Preventing attendees from starting meeting before organiser

[NICRU]

Is there a way to prevent invited attendees from starting the Teams meeting before the organiser starts the meeting? My students are able to start the meeting early without me being there but I'd like to be the only person who can start the meeting that I scheduled with them. 

Thanks in advance. 

[#2]

Currently you can't prevent this. But there is two updates coming to Teams.

One will change so that only users with permissions to create meetings will be able to start meetings. So if your students don't have access to start meetings themselves, they won't be able to start others meetings. This will start roll out in May.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=63355

The other option is that you will be able to set that everyone except you have to wait in the lobby, this is a uservoice request that Microsoft said they are planning to implement. Vote for this to get it faster.
https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/599053-schools-and-universities/suggestions/39962434--wa...

[#3]

The lobby has been the default setting for organising meetings since last week, depending on your update schedule.

[#4]

@NICRU 

My solution may or may not work for you.  But I have found that if I set the "manage channel" permissions to "only owners can post messages", then I am the only one who can start a meeting, since I am the only owner.  Members cannot start meetings at that point.

This is how I keep my high school students from starting meetings without me or starting their own meetings I cannot supervise.

[#5 · Accepted solution]

@NICRU  You should be able to change your Teams meeting options and set the 'who can bypass the lobby' to 'Only me'. This means that everyone will wait in the lobby until you join and let them into the meeting

[#6]

@Deleted  I have teachers who have set up their permissions this way and students are still starting the meeting before the teacher. 

[#7]

@burrowsa   They cannot start THAT particular scheduled meeting if the permissions are this way...however, they CAN start a new meeting in the channel on their own if they do some digging...the "meet now" still shows up in their chat reply bar, even if you have taken away the "meet now" button at the top.

I have had this issue as well.  Teams is NOT friendly for education settings at all...I think we are all learning that together.

[#8]

@Steve880 the right to use Meet Now or schedule their own meeting is controlled by a Meeting Policy in Teams Admin. You can create your own or there is an existing policy called 'Student' that' already set with the policy to prevent students scheduling meetings. 

There are lots of great documentation, guides, video and training available to use Teams in education, here's the article on setting these policies https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/policy-packages-edu

[#9]

@StevenC365   Thank you so much.  I will be forwarding this to out IT department asap.  They control all the admin settings.

[#10]

@Deleted Thank for for posting the screen shot. Can you go back even further? I do not know how to get to that--I looked in my scheduled meetings and on the actual Team and did not see those choices. 

[#11]

Is there any updates on how to prevent such dilemmas??

[#12]

You access it from manage permission during meeting or while attendees are joining or from schedule meeting

[#13]

@Steve880 I may be asking this too early (I haven't read through the entire thread) but if you do this does it prevent them from chatting during the meeting?

[#14]

Yes. It prevents them from typing in the conversation window. So I quickly change that setting once I am in the meeting to allow them to post. Its a pain...but it stops the surprise meetings.

[#15]

@Steve880 that's good to know thank you.  Is that setting something I can access in the meeting or is it a separate tab like the meeting options were?  Maybe a screenshot of where it is?  Thanks!

[#16]

@MDPtusd 

I makes the adjustments under "manage channel" in your channel "..."

Turn Moderation to "on"....and set so only the moderator can start a new post...this will prevent 99% of unauthorized meetings.

If you also unclick the "Allow members to reply to channel messages" box, then it will prevent ALL of them.  You just need to go back and click this box once you start your meeting so the kids can post in the conversation window.

I don't know if this is the best way to make all this happen...its just what I do that seems to work.

I tried to attach a screenshot to this message.

[#17]

@Steve880 I got the screenshot thank you.  That is where I got to but wanted to make sure that's where I was supposed get.  Going to try it with my next period.  Thanks for the help!!

[#18]

It didn't work. I think it is something the district has to change and I doubt it will happen any time soon. 😞

[#19]

@MDPtusd  Is it a channel you created?  Or the "general" channel that Teams starts you with?

[#20]

It's one I created.