MC246704 – Updated April 01, 2021: Microsft updated the message with additional details for clarity. Thank you for your feedback.
Teams meeting organizers and presenters who use the attendee audio management feature will have greater flexibility to determine when attendees can use their microphone.
These updates apply to Teams desktop apps, Teams mobile apps, and Teams on the web.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 80261.
When this will happen
How this will affect your organization
After scheduling a meeting and sending invitations, the meeting organizer can prevent attendees from unmuting during the meeting. With this setting enabled, all attendees (but not presenters) will be muted when they join the meeting and they won’t be able to unmute themselves.
In the current state, attendees must raise their hand to request to speak before a meeting organizer or presenter can allow the attendee to unmute.
In the current state, in order to prevent an individual attendee from unmuting (thereby disabling the attendee’s mic), a meeting organizer or presenter must prevent all attendees from unmuting.
Note: Managing attendee audio can be done before the meeting or during the meeting. It can also be “undone” during the meeting. All of this is done through Meeting Options. Meeting options are available in the invite once it’s sent (Outlook and/or Teams) and it’s also an option under the ellipsis during a meeting.
Organizers and presenters cannot prevent attendees who dial in to a meeting using the phone number provided in the meeting details from unmuting. This functionality is in development. Further, organizers and presenters joining from Teams meeting room devices still cannot modify attendee ability to use their microphone.
What you need to do to prepare
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
Learn more
The Manage attendee audio permissions in Teams meetings support document will be updated once these improvements are released.
Previous Microsoft Teams Changelog Messages
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