14 best practices for Microsoft Teams video meetings

It’s easy to start a video meeting in Microsoft Teams, but there are ways to enhance the experience for you and the other attendees, whether it’s an informal video chat with co-workers, a presentation to a client, or a department-wide quarterly update. Here’s how you can get the most out of video meetings in Teams — best practices for before, during, and after your meeting.

This story is primarily for users whose organizations have a subscription to a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 business or enterprise plan. Although Microsoft offers subscriptions tailored for home users, as well as a free version of Teams, these don’t include many of the features covered in this story. Also note that these instructions describe the Teams desktop app; some features are not available in the web or mobile versions. (Here’s a look at how Teams compares to rivals.)

Before the meeting

To schedule a video meeting in Teams, click the Calendar icon on the left toolbar. This brings up a calendar in the main window. Click the New meeting button at the upper-right corner.

A fill-out form will appear in the main window. Type in a title for your meeting.

In the Add required attendees box, type in the email addresses of the people who you want to attend your meeting — or, if your organization’s address book is integrated with Teams, you can just start typing co-workers’ names (or the names of corporate email lists) and select them from the list that appears. If you want to invite people without making them feel that they’re required to attend, click +Optional at the right end of the required attendees field and add their names in the Optional field that appears below.

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Then in the fill-in boxes below, choose a date, a start time, and an end time for your video meeting. Click the Save button at the upper-right corner, and your invitation will be sent to these people with a link to join the meeting in Teams.

This covers the basics for inviting people to your video meeting and scheduling it. So now let’s go over ways to enhance your invite and prepare for your meeting.

1. Fine-tune your meeting time

Before you click the Save button: There’s a tool you can use to find out if a particular meeting time works for all the people you want to invite. When you’re composing your invite, click Scheduling Assistant at the top of the fill-out form.

Along the left side of the panel that appears is a list of all the required and optional attendees you’re inviting. To the right is an hourly timeline for the day you picked to hold your meeting. Color coding on this timeline indicates when someone you invited will be busy or free throughout the day according to their Outlook calendars.

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By referring to this timeline, you can find a date and time when all of your invitees will be able to attend your video meeting. Click on the column for a period of time to change your meeting’s start and end times. You can also scroll ahead through the days in the timeline to see if another day has fewer scheduling conflicts for the people you’re inviting.

If at least one of your invitees is unavailable for a meeting time you’ve selected, Teams will automatically suggest alternate times, if any are available. These appear below the start and end times that you set for your meeting. Click one of the suggested times to replace the start and end times that you originally chose.

2. Share your meeting’s agenda

When you’re scheduling your meeting, it can be helpful to include your meeting agenda so invitees know what will be discussed and can prepare appropriately.

At the bottom of the fill-out form for a new meeting, you can add a message to include in the meeting invite. This is a good place to include a brief meeting agenda (especially in an easy-to-read format, such as a table or a bulleted list). We suggest that you don’t make the agenda too long, since that might make it hard for recipients to find the link to join the meeting in the invitation email.

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If you need to provide a more detailed agenda, you can send a separate email with a document (such as a .docx or PDF file) attached. Or consider hosting your meeting in a Teams channel as described below. There you can post a reply to the message that announces your meeting with the agenda attached.

3. Host your meeting in a team channel

In most cases you’ll probably want to invite specific people to your meeting. But you can set up an “open” meeting that’s announced in a team channel. This can be handy if, for instance, you’ve created a channel in Teams for a specific project and you want everybody working on this project to attend the meeting.

As you’re going through the fill-out form for scheduling your meeting, click inside the Add channel box, and from the drop-down menu that appears, select a team and a channel within that team. You don’t need to add members of this channel as individual attendees, but you can optionally invite additional attendees who aren’t members of the channel.

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Another way to do this: Go to the team channel where you want to announce this meeting. At the upper-right corner, click the down arrow next to the Meet button. From the menu that opens, select Schedule a meeting. The fill-out form for a new meeting will appear in the main window with the Add channel box already filled in with the name of the channel that you’re in.

When you’ve finished filling out the new meeting form, click the Send button in the upper-right corner. Your scheduled meeting will be posted to the channel’s Posts tab. Members of the channel will get a notice of your meeting announcement, and they can reply to this post with background information or requests for the meeting. You can reply and attach a detailed agenda as a document by clicking the paperclip icon.

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4. Test and configure your computer hardware

If it’s your first time leading a Teams video meeting on your current computer, do a test call to ensure that your device works correctly with Teams. You might need to grant permission to Teams to access your device’s camera, microphone, and/or speakers, and also to allow screen sharing on your device. Recent versions of macOS, for instance, require you to grant some permissions in System Preferences.

To test your device, click the Teams icon on the left toolbar. Then at the upper right, click the Meet button. On the video meeting panel that opens, click the Join now button on the lower right. The meeting window will open, and Teams should pop up a message asking for permission to access the camera, mic, and/or speakers if needed. (If you don’t get such a request but you can’t see or hear yourself, you probably need to grant these permissions anyway.)

If you plan to share your screen during the meeting, click the icon of an upward arrow inside a square in the meeting controls toolbar along the top of the screen. This will open a panel that lets you share your screen, an app window, or other content. If Teams needs permission to share your screen, it should pop up a message requesting this access.

If you’re using a Mac, the permission messages Teams pops up should take you to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy, or you can navigate there manually. On the left side of the screen, click Camera, then find the Microsoft Teams checkbox on the right and make sure it’s checked. Find Microphone, Accessibility, and Screen Recording in the list on the left and check the Microsoft Teams boxes for them as well. You’ll need to restart Teams before the changes take effect. (Marquette University offers more details and troubleshooting tips.)

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Likewise, if any of your invitees are new to video meetings with Teams, request that they arrive 10 minutes early. You can start the meeting early so they can get their device working properly before the meeting’s scheduled start time.

5. Practice PowerPoint presentations with the Speaker Coach

This is actually a feature in PowerPoint, but it’s great preparation for presenting during a Teams meeting: As you practice giving your presentation by speaking aloud and clicking through the slides, Speaker Coach listens to and watches you through your PC’s camera. It gives you real-time tips (as banner notices that pop up along the top center of the screen) on how to improve your performance, such as the words you choose to say, your pace, and even your expressions and body language.

Microsoft plans to implement a version of Speaker Coach for use during Teams meetings sometime in spring 2022. But in the meantime, you can still use it as a way to practice giving a PowerPoint that you will present to others in a Teams video meeting.

To access Speaker Coach: Open your presentation in PowerPoint. On the toolbar along the top of the screen, click Slide Show and from the menu that opens select Rehearse with Coach.

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6. Optionally turn off attendees’ cameras and/or mics

If you’re conducting a video meeting with many attendees, you may want to prevent attendees from turning on their cameras and mics. This can improve call quality and minimize distractions so that you’re the only one speaking or being seen.

To turn off cameras and mics before the meeting begins, open a meeting from the calendar in the Teams app and click Meeting options. (If you don’t see it, click the three-dot icon in the toolbar and then select Meeting options.) In the “Meeting options” pane that opens, turn off the Allow mic for attendees? and Allow camera for attendees? switches and click Save.

You can also do this after you’ve joined the meeting: On the toolbar along the top of the video chat panel, click the Show participants button, which will open a panel along the right side. At the top of this Participants panel, click the three-dot icon and select Disable mic for attendees or Disable camera for attendees.

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You can also prevent a specific person from turning on their camera or unmuting their mic. On the Participants panel, click the three-dot icon next to the person’s name and select Disable mic or Disable camera.

During the meeting

7. Use background blur or a background image

During a video meeting, a professional appearance is important — and that includes what appears behind you on camera. The background blur feature does just what it says: blurs the background behind you. Alternatively, Teams provides a selection of “virtual background” images you can choose to appear behind you. Using background blur or a background image can help make you stand out, and other attendees won’t be distracted by whatever is behind you.

(Note: If you don’t see the option to change your background, then Teams doesn’t presently support the webcam model that is in your laptop or connected to your PC.)

To turn on a background effect before you join a scheduled meeting: Along the bottom of the video preview that shows you on camera, click the Background filters icon. On the panel that opens, select Blur to blur your background, choose one of the provided background images, or click Add new to upload an image file (in .BMP, .JPG, or .PNG format) that’s stored on your PC or in your OneDrive account to use as your background.

To turn on a background effect when you’re already in a meeting: On the meeting controls toolbar along the top of the screen, click the three-dot icon to open the More actions menu, then select Apply background effects. You’ll see the panel described above. Click Preview to see what the new background effect will look like before other attendees see it behind you. Click Apply to set your chosen background effect; then the other attendees will see it behind you.

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8. Screen-share, don’t overshare

If you need to share information from an application running on your PC (for example, a spreadsheet in Excel) to the attendees of your meeting, you can share a window showing only that application and not the rest of your desktop. This helps protect your privacy, as attendees won’t see your other, personal information that may happen to be elsewhere on your desktop, such as an opened calendar or email application.

To share an application window: On the meeting controls toolbar along the top of the Teams meeting screen, click the icon of an up-pointing arrow inside a square. On the panel that opens, thumbnails of applications that are presently running on your PC appear under the Window category. Click the thumbnail of the app that you want to share with the attendees in your meeting.

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From this panel you can also share a PowerPoint presentation; a document, PDF, or image file that’s stored on your PC or in your OneDrive account; or an item captured via your webcam, such as a book or paper document. You can also open a virtual whiteboard that you and the other meeting attendees can collaborate on. (For more about these options, see “The 10 best new Microsoft Teams meeting features.”)

9. Take advantage of transcriptions or live captions

If anybody in your meeting is hard of hearing, not fluent in the language being spoken, or having trouble hearing the audio for another reason, Teams has a live transcription feature that can help them follow the conversation better. It automatically converts speech into text in real time; the conversation appears with speaker attribution in a Transcript sidebar at the right side of the Teams app.  After the meeting, the complete transcript will be available for download in the meeting event on the calendar.

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To turn on live transcription: While you’re in a meeting, on the meeting controls toolbar along the top of the screen, click the three-dot icon to open the More actions menu, then select Start transcription. Alternatively, if you record a meeting (see the following tip), live transcription will automatically be turned on at the same time.

The live transcription feature is available only with a business or enterprise Microsoft 365/Office 365 account, and it must be enabled by a Teams administrator.

An alternative feature that anybody can use is live captions. Like live transcription, it converts speech into text in real time — in this case in the form of captions that appear below the video feed. These captions show only two lines of text at a time and do not persist after the meeting, making them less useful than transcriptions.

To turn on live captions: In a meeting, click the three-dot icon in the meeting controls toolbar to open the More actions menu, then select Turn on live captions. Each person must turn on the captions feature for themselves.

You can use both live transcription and live captions in a language other than English: Click the three-dot icon that appears to the right of a caption, select Change spoken language, and select a different language (33 others are available, including Mandarin, French, German, and Spanish). Note: Everyone in the meeting should be speaking the same language – these features can only be set to recognize and transcribe one spoken language at a time.

10. Record your meeting

It’s easy to miss important points during a meeting, but you can easily record your meeting. You and other team members will be able to watch this recording, which includes audio, video, and screen-sharing activity) after the meeting has concluded. Along with the transcription, the recording can be useful for those who missed your meeting or for anyone who needs to go back over what was discussed in the meeting.

The recording will be stored in your own OneDrive account, inside a folder named Recordings. But if the meeting was scheduled or started inside a Teams channel, then both the recording and transcription will be stored in your organization’s SharePoint.

To record your meeting: On the meeting controls toolbar along the top of the screen, click the three-dot icon to open the More actions menu, then select Start recording. This automatically starts live transcription (if it’s enabled) at the same time. The other meeting attendees will see a banner informing them that the meeting is being recorded and transcribed.

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You can stop recording by clicking the three-dot icon and selecting Stop recording. The recording will then be saved to your OneDrive or to your organization’s SharePoint. You and others who were invited to the meeting will be able to watch the video. (We’ll cover how to do this below.)

11. Take meeting notes

It’s not uncommon in meetings for important points to be raised or action items to be decided — and then promptly forgotten once the meeting’s over. To help track these items, you or another attendee can take notes that will be saved as part of the meeting. They’ll be easily accessible for review later in Teams.

To take notes during a meeting: On the meeting controls toolbar along the top of the video meeting panel, click the three-dot icon to open the More actions menu, then select Meeting notes. A Meeting Notes panel appears at the right side of the meeting window. Click the Take notes button, and you’re taken to the main Teams desktop app, where a tab titled “Meeting Notes” will be opened in the chat thread for your meeting. In the main window of the Meeting Notes tab, click on the line that says Notes and type in a new section name. Then click on the line that says Capture meeting objectives… and start typing in a note.

When your cursor is in the notes area, a formatting toolbar appears near the top of the window that lets you apply bold, italic, highlighting, numbered and bulleted lists, and other formatting to your text. Click the + icon in the main note area to add a section headline. You can create as many sections as you need. If you want to rearrange the order of these sections, click the three-dot icon to the right of a section title and select Move up or Move down.

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12. Use keyboard shortcuts for quick meeting actions

During a meeting, it can be helpful to use keyboard shortcuts. You can perform actions quickly without distracting your attendees or yourself from what someone is saying. Instead of fiddling around the Teams interface to turn off your mic if you’re not speaking for a while, for example, just press the Ctrl + Shift + M keys (Command + Shift + M on a Mac).

Other shortcuts that can be very useful during a meeting:

• Ctrl + Shift + P (macOS: Command + Shift + P) to turn on/off background blur
• Ctrl + Shift + Y (macOS: Command + Shift + Y) to allow people waiting in the virtual lobby into the meeting
• Ctrl + Shift + E (macOS: Command + Shift + E) to start screen sharing

You can view the complete list of shortcuts in Teams by typing the Ctrl + period keys (macOS: Command + period) or see the ones that are specifically used during meetings on Microsoft’s Keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Teams page.

Before your next meeting, commit to memorizing the shortcuts that you are likely to use during the meeting, or just write them down on paper and have this on your desk.

After the meeting

When your meeting ends, a new chat thread for it will be automatically posted in the chat section of your Teams app. This lets you and others in your team engage in a follow-up chat and access information about the finished meeting.

Making sure that your meeting attendees can review the video recording, transcription, and meeting notes for the concluded meeting will help clarify what was discussed and ensure that action items aren’t forgotten.

13. Review the meeting recording and/or transcript

If you recorded a meeting, you and others who were invited to the meeting can access the recording by clicking Chat on the left toolbar of the Teams window. In the second column, find and click the listing for your concluded meeting. In the main window, you’ll find the video file of your recorded meeting posted as a message. You can play it from inside the Teams app by clicking its name.

The meeting transcription appears as a separate message in the same chat. Click the three-dot icon in the message’s upper-right corner and select download as .docx to download the transcript as a Word file or download as .vtt to download it as a Web Video Text Tracks format file.

If the video meeting was started from a Teams channel, click Teams on the left toolbar. In the second column, click the channel where you originally posted an announcement for the meeting. In the main window, you’ll find the video file and transcription of your recorded meeting posted as a message. (If not, make sure the Posts tab is selected at the top of the main window.) You can play the video recording from inside the Teams app by clicking its name; download the transcript by clicking the three-dot icon and selecting a download format.

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To share a web link to the video file: Click the three-dot icon to the right of the video’s file name, and on the panel that opens, select Copy link. You can then paste this link inside an email, instant message, etc. The person who receives your link can click it to watch the recording of your video meeting.

(Note: Only the person who recorded the meeting can share it with people who weren’t originally invited to the meeting.)

14. Review and share the meeting notes

If you took meeting notes, you and the other attendees can access them by clicking Chat on the left toolbar and selecting the new chat thread that was posted for your concluded meeting. At the top of the main window, click the Meeting Notes tab.

If the video meeting was started from a Teams channel, click Teams on the left toolbar. In the second column, click the channel where you originally posted an announcement for the meeting. At the top of the main window, click the Meeting Notes tab.

If you or another attendee took notes using a different tool, such as Microsoft Word, you can attach the document file in a reply message to the chat thread that was automatically posted in the Chat section of Teams for your concluded meeting. Or, if the video meeting was started from a channel, attach the meeting notes to a message reply in the conversation thread that you posted to originally announce your meeting.

This article was originally published in May 2020 and updated in June 2022.