Teams meetings not allowing pupils to join till organiser is present

[Jamman960]

Morning all,

 

up until now pupils have been able to start meetings whenever they wanted(not good), at the moment it seems as though in a limited number of meetings the organiser needs to be present before pupils can join. While this is a welcome change but in some cases the teacher isn't the one who setup the meeting so pupils can't join even though their teacher is there.

 

I can't seem to find any settings or documentation for this and it appears to be on by default - is anyone else experiencing this or know of any settings/documentation for it?

 

Regards

 

James

[bobsmith]

so who is setting up these meetings?

[Jamman960]

IT have been roped into it for some staff, I've setup all of the lessons for our remote music staff for instance.

 

Seems odd as its affecting some but not others, a test meeting I've just setup is affected. As a pupil I get a message stating the meeting hasn't started yet and to try again, once the organiser is present the pupils still need to come out of the meeting and re-join, they're not in a lobby

 

I knew this feature was coming and would have implimented it either way but to be on by default is frustraiting

[Jamman960]

Is anyone else finding this? I've created a ticket with Microsoft - this isn't the new lobby feature and there are no settings for the meeting to change this behaviour

 

James

[DrBeaker]

Surely this logic applies the same way as kids shouldn't be in a physical classroom until the lesson starts. Same as a science lab, same as an IT lab etc.

[Jamman960]

I agree entirely and think teams should have been setup to stop students starting meetings in the first place but this hasn’t been the case until now.

 

Having a teacher present is great but this seems to require the organiser to be present which isn’t always the same person

[psydii]

It's a new capability that went live today!

 

From elsewhere:

 

 

Prevent students from joining meetings without teacher present (based on messaging policy) available now!

 

 

 

Great news for educators everywhere! No more unattended Teams meetings in EDU!

We are pleased to announce General Availability of one of the most requested features for Teams in Education. This new experience will prevent students from joining a meeting un-attended, when the educator is not in the meeting. Additionally, students will only be able to chat when a teacher is present in the meeting. To be very clear, this feature is based on the Meeting Policy - "Only people who can create a meeting can start a meeting". This feature, in combination with 'end the meeting' will allow instructors to ensure that students do not continue or re-start existing meetings. A huge thank you to educators everywhere for your patience as our engineers worked around the clock to make sure this solution was enabled with all of your feedback in mind!

 

Two things to keep in mind when testing this new functionality:

 

 

 

Applying new meeting policies to student accounts can take up to 24 hours to fully process.

Teams must be updated to the latest version.

 

Moving forward, students will not be able to join a meeting if the Teacher has not yet started the meeting.

 

 

 

In addition, students will only be able to chat when a teacher is present in the meeting.

 

 

 

Documentation on our support sites has been updated, feel free to access those updates at the links below:

 

https://aka.ms/MeetingSafetyEduAdmin

 

 

https://aka.ms/MeetingSafetyEducator

Edited June 25, 2020 by psydii

[psydii]

There isn't actually a policy or setting called "Only people who can create a meeting can start a meeting", but you can achieve that effect by (to quote the updated documentation linked above)

Turning off Allow Meet now in channels, Allow channel meeting scheduling, Allow scheduling private meetings, and Meet now in private meetings for students not only blocks students from scheduling a meeting as the organizer, they also provide the following safety measures for education:

 

If students attempt to join the meeting before the educator, they won't be able to join the meeting in the latest version of the Teams app.

Although meeting creation applies to any users and any licenses, the safety measures on meeting join block described above apply only to education customers in Teams based on the users’ license type.

When you change the Allow chat in meetings policy to disabled and block students from scheduling meetings from above while and keep this policy on for educators (for the meetings that are not scheduled from a channel or meet now in a channel), students won't be able to chat before the educator joins the meeting, nor after the meeting. They will still be able to see the chat history before, during, and after the meeting. As an example, they'll be able to see messages from the teacher, or the meeting recording link, if the meeting was recorded.

 

If both students and educators have the Allow chat in meetings policy turned off, no one will be able to chat in the meeting chat window. The safety measure on meeting chat restriction described above only applies to education customers in Teams based on users’ license type.

 

Apparently this behaviour is only present on edu tenants.

Edited June 25, 2020 by psydii

[NicholasEsping]

From my understanding if you set your students up with a meeting policy that does not allow them to schedule meetings they will not be able to start the meeting until the teacher joins. Your teachers will need to have a policy that allows the creation of meetings for this to work properly.

[gumbygaz]

Just tried testing this, have it setup as per the MS website but students can still start the meeting before the start time on their own.

Anybody else confirm it working for them? Perhaps with it only being released today the policies haven't filtered to our tenancy yet...

[robyholmes]

It needs the Teams app to be up to date to apply. So if your using your phone or tablet, check the app is up to date. On the windows desktop client, you can request it to check for updates on your user profile image.

[NicholasEsping]

Also if you just set the policies I have seen it take over 24 hours for the settings to apply might just need to wait a while longer.

[Jamman960]

Thanks for all the info guys, It turns out that tit isn't restricted to the organiser but is in fact any teacher that needs to be present - we've been having issues because the pupils weren't aware of this change and kept reporting the links weren't working. It ended up being a game of cat and mouse as staff were leaving and re-creating meetings because they thought their previously created ones weren't working.

 

Its a great feature to have but a bit of a pain when its released so quietly and took effect by default because of the way our policies are configured.