Participant settings for a Teams meeting – Microsoft Support

Participant settings are meeting options that affect how participants engage and interact during a meeting. Although default meeting options are determined by an org’s IT admin, meeting organizers can change them for a specific meeting.

About meeting options

Choose who can bypass the lobby 

You can decide who gets into meetings directly and who should wait to be let in by using the lobby. If you choose to have people wait, you (and anyone else allowed to admit people) will see a list of people in the lobby. From there you can choose whether to admit or deny them. 

Let people calling in by phone bypass the lobby 

You’ll see a toggle next to 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.  

Get notified 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 next to Announce when callers join or leave?  

Choose who can present 

See Roles in a Teams meeting for details about selecting presenters and changing someone’s role before and during a meeting.  

Note: Meeting rooms are part of your org, so they’ll join meetings the same way any other participant in your org does.

Prevent attendees from unmuting themselves and sharing video 

To avoid distractions in large meetings, you may want to decide when attendees can unmute and share their video. For details, see Manage attendee audio and video permissions. 

To prevent attendees from unmuting, turn off the toggle next to Allow mic for attendees?

To prevent attendees from sharing video, turn off the toggle next to Allow camera for attendees?

Record automatically 

If you turn on this option, a recording and transcription of your meeting will begin as soon as the meeting starts. For more info, see Record a meeting in Teams. 

Allow meeting chat 

In general, people who are on the meeting invite can participate in a meeting chat before, during, and after the meeting. 

If you select Disabled for this option, there will be no meeting chat at any time. 

If you select In-meeting only, the meeting chat will be unavailable before and after the meeting. 

Allow reactions 

Choose whether people can use live reactions in a meeting. If you choose not to allow it, they will still be able to raise their hand. For more info, see Express yourself in Teams meetings with live reactions. 

Enable Q&A 

Use Q&A to allow attendees to post, reply, and react to questions in real-time during a meeting. Learn more about Q&A in Teams meetings. 

Provide CART Captions 

Communication access real-time translation (CART) captions are human-generated captions, in which a trained CART captioner listens to speech during a meeting and translates it to text. Learn more about CART captions in Teams meetings. 

Enable language interpretation 

Language interpretation allows professional interpreters to translate what a speaker says into another language in real-time, without disrupting the speaker’s original flow of delivery. Learn more about language interpretation in Teams meetings. 

Enable Green room 

Use a green room to prepare with other presenters, practice sharing materials, and more before attendees enter the meeting. 

Who can record 

Choose who has permission to record a meeting in Teams. 

Enable end-to-end Encryption 

Use end-to-end encryption in Teams to add an extra layer of security to confidential meetings. 

Allow attendance report 

Enable attendance reports in Teams meetings to view and download details about who attended your meeting, how long they attended, and more.