Configure the Microsoft Teams meeting lobby for sensitive meetings
Some features described in this article require Teams Premium.
The meeting lobby is a tool that you can use to help ensure that inappropriate people aren't admitted to meetings. By holding different types of participants in the lobby, meeting organizers can vet them and make sure it's appropriate for them to attend the meeting.
By default, people in your organization and guests are admitted to meetings directly and participants from trusted organizations and anonymous participants must wait in the lobby to be admitted by a meeting organizer. Meeting organizers can change this default setting for each meeting they create.
The lobby and other related settings can be controlled by the Teams Administrator by using meeting policies, meeting templates, and sensitivity labels to customize the experience for different users and different types of meetings.
The following table lists features that you can use to help manage the lobby experience for your organization and where to configure them.
| Setting | Admin policy | Sensitivity label | Template | Meeting organizer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Announce when dial-in callers join or leave | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Anonymous users and dial-in callers can start a meeting | Yes | No | No | No |
| Anonymous users can join a meeting | Yes | No | No | No |
| People dialing in can bypass the lobby | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Who can admit from lobby | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Who can bypass the lobby | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
For information about how to use templates and sensitivity labels to configure meeting settings, see Overview of custom meeting templates in Microsoft Teams and Use sensitivity labels to protect calendar items, Teams meetings, and chat.
Note
Meeting settings in sensitivity labels and custom meeting templates require Teams Premium.
Lobby settings for different types of meetings
The following settings are available for Who can admit from lobby:
- Organizers and presenters
- Organizers and co-organizers
To manage who can bring participants from the lobby into the meeting or webinar, you should consider using this per-organizer policy for sensitive meetings. When set to it's default value of Organizers and presenters, only organizers and presenters can admit participants into the meeting from the lobby. This policy sets a default that your organizers can change through their Meeting options.
The following settings are available for Who can bypass the lobby:
- Everyone
- People in my org, trusted orgs, and guests
- People in my org and guests
- People in my org
- People who were invited
- Only organizers and co-organizers
This per-organizer policy controls who can bring participants from the lobby into the meeting or webinar. When set to it's default value of Organizers and presenters, only organizers and presenters can admit participants into the meeting from the lobby. This policy sets a default that your organizers can change through their Meeting options.
An additional setting, People dialing in can bypass the lobby, controls if people calling in by phone can bypass the lobby.
While the meeting organizer normally chooses which setting to use for each meeting, you can enforce a particular setting using either a meeting template or a sensitivity label.
If your organization requires that certain types of meetings not be attended by people outside the organization, consider a meeting template that only allows people in your organization to bypass the lobby. This ensures that people outside the organization who were accidentally invited or sent a meeting link can't join the meeting directly.
If your organization has meetings where highly sensitive information is shared and you need to be sure that only certain people attend, consider using a meeting template or sensitivity label that only allows meeting organizers to bypass the lobby. This ensures that organizers can vet each incoming participant to make sure they should be in the meeting. This also prevents the meeting from starting until an organizer joins.
For sensitive meetings in general, consider using the People who were invited option. This ensures that people who don't have either a direct or forwarded meeting invite go through the lobby. (The meeting organizer can also prevent forwarding when they create the meeting.)
For more information about the meeting lobby, see Control who can bypass the meeting lobby in Microsoft Teams.
For information about using meeting templates and sensitivity labels together, see Use Teams meeting templates, sensitivity labels, and admin policies together for sensitive meetings.
Attendees calling in by phone
By default, attendees who are dialing in by phone go through the lobby. Administrators can change this default with the People dialing in can bypass the lobby admin meeting policy. If you want to enforce this setting to be on or off, you must use a meeting template or sensitivity label.
If there are circumstances where you want to allow callers to bypass the lobby, meeting organizers can control this setting, or you can enforce it through a meeting template or sensitivity label.
Join and leave notifications
Meeting organizers have the option of having attendees calling in by phone announced when they join or leave a meeting. If you want to ensure that phone attendees are announced for certain types of meetings, you can enforce this setting with a meeting template.
Meeting with anonymous participants
Unless you allow everyone to bypass the lobby, anonymous participants must go through the lobby to attend the meeting. Meeting organizers can then decide if these participants should be admitted.
If your organization doesn't allow anonymous participants to join meetings at all, you can turn off the Anonymous users can join a meeting policy in the Teams admin center. If you have certain groups in your organization - such as marketing - who need to organize meetings with anonymous participants and others - such as research - who shouldn't, you can use Teams meeting policies to configure anonymous meeting join for different groups. For more information, see Manage anonymous participant access to Teams meetings, webinars, and town halls.