SOLVED

Stopping participants from unmuting themselves

Copper Contributor

Hi,

 

I am a teacher currently looking at options for virtual schooling during coronavirus shutdown. A lot of people are using teams, and I like much of the functionality, however I cannot seem to work out how to stop participants in a meeting unmuting themselves. This is probably fine for adult meetings, but with groups of children it's quite a distraction. Ideally I would like them to be able to choose individuals to unmute when I wish them to speak, but to be the only person with that power. Is it possible? Or is teams an inappropriate platform for this kind of task?

11 Replies
best response confirmed by adam deltinger (MVP)
Solution
Hi @D_J_Barker,

Currently, you can't. Whilst Microsoft have made improvements such as joining the meeting muted, and being able to mute someone, Members of Teams meetings can unmute at any time. Policing is therefore needed. There are multiple uservoices for it including this:

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/36709033-mute

I would recommend voting to push it up the agenda. Microsoft are very aware of this requirement, and with the development of muting whilst joining I would imagine you may see it on the roadmap relatively soon in the future. Microsoft is also working on other classroom style virtual functionality such as raise hand

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/35262385-add-a-raise-your-hand...

You could look at potentially using Live Events in Teams to do this, which are like Ted talks where one person talks and the attendees do Q&A - however, it's not what you need. As a former teacher in secondary I know you need the default to be muted then you unmute either individuals or to the audience as required

As said I believe this will come soon, but not soon enough for Covid-19 which is here now

Hope that answers your question

Best, Chris

@Christopher Hoard 

Annoyingly MS have incorrectly marked the request completed - incorrectly because they didn't listen to the use case properly.

I haven't found another thread to vote up yet.

@Christopher Hoard  If you use Meet Now inside the channel and make them an attendee, they can't unmute themselves. https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/roles-in-a-teams-meeting-c16fa7d0-1666-4dde-8686-0a0bfe16...

Microsoft have literally just announced today that the force mute capability is coming in Microsoft Teams meetings by the end of June

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/39784519-teams-meeting-organiz...

Best, Chris
Many thanks for the ongoing replies in this thread. It is good to know things are being sorted, though to be honest I ended up setting up my classes with zoom due to this feature. I still use teams for text conversation outside of live lessons and the combination seems to work well.

@Amy_P_librarian I believe they can unmute themselves if they are an attendee. 

This option is must have for e learning . At least add it for sake of feature parity as Zoom has it .
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by adam deltinger (MVP)
Solution
Hi @D_J_Barker,

Currently, you can't. Whilst Microsoft have made improvements such as joining the meeting muted, and being able to mute someone, Members of Teams meetings can unmute at any time. Policing is therefore needed. There are multiple uservoices for it including this:

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/36709033-mute

I would recommend voting to push it up the agenda. Microsoft are very aware of this requirement, and with the development of muting whilst joining I would imagine you may see it on the roadmap relatively soon in the future. Microsoft is also working on other classroom style virtual functionality such as raise hand

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/35262385-add-a-raise-your-hand...

You could look at potentially using Live Events in Teams to do this, which are like Ted talks where one person talks and the attendees do Q&A - however, it's not what you need. As a former teacher in secondary I know you need the default to be muted then you unmute either individuals or to the audience as required

As said I believe this will come soon, but not soon enough for Covid-19 which is here now

Hope that answers your question

Best, Chris

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