Teams Meetings: Change meeting participant roles

Introduction

When you have a Teams meeting, you sometimes want to restrict the permissions of meeting attendees. This could be to prevent attendees from recording, presenting slides or taking control of the meeting. In Teams meetings, there are four main roles: Organizer, co-organizer, presenter and attendee.

Organizer refers to the person who creates the actual Teams meeting. The organizer has full meeting permissions and also has the ability to make additional users presenters or attendees. There can only be one meeting organizer, and this role cannot be changed.

Co-organizer refers to the people the organizer designates to help manage the meeting. The organizer can add up to 10 co-organizers to the meeting after inviting people to the meeting. 

Presenter refers to people who have been designated to run the meeting by the meeting organizer. The presenter has the same meeting permissions as the organizer. There can be multiple presenters in each meeting.

Attendee refers to people who are attending the meeting and are not the organizer or a presenter. The attendee has limited meeting permissions.

The following table outlines the permissions that are designated for each meeting role:

* – Some apps may limit what certain roles can do.

As you can see, an attendee can only participate in the meeting by chat, audio and video. They cannot perform additional functions like changing meeting roles, recording meetings and admitting people from the meeting lobby.

Change meeting roles

There are two ways to update meeting roles: before the meeting, and when the meeting is already in progress. Please note that you cannot add someone from an external organization as a presenter. You also cannot add a caller.

Updating meeting roles before the meeting

If the meeting has not yet started, the meeting organizer can set the meeting roles through the Teams meeting options.

1. Open the meeting in your Outlook calendar.
2. Scroll down to the section of the meeting information that gives the Teams meeting details and select Meeting options.
   
    
3. Open the drop-down menu under Who can present?
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4. If you want everyone attending the meeting to have presenter permissions select Everyone. This is the default meeting setting.
5. If you only want authenticated University of Toronto members to have presenter permissions select People in my organization and guests.
6. If you want to designate specific people as meeting presenters, select Specific people. An option to search for participants will appear, and you can click on multiple names to add them to the presenter list. Note that you can only search for individuals from the list of meeting invitees. 
   
    
7. If you want to be the only person in the meeting with presenter permissions, select Only me. You can add additional presenters when the meeting is in progress if you change your mind.

Updating meeting roles when the meeting is in progress

1. Existing organizers and presenters can update meeting roles when the meeting is already in progress. You first need to click on the More options menu (three-dot icon) of your meeting. Select Meeting options.
   
    
2. Your meeting options menu will launch in Teams. Adjust your presenter policy. When you are finished, scroll down and click Save.
   
    
3. You can also change an individual's presenter status during a meeting by going to the Show participants menu in the main meeting menu. To change someone's status, simply click on the three-dot menu that appears when you hover over their name. If you wish to make them a presenter, select Make a presenter.
   
    

More information

For more information on Teams meeting roles, please review this Microsoft article on roles in a Teams meeting.