Microsoft Teams: How to Facilitate a Meeting

Open the calendar in Microsoft Teams. It is located on the left-hand side of the application.

Click on “New Meeting,” located on the upper right-hand corner of the screen, to schedule a new meeting.

A new window will open:

Show as:

Select how others see your availability during the meeting – Free, Tentative, Busy, Working elsewhere, Out of Office, or Private.

Category:

If you have set up email categories in Outlook, those will be shown here for you to select to associate the new meeting with this category.

Time zone:

This will show your default time zone as set up in Teams, but gives options to change the time zone for this meeting.

Response options:

You may request that participants respond to the invitation and whether they may forward it to others.

Require registration:

You have the option of requiring registration for either people in your organization, everyone, or no one.

Options:

Here, you can choose 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, or only organizers and co-organizers. You can also chose whether to record and transcribe the meeting automatically.

More options:

Found under Options, clicking “More options” will open a new window.

The Security category once again gives you the choice of who can bypass the lobby, as well as whether to enable a green room for presenters and organizers to check their audio, video, and content sharing before any attendees are admitted.

Audio & video lets you toggle off microphone or camera usage for attendees.

Engagement gives you options to turn on or off the meeting chat, allow reactions, and allow attendance report.

Roles offers the choice to announce people who are using the dial-in option to join, choose co-organizers and presenters, and enable language interpretation (this requires having someone to assign as the interpreter).

Recorder & transcript again allows you to toggle on or off the automatic recording and transcribing of the meeting.

Scroll down to save any changes you may have made in these settings.

Add Title:

This is where you will add the name of your class, training, or meeting.

Add required attendees:

Initially you may invite people to your meeting from this box. Click “Optional” to add optional attendees.

Date and Time:

Meeting time and date can be selected here, and whether it is an all-day event. If you are not sure when to host the meeting, the toolbar at the very top has a “Scheduling Assistant” tab that can show you your participant’s schedules.

Does not repeat:

You may choose to repeat this meeting regularly – Every weekday (Mon-Fri), Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, or Custom.

Add Channel (optional):

You may host your meeting within a specific channel, allowing anyone in that channel to join.

Add Location (optional):

You may add a location here if needed. It is optional and not needed for online conferences.

Once you are finished filling out the previous information. Click Save.

Now you can see your new meeting on the calendar in Teams and Outlook. From here, you may join the meeting, or you may edit details or cancel the meeting.

The new edit screen also opens access to new tools to prepare for your meeting and to review when your meeting is over. You can access breakout rooms, attendance reports, and add additional approved apps, like Word or Excel. The chat and any files that you would like your participants to have access to or are shared during the meeting can also be accessed here.

You can create the number of rooms, have participants assigned to rooms automatically, or manually assign them. You can change the names of each room and change meeting settings for individual rooms.

Clicking on the three dots in the upper right corner of each room will allow you to rename the room and see additional room options, similar to the “More options” for the meeting itself.

Many people use Outlook to schedule and edit meetings. To add additional participants to a meeting after you have scheduled it, simply go into the calendar of either Outlook or Teams and click on the meeting.

Teams:

Go to the meeting details, as explained above, and add their email address to the list of required or optional attendees. You will then have to send an update to all participants.

Outlook:

The event will open. Add the new email addresses to the participants bar. Pressing “Send” will automatically update all attendees. If you wish to only update the new attendees, you must click on the “Scheduling Assistant” tab at the top and add attendees, or click on the “X” beside the names of those you wish to remove. Return to the “Event” tab and press “Send”

The update will be reflected in both Teams and Outlook.Note: It is best practice to ensure participant updates are kept to a minimum, so it is recommended that the meeting organizer make as many edits as possible all at once for fewer emailed updates.

Before the meeting begins, ensure your microphone is plugged in, and then test your devices. To do this, click on the three dots at the top right corner of the Teams window, next to your profile picture. Select “Settings,” then “Devices.” From here, you can adjust your device settings and even make a test call to ensure your mic and camera are working the way you prefer.

When you join the meeting you will see the following screen. The options you have on this screen are:

Audio:

The default setting is Computer audio. The other options are only used in specific circumstances. Under Computer audio, it will show the current default microphone and speakers. You can choose between PC Mic and Speakers or a specific headset, headphones, and/or microphone. You can also toggle the microphone on or off here.

Join Now:

This will bring you directly into the meeting.

Camera:

Toggle the cameras on or off.

When you join a meeting, you will see a toolbar near the top of the screen.

Many of these options are available to all attendees. See Microsoft Teams Meeting Attendees Toolbar for more information about these options.

Chat: The first button will open the Meeting chat panel on the right side of the screen.

People:
The second button opens the Participants panel. This will show the participants currently in the meeting and allow you to invite additional people. You can also see who is raising their hand in the order that their hands were raised.

Raise:
The third button allows you to raise your hand. In the participants panel, those with hands raised will be shown in the order that they raised their hands.

Reactions: The fourth button shows the reactions you can use

View:
The fifth button allows you to change how you see participants and content.

Notes:
The sixth button opens the Meeting Notes dialog. You may have to request access to the meeting notes.

Rooms: The seventh button opens the Rooms dialog. This will allow you to set up Breakout rooms to split up your participants into groups after the meeting has started.

Apps:
The eighth button opens the Apps dialog. A few pre-approved apps will show with the option of looking for more.

More: The options that are available only to the facilitator include:

Record and transcribe:

Start recording or start transcription.

Meeting Info:

Specific details about the meeting that may need to be shared to help participants enter the meeting when they are having trouble, or to invite additional people when the participant panel’s invite option is not working.

Video effects and settings:

You can choose your camera device, adjust its settings, and choose special effects, such as a virtual background and image touch-up.

Audio settings:

Choose your audio device and adjust its settings.

Language and speech:

Turn on live captions and Speaker Coach. Speaker Coach will provide a report after the meeting to help you with various aspects of public speaking according to how you speak during the meeting.

Settings:

• Call health: provides information about your connection.
• Meeting options: the same options available when first scheduling the meeting.
• Accessibility: assign a specific person as a sign language interpreter to prioritize their video and adjust specific settings for live captions.
• Don’t show chat bubbles
• Mute notifications

Help:

Opens a new Teams dialog that allows you to search Teams support.

Camera: Toggles Camera on/off and offers options for visual effects.

Microphone: Toggles Microphone on/off.

Share: This is where you will share the visuals for your meeting. When you click on the share button you will have the option to share your desktop or browser windows. If you want to share sound from your computer, make sure you toggle “Include sound”. Choose from different presenter modes and add digital backgrounds to your content.

Leave: Allows you to either hang up or end the meeting for everyone.

One final important note is that if you click on any of the tabs in the upper far left of the MS Teams module (e.g. “Activity”, “Chat”, “Teams”, “Calendar”, “Calls”, or “Files”) then the primary meeting screen will get minimized. You can still see it in the upper-left corner of the screen. If you want to return to the primary meeting screen, you only need to click on the minimized screen that was just mentioned and it will take you right back to the meeting.