This site requires JavaScript to be enabled to run. Please enable JavaScript and refresh the page. Your calendar in Teams is connected to your Exchange calendar. In other words, when you schedule a meeting in Outlook, it'll show up in Teams, and vice versa. Every meeting scheduled in Teams is automatically made into an online meeting. Collaborate for free with online versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Save documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online, in OneDrive.
How to Set Up a Microsoft Teams Meeting for First-Time Users
This guide is designed to help you set up a Microsoft Teams meeting for the first time.
Find Teams on the web at To use Teams, you need a Microsoft 365 account with a Business or Enterprise Microsoft 365 license plan. For more information, see How do I get access to Microsoft Teams? For information about supported browsers for Teams on the web, see Web clients for Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams Learn how to use Microsoft Teams from these online video tutorials designed to help you communicate with your team, track projects, manage shared files, and more.
It should also help you learn how to the different variations of Microsoft Teams meetings and the features at your disposal before, during, and after a meeting.
Here’s how to get started. If you’re already using Teams, you can jump to the section most relevant below:
How to start a Microsoft Teams meeting
You can set up your Microsoft Teams meeting either through the Teams app or Microsoft Outlook.
The meeting looks the same bothways.
You can decide which you want to use based on what makes the most sense to your company.
Microsoft is all about making meetings flexible so there are four ways that you can launch a discussion with your team:
- Ad-hoc meetings: Created by clicking the “Meet Now” button to get everyone involved in a conversation as quickly as possible.
- Private meetings: 1-on-1 conversations with specific colleagues or employees.
- Channel meetings: Group conversations with an entire team or group of people.
- Consultation meetings: Like in a telemedicine example where doctors and patients meet one to one.
How to Meet Now in Microsoft Teams
If you want to “Meet Now” in Microsoft Teams, you’re probably looking for the quickest way to get all of the people in a channel talking.
All you need to do is select the little camera icon in a new or existing conversations.
In your video preview, enter a name for your meeting, and click Meet Now.
Click on the names of the people you want to invite to your meeting.
You can also type phone numbers if you want to add people from outside of your organization to the discussion.
If you want to joina meeting using Meet Now, look for the camera icon in a conversation and click Jump In.
If you want to sharea screen during your meeting, click the screen icon to show your screen to the other people you’re talking to.
The ellipses icon will give you other in-meeting controls, including the option to record the meeting and have it emailed to you.
How to schedule a Microsoft Teams meeting
You can schedule Microsoft Teams meetings using your Exchange calendar.
Your calendar in Teams is automatically synced to your Exchange calendar.
Every meeting scheduled in Teams automatically becomes an online meeting.
To schedule a meeting in a chat window, select the icon that looks like a calendar in the chat below the box where you usually type your messages.
You can also go to the Calendar tab on the left-hand side of the app and click on New Meeting.
Select a range of time within the calendar and Teams will open a scheduling form, where you can give your meeting a title, invite people, and add meeting details.
Microsoft Teams also has a Scheduling Assistant you can use to find a time that works for everyone.
Once you’ve got all the details ironed out, click Save. This closes the scheduling form and sends an invite to everyone’s inbox.
To create a channel meeting, click on New Meeting and type the name of one or more channels into the box that says Add Channel.
Channels can’t be added or edited after you’ve sent your invites.
You’ll need to send a new invite if you decide to add extra channels later.
When you have a channel meeting, everyone in the team can see and join that channel.
Once again, you can use the Scheduling Assistant with a channel meeting.
You can also use dropdown boxes on your calendar to add a recurring meeting to everyone’s calendar.
Remember, in a Microsoft Exchange calendar, all Microsoft Teams Meetings will show a Join button five minutes before a meeting is set to start.
When someone joins a meeting, the event changes colors to let you know that someone’s online.
How to schedule a Microsoft Teams meeting from Outlook
You can also schedule your Microsoft Teams Meetings from Outlook.
The Microsoft Teams Outlook add-in allows people to view, accept, or enter meetings from Teams, or Outlook.
To schedule a meeting, open Outlook and click on New Teams Meeting in the calendar view.
Add the people that you want to include in the meeting to the To field.
If you want a bunch of people to join the meeting at once, you can invite entire contact groups.
Add your meeting subject, as well as a location, start time, and end time, then click Send to inform your team.
You can also invite people outside of your organization to a Teams Meeting from Outlook.
All you need to do is add them as guests before the meeting starts, so they don’t need to join anonymously.
Add guests to your team by selecting Teams then visiting the team in your list. Click on … (More Options) > Add member.
Enter the email address of the guest.
Anyone with a business or consumer account can join your team as a guest.
You can also edit guest information to give them a name.
Click Add to send a welcome email to your guest. Casting simulation open source.
Customize your Microsoft Teams background
Video conferencing is a great way to bring teams together, regardless of where your users are. However, people may be reluctant to join a video meeting if their environment is messy or distracting.
The good news? Microsoft Teams changes all that.
You can blur everything behind you in a video, for absolute privacy.
To do this, simply:
- Click on your audio and video settings screen when you join a meeting
- Choose the ellipses “…” for more options
- Tap on Blur my background
You can also add custom backgrounds like an office environment or company logo, rather than blurring out the background.
Microsoft Teams Custom Backgrounds
Microsoft introduced virtual backgrounds for Microsoft Teams in April 2020. Microsoft said it designed custom backgrounds to let you replace your real meeting background with a “fresh and bright home office.”
To find virtual backgrounds, launch a video chat and tap the … menu:
Click Show background effects.
This will bring up a sidebar with some alternative background options.
You can only use stock photos from Microsoft for now but watch this space.
For something more advanced, and to stand out in front of your boss, colleagues, or clients, you can opt for a third-party background.
To download a selection of premium Microsoft Teams backgrounds, you can choose from 300 high-quality images here.
How to add members to Microsoft Teams Meetings
The are various ways that you can add people to a meeting in Microsoft Teams.
For instance, if you have Anonymous Join enabled, then anyone can join the conference as an anonymous user by clicking on a meeting link invitation.
You can turn Anonymous Join on by visiting the Microsoft Teams admin center, clicking on Meetings > Meeting Settings > Participants:
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If you want more control over who attends your meetings, toggle this switch off, and send invitations to individual team members instead.
As well as inviting everyone in a channel or conversation to a meeting at once, you can also send an email and phone number invitations too.
Before a meeting, you can use the Invite People box when you start your meeting to search for people and invite whoever you like.
When you’re in a meeting, click on Show participants icon your meeting controls to see who’s there, who’s been invited, and who isn’t there yet.
To ask someone to join a meeting, you can click on More Options (…), then Ask to Join.
Alternatively, type a person’s name into the search box (if they’re in your organization), or their phone number or email address.
Want to customize your meeting invitations?
Click on Meetings > Meeting Settings > Email invitation.
Here, you can customize the logo that shows up in your email invitation, as well as the footer, to make your invite seem more professional.
How to see everyone in Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams allows for up to 250 people to participate in a single Teams meeting.
But, this doesn’t mean you can see all users at the same time. Until recently, Teams only allowed users to view the 4 last active participants in a video call.
As part of the thirdanniversary of Microsoft Teams celebration on the 20th of March, Microsoft rolled out various updates, including a new ability to see up to 9 people in a meeting at the same time.
The upgrade to simultaneously being able to view 9 participants came with a few exciting other features for Microsoft Teams meetings, like:
- Background blur for iOS devices
- Enhanced audio even when using networks with high packet loss
- Booking apps added to teams
- Custom backgrounds for video meetings
- A raise handsfeature to let your colleagues know you have something to say
- The option to formally end meetings for all Teams participants at the same time
The new 9-person view for Microsoft Teams will feature a 3×3 grid of the most active people in your meeting.
The option will be rolled out incrementally so keep checking your Teams meetings for this.
Choosing what you want to see in a Teams meeting
Although you can’t switch from one screen layout to another in a Teams meeting, Microsoft anticipates what you need to see during conversations.
When someone is speaking, they’ll be added to the roster of the 9 videos you can see on your screen at once.
There are also a few ways to choosewhat you want to see in a Teams meeting, like:
- Pinning the video: If you need to focus on a particular person during a video conference, right-click on the video you want to pin and select Pin.This keeps the video feed on your screen, no matter who’s talking.
- Switching between content: When a video presentation appears, you can switch between viewing the content and watching other people in the room. Click on the video you’re interested in to focus on a particular person or presentation.
- Reframing your video: If you want a different view of a specific video, right-click on the content and click fit to frame.Choose fill frameto get a closer, more cropped view.
In-meeting controls and what you can do with Microsoft Teams
As an admin, you’ll be able to use your Meetings settings to control plenty of factors, including whether anonymous people can join teams and more.
You can:
- Allow audio conferencing: With an audio conferencing license, people will be able to dial-in to your meetings from over 90 different countries.
- Set up a virtual lobby: Any attendees not in your organization will appear in a virtual lobby by default with Microsoft Teams. This allows you to choose who should have access to the conversation.
- Mute attendees: In large meetings, you can click on the Mute option on an attendee’s profile to stop them from disturbing other people in your group. You can also unmute them later, or mute everyone but yourself.
- Screen or application sharing: Click on the screen icon on your Microsoft Teams meeting to share your screen. If you only want to share a specific window or application, you can choose exactly how much to share.
- Interactive troubleshooting: Teams will automatically tell you if it detects any problems. For instance, you’ll get a notification if you’re trying to speak to your team when you’re muted.
- Call analytics and recordings: Clicking the … More Options button on Teams will allow you to record a meeting, which can be sent straight to your inbox after the discussion is finished. Microsoft also offers a range of analytics to help troubleshoot potential issues with your meetings too.
More from Microsoft Teams
Hopefully, this guide has presented itself useful for first-time or returning Microsoft Teams users and admins.
To start taking full advantage of Microsoft Teams, I’ve included our Microsoft Teams library that you and your team (no pun intended) should find useful:
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Watch the following session to learn how Teams interacts with Azure Active Directory (AAD), Microsoft 365 Groups, Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business: Foundations of Microsoft Teams
For the full Teams experience, every user should be enabled for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft 365 Group creation.
Users' Exchange mailboxes can be hosted online or on-premises.
Users hosted on Exchange Online or Exchange Dedicated vNext can use all the features of Teams. They can create and join teams and channels, create and view meetings, call and chat, modify user profile pictures (if the Outlook on the web mailbox policy allows them to do so), and add and configure connectors, tabs, and bots. For a more comprehensive list of available features, see the table below.
Users hosted on Exchange Online Dedicated (Legacy) must be synchronized to Azure Active Directory on Microsoft 365 or Office 365. They can create and join teams and channels, add and configure tabs and bots, and make use of the chat and calling features. However, they cannot modify profile pictures, manage meetings, access outlook contacts, or manage connectors.
Important
For integration with on-premises, it's highly recommended that you have an Exchange full Classic Hybrid deployment with Exchange Server 2016 or later. Modern Hybrid support is limited to Free/Busy and will not provide calendar integration from Teams to mailboxes on-premises, for example. For more information about setting up a hybrid deployment, see Exchange Server hybrid deployments.
Users with mailboxes hosted on-premises must be synchronized to Azure Active Directory. They can make use of all the features in the above scenario, but additionally, they can manage meetings if the requirements listed on Requirements for mailboxes hosted on-premises section are met.
The following table provides a helpful quick reference to feature availability based on the Exchange environment.
Actions supported:
| User's mailbox is hosted in: | eDiscovery | Legal Hold | Retention | Team and Channel mgmt | Create and view meetings in Teams | Modify user profile picture | Call History | Manage Contacts | Access Outlook contacts | Voicemail | Add and configure connectors | Add and configure tabs | Add and configure bots |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exchange Online | Yes 1 | Yes 1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes7 | Yes | Yes | Yes 6 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Exchange Online Dedicated vNext | Yes 1 | Yes 1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes7 | Yes | Yes | Yes 6 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Exchange Online Dedicated – Legacy (Sync to Azure AD required) | Yes 1 | Yes 1,2 | Yes 3 | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes 4 | Yes 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Exchange On-premises (Sync to Azure AD) | Yes 1,9 | Yes 1 | Yes 3 | Yes | Yes 8 | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes 4 | Yes 5 | Yes | Yes |
1 eDiscovery and Legal Hold for compliance on channel messages is supported for all hosting options.
2 Teams private chat messages are not yet supported for Legal Hold for this hosting option.
3 Retention will use a shadow mailbox for the online user to store messages.
4 Teams users with on-premises Exchange mailbox may use voicemail with Teams and receive voicemail messages in Outlook, but voicemail messages will not be available to view or play within the Teams client.
5 If one of the owners of a team can add connectors, everyone else in that team will be able to do so, even if their mailboxes are homed on-premises.
6 Only contacts in default contacts folder. Access to other contacts folders or sub-folders is not supported.
7 Teams honors the Outlook on the web mailbox policy setting that's configured by tenant admins to control whether users can change their profile picture. If the -SetPhotoEnabled setting is turned off in the policy, users cannot add, change, or remove their profile picture, so the porfile picture wont be synced to teams if the admin changes the photo.8 You need to meet the requirements listed in the Requirements to create and view meetings for mailboxes hosted on-premises section.
9 A minimum of an Exchange Online Plan 1 license is also required. For more information, see Search for Teams chat data for on-premises users.
Requirements to get the most out of Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams works with several Microsoft 365 and Office 365 services to provide users with rich experience. To support this experience, you need to enable certain features or services and assign licenses.
Users must be assigned an Exchange Online license.
SharePoint Online is required to share and store files in team conversations. Microsoft Teams doesn't support SharePoint on-premises.
Users must be assigned a SharePoint Online license if they want to share files in Chats. If users aren't assigned and enabled with SharePoint Online licenses, they don't have OneDrive for Business storage in Microsoft 365 or Office 365. File sharing will continue to work in Channels, but users are unable to share files in Chats without OneDrive for Business storage in Microsoft 365 or Office 365.
Users must be enabled for Microsoft 365 group creation to create teams in Microsoft Teams.
Important
If you uninstall the Skype for Business client after you move a user to Teams Only mode, presence may stop working in Outlook and other Office apps. Presence works fine in Teams. To resolve this issue, select your profile picture in the top right-hand corner of Microsoft Teams and then select Settings. On the General tab under Application, select Register Teams as the chat app for Office (requires restarting Office applications). After you select this option, close and re-open all Office apps, including Outlook. After you open Outlook, presence information will be available.
Requirements to create and view meetings for mailboxes hosted on-premises
If mailboxes are hosted on-premises, to create and view meetings, the following requirements must be met:
The required Teams license needs to be assigned for the Azure Active Directory synced user.
Users must be synchronized to Azure Active Directory. For information about how to use Azure AD Connect to synchronize with Azure Active Directory, see Hybrid identity documentation.
Mailboxes are hosted in Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 3 or later.
Autodiscover and Exchange Web Services is published externally.
OAuth authentication is configured preferably via the Exchange Hybrid Configuration Wizard running a full hybrid configuration (Classic or Modern). If you are not able to use the Hybrid Configuration Wizard, configure OAuth as described in Configure OAuth authentication between Exchange and Exchange Online organizations.
Note
Exchange trusts OAuth Token from Teams service which is known as EvoSTS. Step 1 should be enough, but just the EvoSTS; ACS is used for Free/Busy lookup in the calendar.
The checkbox for the Exchange Hybrid Deployment feature in Azure AD Connect is set.
For calendar app support and Teams Outlook Add-In for Mac, Exchange Web Service URLs must be configured as SPNs in Tenant Azure AD for the Exchange Service Principal. This step is done with Hybrid Configuration Wizard or following manual steps for Hybrid Modern Authentication.
To enable calendar delegation for these users:
You must also complete steps as described in Configure Integration and OAuth between Skype for Business Online and Exchange Server; these steps will provide the Teams scheduling application the required permissions to confirm delegate permissions.
Note
Step 2 includes role assignment for ArchiveApplication, which is not required for delegation.
The Teams Scheduling add-in for Outlook requires Exchange 2013 CU19 or later when scheduling a meeting on behalf of someone else. This is to support the unauthenticated discovery of the mailbox by our service to check delegate permissions against the delegator mailbox. The delegate and delegator location could be Exchange 2013 or later, or Exchange online, but Autodiscover must resolve to Exchange 2013 CU19 or later.
Additional considerations
Here are some extra things to think about as you implement Microsoft Teams in your organization.
In Microsoft Teams, security and compliance features like eDiscovery, Content Search, archiving, and legal hold work best in Exchange Online and SharePoint Online environments. For channel conversations, messages are journaled to the group mailbox in Exchange Online, where they're available for eDiscovery. If SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business (using work or school account) are enabled across the organization and for users, these compliance features are available for all files within Teams as well.
Control and protect the configuration of compliance policies in Teams and Exchange using Conditional Access. For more information see How do Conditional Access policies work for Teams?
If your organization has compliance requirements to ensure all meeting discussions are discoverable, you should disable private meetings if the organizer has an Exchange on-premises mailbox. For more information, see Allow scheduling private meetings.
In an Exchange hybrid deployment, content from chat messages is searchable regardless of whether chat participants have a cloud-based mailbox or an on-premises mailbox. To learn more, read Searching cloud-based mailboxes for on-premises users. To learn about searching for content in Teams, read Content Search in the Microsoft 365 Compliance Center.
For presence status, Microsoft Teams must check whether the mailbox is hosted on Exchange Online or on-premises. The service then decides where to access the mailbox. To enable the Teams service to check the mailbox location through the REST API call to the Exchange Online service, you have to deploy an Exchange hybrid environment by running the Exchange Hybrid Configuration wizard, as described in Create a hybrid deployment with the Hybrid Configuration wizard.
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Troubleshooting
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For a full troubleshooting guide on the topic, make sure to check out Troubleshoot Microsoft Teams and Exchange Server interaction issues.