Limiting access to Teams meetings

[enjay]

A number of our teachers have had instances of people joining their Teams lessons then disrupting them by playing music, making/playing odd noises, etc. These people are joining the Teams meetings with names which match students in the class, but we do not believe they are actually that person. I'm thinking this is being done by students who have got hold of the link somehow (I'd be interested to know how they might have done that, too) and signed in but took the opportunity in-browser to set someone else's name.

 

How, if at all, are your teachers managing this? We've already advised teachers to enable the lobby, however if the name matches, teachers are - understandably - allowing the student through. Can we limit which accounts can join an individual meeting just to those who have been invited and/or are members of the Team/Channel? Can we force authentication through AzureAD and remove the option to choose your own name?

[enjay]

Here's a related thought - anyone with the link can join a Teams meeting, but... (how) is it possible to access the links for a Meeting to which you weren't invited? Unless there's a way of accessing links for random Meetings in the organisation, can we be confident the people who are doing this are members of the class?

[Mako]

When a meeting is set up, the students will get the meeting invitiation in their e-mail. That join link is there, they can forward it on, open it incognito (thus bypassing any O365 login session) and join your meeting with a dummy name.

 

I believe the "Anonymous users can join a meeting" setting is what's giving rise to your issue. I'm not sure how it works if you turn it off but leave guest access on...

[enjay]

When a meeting is set up, the students will get the meeting invitiation in their e-mail. That join link is there, they can forward it on, open it incognito (thus bypassing any O365 login session) and join your meeting with a dummy name.

 

Agreed. Is there a way of getting those links without an invited student forwarding the email? If not, we at least have a much smaller pool of suspects.

 

I believe the "Anonymous users can join a meeting" setting is what's giving rise to your issue. I'm not sure how it works if you turn it off but leave guest access on...

 

That's the conclusion I was coming to, as well. At the moment, we have anonymous access enabled for two reasons: 1) it allows invited external people to join, 2) it allows students who are having sign-in issues to still access their lessons, as friends can forward them the link (off topic, but a student found a creative way round this yesterday - they couldn't access the meeting, so went on Facetime screen sharing with a friend who was in the class!). We may have to review this policy, though.

[chris11256]

Guest users should still go into the lobby before being admitted. We tell staff that unless they're expecting a guest user(like an external speaker or something) then always decline then block entry.

[enjay]

Guest users should still go into the lobby before being admitted. We tell staff that unless they're expecting a guest user(like an external speaker or something) then always decline then block entry.

 

We tell our teachers the same. The problem here is someone has gone in as a guest and when prompted for their name, typed the name of a student in the class, so the teacher has admitted them.

[Mako]

I don't think there's a clear-cut way to a compromise.

 

Either leave anonymous access on, and lose the ability for external speakers etc and continue with your issue, or turn it off.

 

I've actually just turned it off because I like to cause chaos want to see what impact it will have.

[lmrogers]

We too have been having this problem but the guidance we are giving is do not admit any guest users despite what name they type. Guest users will always have (Guest) at the end of what ever the users type.

[enjay]

Guest users will always have (Guest) at the end of what ever the users type.

 

That's the slightly odd thing. The second accounts didn't have "Guest" after their name...

[Mako]

Vaguely related to something in your OP, are you allowing students to use cameras? To bring it round to the topic, if "anonymous" people are joining with a camera on, it would be interesting to know, or were they just arsing about with a microphone?

 

It's a hot topic for SLT at the moment.

[enjay]

Vaguely related to something in your OP, are you allowing students to use cameras? To bring it round to the topic, if "anonymous" people are joining with a camera on, it would be interesting to know, or were they just arsing about with a microphone?

 

It's a hot topic for SLT at the moment.

 

Yes, we're allowing it, encouraging it even, but not insisting on it.

[msi_school]

I am telling staff to set pupils to attendees and use the "Allow attendees to unmute" option to stop pupils from unmuting this stops anyone from making a noise without the teachers permission.

[enjay]

I am telling staff to set pupils to attendees and use the "Allow attendees to unmute" option to stop pupils from unmuting this stops anyone from making a noise without the teachers permission.

 

That's another option, again a compromise but it might work. We allow students to unmute themselves so they can answer questions, but we could have them put up their hands then the teacher unmute them.