Using Teams Meetings for Office Hours

Owned by Trevor Bain, created
Feb 22, 2023
2 min read

There may be times when you need to hold your in-person office hours online. You can use a Teams meeting to host your office hours if you have a class Team set up.

 Instructions

  1. Open up the calendar in Teams and go to the date and time slot for the office hours

  2. Click on the New Meeting option at the top

  3. Give it a title and then, crucially, use the Add Channel option to add it to a channel within your class Team

  4. Save the meeting

  5. Then, still in the calendar view, double-click on the meeting you just created to bring up the meeting details.

  6. Click on the three dots near the top and select “Meeting options”

    Where to find the Meeting options

  7. That will launch a web page with additional meeting options that you can set. Change “Who can bypass the lobby” to “Only me and co-organisers” and click Save

 

Depending upon your preference, you could set “Announce when callers join or leave” to “Yes” to get an audible tone when someone enters the room (although you are admitting them from the lobby so chances are you know)

Teams Meeting options with Who can bypass the lobby and Announce when callers join or leave set

You can always revisit these settings by double-clicking the meeting in Teams and then going to the Meeting Options again.

There are a few of things to note:

  • The list of people in the lobby is sorted alphabetically and not based on the time that they joined the queue. This is different that having students lined up outside your office. It doesn’t look like you can change this sorting order.

  • The list of people waiting in the lobby is visible to anyone in the meeting. A student meeting with you can see who is in the lobby waiting to get in. This is similar to a student seeing a person waiting outside your physical office when they are meeting with you (or when they leave).

  • Anyone currently in the meeting can admit others from the lobby. It is possible for a student meeting with you to see and admit someone else from the lobby. They are not likely to do this without asking you first. You can remove the person admitted if the student does this by accident.

  • Anyone who leaves (or is removed) can re-join the meeting but they are put back in the lobby when they re-join.

  • While students are in the lobby, they do not see who else is in the lobby.