Persistent or auto-start teams meeting for unattended monitor

Copper Contributor

We have a computer/monitor in the office persistently hosting a meeting which allows remote employee's to join/leave at-will and share their cameras.

 

The local computer is unattended and needs to be able to start/restart/join/rejoin the meeting without local intervention.

 

The question is how do we configure the local computer to:

 

1. Automatically join a daily scheduled meeting in the morning at start of the work day

OR (if that can't be done)

2. Never leave a meeting that runs forever and automatically re-join if it drops

15 Replies

Hi,

 

No native way that I know about but maybe you could use AutoIt or similar software to automated click on join every morning.

 

/Linus

@Eli_Taylor 

I am trying to do the same. Did you find a suitable solution for this?

Also keen to implement this if someone finds a way!

 

 

 

@PaulF707 Negative, we still haven't found or implemented a solution on this one : /

If you have a persistent link for the meetings, perhaps try having the URL load at start-up. You would need to ensure that credentials are saved/loaded into the browser.

@

Even with a URL, there are a couple of mouse clicks to get it to open in the teams app, and the another click in the app to join the meeting.

I'm going to try AutoIt, but I may have to stick with Zoom for this particular usage....

 

Found 1 small improvement

The meeting URL starts teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/…….

If you add in:

teams.microsoft.com/_#/l/meetup-join/…….

then this bypasses the option to open app or open in web. (and opens it in the browser)

I just need to find a way to emulate the 'Join Now' button.......

It's not immediately obvious, but the 'Join' button (in Edge) has 'focus' and can be activated by the Enter key.

This crude solution using VBS and SendKeys appears to be working at the moment (subject to further testing).

 

' Open Teams in Edge
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run "microsoft-edge:[ENTERURLHERE]", 9

' Give Teams time to load
WScript.Sleep 15000
' Join Meeting
WshShell.SendKeys "{ENTER}"
' Give Teams time to join
WScript.Sleep 10000
' Go Full Screen
WshShell.SendKeys "{TAB}"
WScript.Sleep 500
WshShell.SendKeys "{TAB}"
WScript.Sleep 500
WshShell.SendKeys "{TAB}"
WScript.Sleep 500
WshShell.SendKeys "{TAB}"
WScript.Sleep 500
WshShell.SendKeys "{ENTER}"
WScript.Sleep 500
WshShell.SendKeys "{DOWN}"
WScript.Sleep 500
WshShell.SendKeys "{DOWN}"
WScript.Sleep 500
WshShell.SendKeys "{ENTER}"

I researched this question a while back, when I was trying to auto-start Zoom meetings, and came up with a solution that would likely work to start Teams meetings as well.

 

I wrote a four-line Windows Powershell script that:

  • launches Zoom
  • waits a bit
  • opens the URL for the Zoom meeting
  • waits a bit
  • closes the browser

(Newer browsers require a confirmation—they won't go right into the meeting—so I set the default browser to be an older version of Internet Explorer that will launch and join the meeting without confirmation.)

 

I also wrote a one-line Powershell script that quits Zoom, to end the meeting. (I have to "force quit" Zoom, because it wants a confirmation when quitting if there's an active meeting.)

 

After I wrote these, I used Task Scheduler to set up "Start Meeting" and "End Meeting" tasks that run the corresponding PowerShell scripts at the designated start and end times for the meetings.

(Each computer is set up to join the same meeting room for every meeting, but you could also write multiple "start meeting" scripts with different URLs.)

 

That's the solution I used for Zoom, and that's the setup I'm planning on using with Teams, once we start to migrate over.

 

UPDATE: Hmm... This works except for it still brings up the "audio and video settings" screen, with the Join Now button, for the "host", unattended computer. I'll have to add an "enter key" press to the "start meeting" PowerShell script, to enter the meeting.

 

Also, our host computers are Windows 10 machines, and this won't wotk on the Mac. The Office 365 apps are AppleScript-able, though, and you could likely write scripts that would launch meetings, press the "Join Now" button, and quit Teams, and have them execute at set times.

@zanseattle 

If you get this working with Teams I would really appreciate you sharing your success.

My crude script below works sometimes, but it seems that the action menus in Teams seem to vary, sometimes depending on if someone used the session previously (perhaps opened the chat window, or turned off the camera etc), and other times for no apparent reason (other than 'Microsoft') - so the Send Keys process for activating different options don't always work correctly.

I could also do with a way of stopping Edge remembering old browser windows when restarting (as I can end up with multiple Teams sessions in multiple Tabs).

Could you please tell me or make a code for teams, that does the same as the one you've made for Zoom.

@zanseattle  Have you been able to create a script that:

  • Opens a teams meeting automatically at startup in Teams app or the browser (without having to select/click to open in teams app or browser) 
  • Automatically click the "Join now" button at the Teams meeting splash screen
  • Put the teams meeting full screen automatically

Looking for the same thing. I want to have a meeting auto-start on Teams daily. Can you help? thanks

@Veselinves 

@Eli_Taylor 

 

I was wondering the same myself. This might be helpful: https://www.macrorecorder.com/

I guess there would be different ways of achieving your goal, but I did a quick test to start/auto-join a meeting when the meeting starts.

  1. Created a shortcut to the meeting URL and saved to the Desktop.
  2. Recorded mouse actions with the following:
    1. Show desktop (Click on that thing in the taskbar by the clock/system tray. It may not even be necessary to show Desktop, but it's a fast way of using the GUI.)
    2. Mouse left Double-click on the shortcut on the Desktop
    3. Wait 3300 ms for Teams to open (but you may need a longer wait time assuming you're running it at login/boot because Teams and web browser may need to start up too. You can also insert a wait time before 'showing desktop' to allow for login processes to finish up)
    4. Mouse left click on the Join button when the dialogue box for the meeting shows.

 

You could have the Marco Recorder run at login.

 

As for re-joining if it drops, I'm not really sure about that. There might be a way to do that with Marco Recorder's image detection, but I don't have experience with it.

 

The version of Macro Recorder I tested this on is "Standard 2.079s"

 

There are probably slicker, geekier ways since the Teams desktop app is based on Chromium, but that's beyond my understanding.

 

fifty1four

@fifty1four I am trying to have meetings start automatically and play a video automatically. Do you know how to do that?