Unable To Join Microsoft Teams Meeting As Guest

One of my clients recently came with a query; their guest users are unable to join a Teams meeting anonymously. There are some changes and settings you need to make for this.

In this tutorial, I will explain how to join a Microsoft Teams meeting as a guest. Basically, you will learn how to enable anonymous user access for a Teams meeting in Microsoft Teams.

If you’re new to Microsoft Teams, here’s a brief introduction to the platform.

Microsoft Teams is a collaborative communication platform developed by Microsoft, designed to serve as a workspace for real-time collaboration and communication within organizations. It brings together features such as video conferencing, phone calls, text chat, group messaging, file and app sharing, and more—all in one integrated environment.

Teams allows users to organize conversations into channels, share and co-edit files, schedule meetings, and collaborate seamlessly, making it a central hub for teamwork and productivity in both remote and in-office settings. It also offers robust security and compliance features to protect user data and privacy.

Millions of users use Microsoft Teams due to its updated features provided by Microsoft.

To provide access to anonymous users for Teams meetings, you must enable anonymous access at the organization level and then create a specific policy for the meetings.

If the anonymous access is disabled at the organizational level, when a user tries to join the Teams meeting, they will get the error message as shown below:

Let me show you the steps below:

Enable Anonymous User Access for Teams Meeting at the Organization Level

To allow anonymous users to join the team’s meeting, you must have Microsoft Teams admin permissions.

To enable all members of your organization to participate in team meetings that allow anonymous users, you need to activate this organization-wide setting.

If you want to restrict the users or groups who can host the meeting, which allows anonymous participants, you can create a meeting policy and assign users to it.

When this setting is disabled, anonymous users will not be able to join meetings organized by anyone within your organization.

Follow the steps to enable this:

1. Log in to the Microsoft Teams Admin Center. Now, click on the Users drop-down menu and select Guest access. You can see the screenshot below:

2. In the guest access window, scroll down to the Meeting section. Click on Meetings > Meeting settings link.

3. In the Meeting settings window, you can select whether Anonymous users can join a meeting to On or Off. Click on the Save button. Here is the screenshot for your reference.

This is how to enable anonymous meeting settings for a user organization-wide in the Microsoft Teams admin center.

In the next step, you need to create a new Teams meetings policy to grant access to specific users or groups who can create meetings with anonymous participants.

Check out Post an Adaptive Card to Microsoft Teams Using Power Automate

Create a New Meeting Policy for Anonymous Users for Teams Meetings

Follow the steps below to create a new meeting policy in Teams for anonymous users.

Note:

Turning On Anonymous users can join a meeting unverified setting allows the anonymous users can join the meeting by providing their name in the meeting window without being verified by email.

The meeting organizers will see the anonymous participants in the meeting with a name followed by(Unverified). For example: Alex(Unverified).

1. Open Microsoft Teams admin center, click on the drop-down of Users -> Select Guest access.

2. In the guest access window, scroll down to the Meeting section. Select Meetings > Meeting Policies.

3. In the Meeting policies window, select an existing policy or click on +Add to create a new policy.

4. In the meeting policies window, provide a name for the meeting policy. Here is a screenshot for your reference.

5. Then, under the “Meeting join & lobby” section, toggle the option to “on” for “Anonymous users can join a meeting unverified“, so that anonymous users can join a meeting without verification. Click on the Save button.

The meeting has been created and can be displayed under Manage Policies.

6. Now, to the created meeting policy, assign users. Select the policy, click on the “Manage users” drop-down, and then select “Assign users.”

7. Next, it opens the Manage users pane. Search by name in the search box and click the Apply button.

Now, this user [Chandrika Kambala] will be added to the Anonymous User Access policy, who will be able to create a meeting, allowing anonymous participants to join the meeting.

Changes to meeting policies may take up to 24 hours to take effect.

Now, let me create a meeting with the anonymous user, and show you how an anonymous user can join the team’s meeting directly by clicking the link without signing in.

Join Team Meeting as an Anonymous User

Here, I will create a Teams Meeting from the user account [Chandrika].

Below, you can see that I have created a Teams Meeting with one anonymous user.

See the steps on how a user can join:

1. The user’s Gmail account will receive a Teams Meeting link [Join the meeting now], from which they can join the meeting. Click on the link.

2. Next, it will navigate to the Join your Teams meeting window. If you don’t have the Teams app, select the ‘Continue on this browser’ option.

3. Then, it will open the Meeting lobby, where you will be asked to provide your name to join the meeting. And, click on the Join now button.

4. After that, you will be able to join the Teams meeting. For your reference, I have added the screenshot of the Teams Meeting.
   • The anonymous user will be represented with ‘Unverified’ next to their name.

Join a Microsoft Teams Meeting as a Guest from a Meeting Link

Suppose you have copied the Meeting link and sent it to any Teams chat groups, WhatsApp, or other social media platforms. Users who have the meeting link can join the Teams meeting anonymously by clicking on it without any verification.

You can see below:

1. I have shared the meeting link in the Teams chat, as shown in the image below.

2. When you click on that link, it will open the Microsoft Teams Meeting window, where you can enter your Name to join the meeting. Click on the Join now button.

Teams Meeting with Anonymous Users:

This is how you can allow anonymous users to your Microsoft Teams meeting.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, I explained how to enable anonymous user access in Microsoft Teams meetings. After this, users can join a Microsoft Teams meeting as a guest.

You may also visit:

• Set Microsoft Teams Status Using Power Automate
• Post Image to Microsoft Teams Channel Using Power Automate
• Send a Message When a New Post is added in Microsoft Teams Team Channel in Power Automate
• Create a Team using Power Automate in Microsoft Teams

Bijay Kumar

After working for more than 18 years in Microsoft technologies like SharePoint, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI), I thought will share my SharePoint expertise knowledge with the world. Our audiences are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. For my expertise knowledge and SharePoint tutorials, Microsoft has been awarded a Microsoft SharePoint MVP (12 times). I have also worked in companies like HP, TCS, KPIT, etc.