Part of the latest Teams Premium license is the ability to create a custom Teams meeting template. You can create it (as an Admin) and use it to schedule meetings from Teams or Outlook clients. A template contains preconfigured meeting settings so you don’t need to manually edit meeting settings each time you want to create a workshop or external meeting.
In this post, I will show you how to create a template and how to use it in Teams.
Teams Premium license
Meeting templates require the Teams Premium license. Today it is available as a preview, and you can activate it as a trial license. You can enable it on your tenant for 30 days and test templates with your colleagues.
I prepared a detailed guide in one of my previous posts – https://modernworkplace.site/overview-of-the-teams-premium-features/.
Create a template
Let’s start creating a template. First, you need to go to Teams Admin Center, open the Meetings section, and navigate to the Meeting templates option. There is a list with all existing templates (default and custom). Default templates are created by Microsoft – Webinar and Virtual appointment.
- To create a new custom template click on the + Add button.
- Provide a title and a description and configure meeting settings. Click Save when all is ready to use.
Template settings
There are 5 settings categories in a template:
- Security – lobby settings and end-to-end encryption options
- Audio and video – mic and camera settings
- Recording and transcription – record automatically and who can record a meeting
- Roles – meeting notification settings
- Meeting engagement – chat options, Q&A, and what attendees can see during the meeting
Meeting template policy
Meeting templates have a dedicated policy. Using it you can control which template is visible and who can use it.
By default, every custom template is added to the Global (Org-wide default) policy and is enabled for every user. This behavior should be changed in the final version because it’s not a good idea to show all templates by default.
- If you want to check the existing template policy, go to the Meeting section and open the Meeting template policies options.
- Click on the Global (Org-wide default) policy. There are 2 sections – Viewable templates and Hidden templates. By default, all new templates are saved as Viewable templates. You can disable your custom template when you want to hide it.
Create a meeting from a template
You can use custom meeting templates directly from the Teams client (or Outlook client).
- Navigate to Calendar and click the down arrow on the + New meeting button. Your custom templates will be visible at the bottom of the list. Click on the custom template.
- Now you can schedule your meeting – provide a title, add attendees, select dates, etc. On the right-hand pane, you can find all preconfigured settings and modify them if you need. All those options come directly from the custom template.
Summary
Meeting templates provides much-awaited options to create presets for repeating meetings (such as HR meetings, external workshops, management calls, etc.). You don’t need to manually reconfigure meetings to ensure that security and recording options are in place!
For example, I often schedule workshops for my team. Every time I need to change recording settings, lobby settings, audio/video settings, and chat options. Once a month it’s not a big deal but I need to do this 5-10 times/month. Using meeting templates I can create a template and use it whenever I need to schedule a workshop!
Keep in mind that this feature is in preview and will be available only in part of the Teams Premium license!
