the Students meeting policy you would

 

 

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Student -AutoAdmittedUsers OrganizerOnly

 

 

Teams does meet the requirements you've explained so far.

@hhbadarin have you figured out the answer to this?  I get your frustration in people not answering your question.  Maybe I understand you because I came here looking for the same answer but it doesn't seem like it was addressed.

I have kids starting meeting 15 minutes before they start, I don't care whether they are talking to each other or not (which they can't because they are all in the lobby) I don't want my meetings starting that early.  One student told me she starts all her meetings for the day at the beginning of the day so she "won't be late" (there is no tardy policy right now because of DL so I don't buy it).  Students start the meeting on their end and walk away.

If I don't want kids in my classroom before class starts, I don't open the door, I want that same option in Teams.