Join Microsoft Teams Meetings: The Complete Guide (2023)

This is a complete guide to join Microsoft Teams meetings.

If you are looking to learn about Microsoft Teams meetings, you’ll love this new guide.

Let’s dive right in.

What is Microsoft Teams?

• Microsoft Teams is a chat-based workspace in Microsoft 365 that makes it easy to have persistent and threaded conversations, host meetings, share files, collaborate on documents, and get work done with teams across the organization.
• Microsoft Teams lets you work in a natural, conversational way, with everything you need in one place, available anytime, on any device.

Calls and meetings

Configure the following calls and meetings settings for your organization:

• Go to “Microsoft Teams admin center.”
• Select “Meetings” on the left and click “Meeting policies.”
• Select “Global (Org-wide default)“.
• You have to make sure all general options are turned on.

Meet now in channels

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.

Outlook add-in

Make sure that users have the Teams Meeting add-in enabled in Outlook to schedule meetings.

Channel meeting scheduling

When turned on, users can schedule a meeting for a channel that all channel members can easily join with a single click.

Private meeting scheduling

When turned on, users can schedule private meetings that are not listed in any channel.

Schedule a meeting

What actions should be taken to see “New Teams Meeting” in your Outlook? You will need to install the Teams Desktop client and enable the Microsoft Teams add-in in Outlook. Once they are done, Outlook will show the new icon on the ribbon.

You can also schedule a meeting directly from Microsoft Teams. Just select the “Calendar Tab” on the left-hand side of the Teams taskbar, to open up your calendar. From here, click “New Meeting” in the top right-hand corner, and fill in your details as required.

Alternatively, you can set up a teams meeting in your Outlook calendar by selecting the “New Teams Meeting” option in Outlook.

The calendar invite will have a “Click here to Join the meeting” hyperlink that your participants can click at the time of the meeting, to join as required.

Microsoft Teams Meeting Options

Once the meeting is set up, you can go to the meeting and adjust the meeting options by clicking “Meeting options” on the Microsoft Teams toolbar:

The options page will open. You can then set the necessary options:

Who can bypass the lobby?

• The lobby is a virtual waiting area for invitees to wait until they are admitted into the meeting. You set your meeting to allow everyone to bypass the lobby by setting this to everyone.
• If you set it to People in my organization and trusted organizations or People in my organization, you will have to admit attendees to the meeting once you are prompted to do so (an admit window will pop up).
• In addition, if you select Everyone, attendees recognized by the system (Outlook/City employees) will not be announced when entering the meeting.

Note: If attendees are using a cell phone not recognized by the city (a non-city phone), the system will still announce their entry and exit from a meeting.

Always let callers bypass the lobby

• When this setting is enabled, people calling in by phone will join your meeting without having to wait for someone to admit them.
• Select the toggle to turn it on or off.

Announce when callers join or leave

• You may want to receive an alert when someone calling in by phone joins or leaves your meeting. (Your admin might have enabled these alerts by default.)
• To change this setting, select the toggle to turn it on or off.

Who can present?

• If you wish to limit or allow other attendees the opportunity to present (share their screen), you will need to change this option.
• Everyone: Allows any attendee to share their screen.
• People in my organization: Check your organization list to determine who would be included here.
• Specific People: You add multiple presenters by selecting this option and adding their names to the Select presenters for this meeting drop down.
• Only me: It only allows the meeting organizer to present at the meeting.
• Once your options have been selected, click on Save.

Joining a teams Meeting

There are multiple ways to access and join a meeting in Teams, including via link, phone, calendar, channel or browser.

Join Microsoft Teams meeting using the link

• Select “Click here to join the Meeting” in your meeting invite to be taken to a page where you can choose to either join on the web or download the desktop app. If you already have the teams client, the meeting will open there automatically.

• If you do not have a teams account, you may have the option to enter your name into the meeting as a guest, provided the meeting organizer has given you permission.
• Then, depending on the organizer’s settings, you may join the meeting right away or go to the lobby, where people in the meeting can admit you.

Join Microsoft teams meeting by phone

If the meeting invite lists a phone number and conference ID, then you can join that meeting by phone.

To join a teams meeting by phone:

• You will need an invite to join from a phone. It will list both a toll and a toll-free phone number. You can select either of these numbers, depending on your needs and preferences.
• Dial the appropriate phone number.
• Enter the conference ID when prompted.

The invitation will also have a list of local numbers to select from. You can select a phone number from this list instead if the toll and toll-free phone numbers are not local to you.

If you see a phone number in your invitation, but it’s not local to you, select Local numbers and find one that works for you.

Join from the calendar

Select Calendar on the left side of the app to see your meetings. Find the meeting you want, and then select Join.

Or, if someone starts the meeting, you’ll get a notification you can use to join.

Join from the channel

Channels are team subsets; they enable team members to hold conversations and share files about separate projects that do not require the participation of all team members. You can join a Teams meeting from a channel as well, and the meeting will only include the members listed in the channel.

To join a teams meeting via the channel, click on the “Join” button.

Join Microsoft Teams meetings using the browser

What if you cannot access Microsoft Teams desktop version and want to join a meeting and present your screen. No hard feelings.

• You can copy the meeting link by right-clicking on the “Click here to join the meeting” link on your calendar and selecting “Copy Hyperlink” and pasting into a browser to join.

• After you have pasted the link, you will be asked to download the desktop version or use the web interface. Select the web version.
• You have to allow your microphone and camera and that helps other people who are in meetings hear you and see your face or custom backgrounds.

Of course, the above options work for one or two meetings but you will get tired of doing them for many meetings so you may consider the following steps, which give the same interface as the desktop version..

• Go to the teams web version.
• Select the web app and select the calendar.

• Select the meeting to join.

Microsoft Teams join meeting as a guest

• Do you need to meet someone outside of your organization? Don’t worry, with Anonymous Join, you can schedule a teams meeting with anyone with a valid email address, even if they are not in your organization.
• You can invite any valid email address to a meeting while scheduling either from teams or from Outlook and they will receive the meeting invite in their email with information on how to join the meeting.
• Your meeting guests can click on the link, enter their name and join the meeting.

• Your guest will be able to join on the web without having to install any client or if they want additional functionality, such as the ability to start sharing their screen, they can also install the desktop client and join anonymously.
• By default, all attendees who are not from your organization will arrive in a virtual lobby, after which they will have to be admitted to the actual meeting.

• This is done to enhance the privacy of your meetings, but it also gives you time to make sure you’re ready for an important customer meeting. In the future, an admin will have the option to update the settings to allow anonymous users to join directly without having to go into the lobby.

Hosting your teams meeting

• When you join your teams meeting you will be greeted with a landing page. Here, you can select some initial options for the meeting, such as your video and audio options.
• When you have selected ‘Join now’, you will be in a lobby waiting for your participants to arrive.
• You will see a bar of options at the foot of the screen; the ‘people’ icon allows you to access the participants tab. Clicking this will open a tab on the right-hand side of the screen, showing who has arrived, who is yet to arrive, and who is invited.
• Once you are ready to go, you can bring people into the meeting by inviting them from the lobby using the Participants tab.
• If the participant is an internal colleague, they will join automatically. However, if you are hosting a meeting for external clients, you will need to manually select the user and allow them to join from the lobby.

Hosting options

When your teams meeting is live, you will see a toolbar that offers different options:

• People: This will show you who has arrived and who is yet to arrive. You can also choose individual user options, such as ‘mute participants’ or ‘make an attendee’.
• Chat: This opens the text chat box, so you can type comments for your meeting participants. A useful tool should you have any audio problems or wish to send links or comments while hosting your meeting.
• Reactions: In addition to virtually raising your hand in a Teams meeting, you can express yourself in other ways to help make Teams meetings more inclusive, engaging, and fun.
• Rooms: This allows you to create and manage breakout rooms.
• Apps: Meeting organizers and presenters can add, use, and manage apps (which includes removing apps and changing settings).
• More: This brings up a few more advanced options to select from, such as recording your meeting, blurring your background, or showing meeting notes.
• Camera: This toggles your webcam off or on.
• Mic: This allows you to mute or unmute your machine’s speakers if necessary.
• Share: This option allows you to share your screen or individual tabs you may have open.
• Leave: Once you have concluded your meeting, you have the option to leave the meeting or end the meeting. All participants will leave the meeting if you choose to end it.

Sharing your screen

When you select the ‘Share’ icon, it will bring up a toolbar to show all the open tabs you currently have, along with any recent documents you may have worked on.

• Presenter mode: By using a presenter mode such as Standout, Side-by-side, or Reporter in a teams meeting instead of sharing screen or window content only, you become a more engaging and integral part of your presentation.
• Screen: If you select screen, you will share your entire screen with participants. This does mean, however, that if you jump between any open tabs, participants can see everything that you do on your machine.
• Window: You can select individual pages or screens that you want to share in the meeting. So, if you wanted people to only see a PDF document, you could select this one item, leaving you free to jump between programs and tabs on your desktop without any participants seeing this.
• Microsoft Whiteboard: As soon as the whiteboard canvas has been started, attendees of Teams meetings will be able to write on it.
• Content from the camera: This option enables users to stream content directly from physical artifacts such as whiteboards and documents in a legible way.
• PowerPoint Live: With PowerPoint Live, Teams users don’t need to open a PowerPoint deck and share their PC’s screen with an audience. Instead, the presenter can just open PowerPoint Live within Teams to deliver a presentation.
• Browse Options: For those more familiar with Teams, you can use advanced features like PowerApps that you have set up to link to your Teams profiles.

How do I record Microsoft Teams meetings?

• You can record video, audio, and shared screen activities for your teams meeting. The recording is automatically saved to One Drive, so later you can download, manage, or even share it with your organization.
• You have a record of what was discussed in the meeting to review and/or share with absent attendees. Also, the recording can later be used for other business use-cases in your organization such as new product announcements, corporate news, training demos, etc.
• Both the meeting organizer and internal attendees can start or stop the recording.
• External attendees will not be able to do this.

To record Microsoft Teams meetings:

• Start or join the meeting.
• Click on the More options and select “Record and transcribe,” and then select “Start recording” as shown below:

• As the organizer, you will be notified you are being recorded and will be given a reminder to tell your meeting attendees they are being recorded:

• To stop recording, go to the meeting controls on the more options and select “Record and transcribe” and then select “Stop recording” from the same menu.
• The recording will appear in chat history for the organizer and all internal attendees.

To learn more about recording on teams, check out this article.

How do I replay a meeting in Microsoft Teams?

Both the meeting organizer and all internal attendees can replay a recorded meeting.

Note: External guests cannot replay a recorded meeting.

To do this, you will go to either the channel conversation history in teams if the meeting was created in a teams channel or the chat history in teams if the meeting was created outside of a teams channel (directly from Outlook or a group chat) or find the recording folder in your One Drive to view all recorded meetings.

Tip1: Meeting Options error: Only meeting organizers can make changes

• When clicking on Meeting Options when attempting to create or edit a team meeting.
• You are prompted with a message “Only meeting organizers can make changes”.
• The account associated with the prompt is a guest account (for a client’s organization).

• Cause: This error will also occur even if you are signed into the browser with the correct account, but in the Teams client you are currently switched into another tenant as a guest.

• Fix 1: Within Teams, make sure the drop-down menu in the upper right is set to your own domain (home tenant), and then try clicking the Meeting Options button again.
  
• Fix 2: Open the meeting options URL in a different browser.
  
• Fix 3: Clear your browser’s cache.

Tip2: Noise suppression in Microsoft teams

Go to Microsoft Teams > Click more options (…) on the top > go to Settings > Devices > Noise suppression. In the menu, select High for an even stronger suppression of background sounds. So whether your roommate barks at the mailman or does gymnastics outside your door, Teams has you covered with a blanket of quiet.

So that’s how you can join Microsoft Teams meetings.

Now I want to turn it over to you: Which strategy from today’s guide are you going to try first?

Let me know by leaving a quick comment below right now.