How To Schedule A Meeting In Microsoft Teams

You can do many things to improve your team’s efficiency, and using a collaboration hub like Microsoft Teams is one of them. It’s a great communication tool you can use to chat, share files, and have audio and video meetings with your team.

If you’re just getting started with Teams, you might not be sure how to schedule a meeting. There are several ways you can do this, and your options will depend on which Microsoft Teams version you’re using. In this article, we’ll give you all the details you need to know.

Scheduling a Meeting in Microsoft Teams

Your Microsoft Teams account is connected to all the Microsoft 365 Group products such as SharePoint, Outlook, Yammer, etc. And the calendar you use in Teams is directly connected to the Microsoft Exchange calendar.

Outlook uses the Exchange calendar, as well. That means that once you schedule a meeting via Outlook, it will automatically appear in Teams and the other way around. Here is how you can schedule a meeting in Microsoft Teams:

1. In the Teams chat, click on the Schedule a meeting icon (under the box for the new message.)
2. Then, select Calendar, which is on the left side panel, and then click on New meeting.
3. A pop-up window will appear. You can select the time and date for the meeting.
4. When done with scheduling, click Save. After that, the pop-up window will close, and you can send the meeting invitations using Outlook.

Scheduling Assistant

On the pop-up window, you can also use the function of Scheduling Assistant. This feature will help you find the right time for all the members of your team, including you.

When you select this option, you’ll be able to see when meeting participants are free and when they are busy. Dark blue represents the time slots when they’re unavailable. The light blue slots are the available times, and the grey time slots are the participant’s non-working hours.

Inviting People Outside Your Team

One of the great things about Microsoft Teams is that you can invite people outside your organization to join the meeting.

They don’t even need to have a Microsoft Teams license. All you need is their name and email address, and you can send the invite. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Open the Add required attendees option in the New Meeting pop-up form.
2. Click on Optional.
3. Enter the person’s email address.
4. Click on Invite, an email invitation will soon land in their inbox.

You can also schedule a meeting that will take place inside a specific Teams channel. On the New Meeting form, select Add channel. Once you’ve set it up and sent the invitations, you can’t change the channel.

If you do need to make a change, you’ll have to create new invitations. Also, if a meeting is to take place on a channel, everyone who is a part of that team will be able to join the meeting, even if they didn’t get the invitation.

Microsoft Teams Free Edition

In case you’re using a free edition of Teams, you might be wondering where the scheduling option in your app is. Well, unfortunately, in the free version of Microsoft Teams, you can’t schedule a meeting.

But it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a meeting at all. The app has the Meet Now option for when you have to gather the team quickly.

All you have to do is click on the camera icon next to Meet now and then select all the names of people that will be attending the meeting. This feature is available for subscription-based Teams accounts as well.

More About Microsoft Team Meetings

You can have up to 250 people in a single Teams meeting. However, you can’t see every participant at the same time. Before recent updates, you could only see up to four active attendees on a call. Now you can have nine participants on the screen at once. But the new update brought some other exciting innovations.

Microsoft Teams meeting participants now have better audio quality and custom backgrounds for the meetings. You can also pin a video if there’s a need to focus more attention on a particular meeting attendee. Other meeting-related features include a virtual lobby, screen sharing, and interactive troubleshooting.

Bring Your Team(s) Closer

There are many ways you can make your workplace more efficient using Microsoft Teams. It’s mostly a chat-based and file-sharing app. But it’s also a fantastic tool when you need to have a video conference with your team.

Scheduling a meeting with a Scheduling Assistant makes the logistic of finding the right time much more comfortable. And if someone is not a part of your organization or team, they can still join. Just send them an invite via email.

Have you ever attended a Microsoft Teams Meeting? Or scheduled one? Let us know in the comments section below.