Best practices for a large meeting in Microsoft Teams

Before a large meeting

• Present the meeting from a wired connection or network for better and more reliable audio and video.

• Create polls to gather information about attendees.

• In Meeting options, do the following:

1. In Meeting access  > Who can bypass the lobby?, select a minimum of People in my org. 

2. In Roles   > Who can present, select Specific people. Then, select Search for participants. Choose presenters for your meeting (from your org or trusted orgs only).

   Note: After a meeting has started, presenters can promote other attendees to the presenter role.

3. In Participation:

   1. ​​​​​​​Turn the Allow mic for attendees toggle off. If someone needs to interact during the meeting, either allow them to unmute when they raise their hand or change their role by hovering over their name and selecting More options  . For more info, see Manage attendee audio and video permissions.

   2. Turn the Allow camera for attendees toggle off. When needed during the meeting, you can allow video for an individual attendee or all attendees. For more info, see Manage attendee audio and video permissions. 

4. Select Save.

Tips to encourage engagement during a large meeting

• Use Spotlight a video to highlight a single presenter to make them stand out.

• Meeting organizers and presenters can change participant settings for attendees. They can let them unmute or promote them as presenters.

• Remind and encourage attendees to raise their hands before speaking and to use live reactions.

• Create polls during the meeting to get feedback from attendees.

More things to know

• For the best experience attending large meetings, webinars, and live events, attendees should use the latest version of the Teams app on a desktop or mobile device. For more info, see Update Microsoft Teams.

• When a meeting reaches 1,000 attendees, the meeting organizer and presenters see a banner indicating that new attendees will join as view-only.

• If the meeting isn't set to view-only, view-only attendees can't join. They also can't bypass the lobby.

• Breakout rooms can’t be created in meetings that have more than 300 attendees, even if the number of attendees drops to fewer than 300 during the meeting. Also, creating breakout rooms in a meeting automatically limits the number of meeting attendees to 300.