Why meetings with external people need their own approach
In a meeting with only colleagues, it matters little who joins or who shares their screen. With customers, suppliers, job applicants or advisers, it is different. A Teams meeting link is not personal: anyone who has the link can try to join, even if the invitation was forwarded. On top of that, default settings often let many attendees present and keep recordings for a long time. That is not a leak in itself, but it is something you want to decide deliberately.
Two levels: admin center and meeting options
Teams meetings are configured in two places. In the Teams admin center, the administrator uses meeting policies to set the default for the whole organisation or for groups of staff. In addition, the organiser of a meeting can deviate per meeting through the meeting options, within what the policy allows. A good setup combines a safe default with the freedom to make a specific meeting more open or stricter.
The lobby: who gets straight in?
The lobby bypass setting determines who joins the meeting directly and who has to be admitted first. The choices range from only the organiser and co-organisers to everyone. For most SMEs it works well if people from your own organisation, and optionally invited people, get straight in while everyone else waits in the lobby. The organiser or a co-organiser then sees who is waiting and admits that person deliberately.
Also consider people who dial in by phone, if you use dial-in. You can decide whether they may bypass the lobby. And ask yourself whether anonymous attendees, people who are not signed in with a Microsoft or Teams account, may join your meetings. For customer calls that is often necessary, which makes the lobby all the more important for them.
Who can present?
A presenter can share their screen, mute attendees and sometimes remove others from the meeting. If you give everyone presenter rights, any external attendee can share their screen too, on purpose or by accident. A safe default is that only the organiser, co-organisers and people in your own organisation can present. If a supplier needs to give a demo, the organiser makes them a presenter during the meeting. For large sessions, such as a customer webinar, you can also turn off attendees’ microphones and cameras and limit the chat.
Recordings and transcripts: only when needed
A meeting recording or transcript often contains personal data and business information. Recording should therefore be a deliberate choice, not a habit. Teams shows attendees a notification as soon as a recording or transcript starts, but also mention it beforehand in the invitation or at the start of the call. Decide who may record: in the meeting policy you can turn recording and transcription on or off for the whole organisation or for specific groups.
Recordings of regular meetings are stored in the OneDrive of the person who started the recording; recordings of channel meetings in the team’s SharePoint site. Set an expiration period in the policy so old recordings expire automatically instead of staying for years. If you need to keep certain recordings longer, arrange that through retention policies rather than keeping everything indefinitely. When someone leaves, make sure recordings in a personal OneDrive do not disappear unnoticed or end up with the wrong person.
Sensitive conversations: extra options
For conversations about, for example, an acquisition, an employment dispute or medical information, you can make a single meeting stricter: only the organiser admits people, recording is off and only the organiser presents. Teams Premium adds further options, such as watermarks on shared content and meeting templates and labels that apply settings automatically. For most SMEs, the standard options combined with a good meeting policy are sufficient. If you use sensitivity labels, you can check whether they also make sense for meetings.
Meeting, chatting and collaborating with external people
Joining a meeting is different from chatting with external people or working together in a team. Chat with other organisations is controlled through external access; see our article on external chat in Teams. If you collaborate in a team for a longer period, the external party gets a guest account. Keep these three topics separate, so it stays clear what an external person can and cannot do.
How Floor ICT handles this
Floor ICT reviews with you how your organisation meets with external people: customer calls, job interviews, supplier meetings or webinars. Based on that, we set up a meeting policy in the Teams admin center for the lobby, presenter rights, anonymous attendees, recordings, transcripts and the expiration period of recordings. Staff get a short explanation of the meeting options, so they can make a sensitive meeting stricter themselves. As part of our managed service, we review the settings periodically and adjust them when Microsoft adds new options.