Microsoft Teams for Meetings: Business Meeting Guide

Most UK businesses already pay for Teams inside a Microsoft 365 subscription, so the question is rarely "should we use it" — it is "are we using it properly and safely". Lobby settings, recording storage and external-guest behaviour are all policy decisions, not accidents. Getting them right is part of running Microsoft 365 securely, not a separate project.

Which Teams meeting types should UK businesses use?

Teams offers five meeting formats and each behaves differently. Scheduled meetings and Meet Now suit day-to-day calls; channel meetings suit recurring team sessions; webinars and town halls handle audiences. Choosing the wrong format causes the classic problems — guests stuck in a lobby, missing recordings, or breakout rooms that simply are not there.

• Scheduled meetings — created from the Teams calendar or Outlook, with a join link you can share internally and externally. Lobby, recording and permissions are all set per meeting. This is the default for client calls, standups and project reviews.
• Meet Now (ad-hoc) — started instantly from chat or the calendar with no invite. Same feature set as a scheduled meeting, but no predefined attendee list. Useful for "can you jump on a quick call" moments.
• Channel meetings — scheduled inside a Teams channel and visible to every channel member. Good for standing team meetings; note that breakout rooms are not available in this format.
• Webinars — registration, structured Q&A and a presenter focus for up to 1,000 attendees. Better for external events, training and broadcasts than a standard call.
• Town halls — formerly Live Events, a broadcast format for up to 10,000 mostly view-only attendees, built for all-staff briefings and major announcements.

If telephony matters as much as video — inbound and outbound PSTN calls from the same app — that is a Microsoft Teams calling decision, covered separately in our business VoIP guidance.

How do you schedule a Teams meeting?

Open the Teams calendar, click New Meeting, add attendees by name or email (external addresses are fine), set the time, and add an agenda in the description. The join link is generated automatically and dropped into the calendar invite for everyone you invite.

External participants — anyone outside your Microsoft 365 tenant — receive an email with a join link. They can join through a browser without a Teams account, though the desktop or mobile app gives a better experience. Microsoft documents the supported join paths and client options in its Teams meeting guidance for administrators.

Recurring meetings support daily, weekly, monthly and custom patterns. Edits apply either to a single occurrence or the whole series, so review long-running recurring invites periodically and prune attendees who have moved on.

What meeting features matter most, and how are they controlled?

The features that change call quality and security are lobby management, recording, noise suppression and presenter controls. Most are governed by organisation-wide policy in the Teams Admin Centre, not just by the individual host — which is exactly why they belong in a managed configuration rather than left to defaults.

Lobby management

The lobby holds participants until the organiser admits them. By default external guests wait in the lobby while internal users join directly. For sensitive client or board meetings, set the lobby to hold everyone until the organiser is ready — a one-line policy change that prevents people walking into a call early.

Recording and transcription

Recording is available on Business Basic and above via More > Record & Transcribe > Start Recording. Scheduled-meeting recordings save to the organiser's OneDrive; channel-meeting recordings save to SharePoint, with a link posted to the meeting chat. Transcription runs alongside and produces a searchable record with speaker labels. IT can restrict who may record, so a greyed-out button usually means policy, not a bug.

Noise suppression and background effects

Teams includes AI noise suppression (off, low, high, auto) under Settings > Devices, plus background blur and custom images on Windows and Mac. For open-plan offices, high suppression noticeably improves how remote attendees hear the call.

Reactions, Raise Hand and Presenter Mode

Emoji reactions and Raise Hand let people signal without interrupting — valuable in larger calls. When sharing your screen, Presenter Mode options (Standout, Reporter, Side-by-side) produce a far more polished result than sharing a bare window.

Which licence do you need for each meeting feature?

Core meeting functionality — audio, video, screen sharing and chat — works on every paid Microsoft 365 plan, starting at Business Basic. Recording needs Basic or above; webinars need Standard or above; town halls need Premium or an Enterprise plan. The table below maps features to the minimum licence and its list price.

Microsoft licence prices above are the published UK list prices on Microsoft 365 for business, charged per user per month on an annual commitment. The free version of Teams allows group calls but caps them at 60 minutes, which is why most businesses move to a paid plan quickly.

Picking the right tier is rarely about meetings alone — it is about security too. Business Premium bundles the Microsoft Defender for Business controls that protect the same accounts hosting those meetings, which is why we usually steer security-conscious SMEs toward it.

How does AMVIA secure and configure Teams meetings?

AMVIA configures Teams meeting policies across your tenant so the safe option is the default: external guests held in the lobby, recording storage governed, and sensitive meetings locked down without the host having to remember settings on the day. We treat meetings as part of your Microsoft Teams security posture, not a standalone toy.

For organisations that want full telephony inside Teams, we deliver it through Microsoft Teams Direct Routing so calls, meetings and security live under one accountable provider. One provider, security-first, Microsoft-certified — that is the whole point. Good meeting hygiene also supports GDPR and records-retention obligations; the ICO's guidance on data protection is the reference UK businesses should map recording-retention policies against.

Teams meetings on mobile

The Teams mobile app on iOS and Android handles joining and hosting, with audio, video and screen sharing all supported. For complex sessions — breakout rooms, managing a large participant list — the desktop app is better. Mobile is ideal for joining on the move or when a laptop is not to hand.