Manage anonymous participant access to Teams meetings, webinars, and town halls (IT admins)

APPLIES TO: Meetings Webinars Town halls

Some features described in this article require Teams Premium.

In meetings, webinars, and town halls hosted by your organization, anonymous users are users whose identities aren't verified. These users could include:

• Users who aren't logged in to Teams with a work or school account.
• Users from non-trusted organizations (as configured in external access) and from organizations that you trust but which don't trust your organization. When defining trusted organizations for external meetings and chat, ensure both organizations allow each other's domains. Meeting organizers and participants should have user policies that allow external access. These settings prevent attendees from being considered anonymous due to external access settings. For details, see IT Admins - Manage external meetings and chat with people and organizations using Microsoft identities

As an admin, you have the following options to manage anonymous meeting join for your organization:

• The organization-wide Anonymous users can join a meeting setting.
• The per-organizer Anonymous users can join a meeting setting.
• (Public preview) Teams Premium (per-organizer): only allow anonymous users to join meetings after verifying through a one-time passcode. Only organizers with a Teams Premium license can use this feature.

When anonymous users join a meeting unverified, Unverified appears next to their name. If anonymous users join a meeting verified through a one-time passcode, Email Verified appears next to their name. When a user signs in to their Microsoft account, External appears next to their name.

When anonymous meeting join is turned on, lobby policies affect how anonymous participants join meetings. For details, see Control who can bypass the meeting lobby in Microsoft Teams.

Anonymous users can join a meeting

You can control whether anonymous users can join meetings for your entire organization or for specific organizers and groups.

Organization-wide

To allow everyone in your organization to create meetings that allow anonymous users, you must turn on this organization-wide setting. When this setting is turned off, anonymous users can't attend meetings hosted by anyone in your organization.

To manage anonymous meeting join for your entire organization, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Teams admin center.
2. Expand Meetings > Meeting policies.
3. Under Participants, toggle the Anonymous users can join a meeting setting On or Off.
4. Select Save.

Per-organizer

To control which users or groups can host meetings that allow anonymous participants, assign this per-organizer meeting policy to each organizer or group. If the organization-wide Anonymous users can join a meeting setting is on, you can turn off this policy to prevent specific organizers from creating meetings that allow anonymous users to join.

To manage anonymous meeting join for specific meeting organizers, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Teams admin center.
2. Expand Meetings > Meeting settings.
3. Select an existing policy or create a new one.
4. Under Participants, toggle the Anonymous users can join a meeting setting On or Off.
5. Select Save.

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

Organizer control (Public preview)

When you turn on the organization-wide or per-organizer Anonymous users can join a meeting setting, your organizers see the Unverified participants can join the meeting setting in their Meeting options. This setting is on by default, allowing unverified participants to join meetings. However, organizers can choose to turn off this setting for specific meetings to restrict access. If you turn off the organization-wide or per-organizer Anonymous users can join a meeting policy setting, organizers can't configure this meeting option.

Anonymous users can join a meeting after verifying with an email code (Public Preview for Teams Premium)

You can require anonymous users to verify their identities to join meetings in your organization.

When you set Anonymous users can join a meeting after verifying to By email code and the meeting organizer toggles the Unverified participants can join the meeting setting to Off in their Meeting options, unverified anonymous users are prompted to enter up a one-time passcode that gets sent to their email to join the meeting.

If you turn off the Anonymous users can join a meeting unverified setting and Anonymous users can join a meeting after verifying is set to No, anonymous users can't join meetings in your organization.

To manage whether unverified anonymous attendees can verify themselves with a one-time passcode to join meetings, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Teams admin center.
2. Expand Meetings > Meeting settings.
3. Under Participants, in the drop-down for Anonymous users can join a meeting after verifying, select By email code or No.
4. Select Save.

Manage anonymous meeting join using PowerShell

Manage whether anonymous participants can join meetings

The -DisableAnonymousJoin parameter controls whether anonymous users can join meetings for your organization, while the -AllowAnonymousUsersToJoinMeeting parameter controls this setting at the user or group level. You can use these parameters together to manage how anonymous users join meetings in your organization. For example, when you set -DisableAnonymousJoin to false for the organization, anonymous users can join meetings in your organization. If you also set -AllowAnonymousUsersToJoinMeeting to false for a specific user, that user can't create meetings that anonymous users can attend, even though the organization-wide setting allows it.

For your organization

We recommend leaving -DisableAnonymousJoin set to False and using the -AllowAnonymousUsersToJoinMeeting parameter within the PowerShell CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet to manage anonymous meeting join at the user or group level.

To allow anonymous participants to join meetings in your organization, use this script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingConfiguration -Identity <policy name> -DisableAnonymousJoin $false
```per-organizer
To prevent anonymous participants from joining meetings in your organization, use this script:

```powershell
Set-CsTeamsMeetingConfiguration -Identity <policy name> -DisableAnonymousJoin $true

For specific organizers

To allow anonymous participants to join meetings organized by users or groups with this policy, use this script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -AllowAnonymousUsersToJoinMeeting $true

To prevent anonymous participants from joining meetings organized by users or groups with this policy, use this script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -AllowAnonymousUsersToJoinMeeting $false

Allow anonymous users to join a meeting after verifying an email code

To allow unverified anonymous attendees to verify themselves with a one-time passcode to join meetings (default value), use the following script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -AnonymousUserAuthenticationMethod OneTimePasscode

To prevent unverified anonymous attendees from verifying their identity to join meetings, use the following script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -AnonymousUserAuthenticationMethod None

Block anonymous meeting join for specific client types

When anonymous participants are allowed to join meetings, they can use either the Teams client or a custom client built using Azure Communication Services.

Admins can block either of these client types by using the -BlockedAnonymousJoinClientTypes parameter. To learn more, see Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy.

Anonymous participants' meeting experience

Anonymous participants don't have all the same capabilities as other meeting participants. For example, anonymous participants:

• Don't have access to meeting chat before and after the meeting
• Don't have access to profile cards
• Don't have access to collaborative meeting notes.

How anonymous participants interact with apps in meetings

By default, the setting to allow anonymous participants to interact with apps in meetings is enabled. Anonymous participants inherit the Global (Org-wide default) Teams apps permission policy. Anonymous participants can interact with apps in Teams meetings as long as the app is turned on in that policy and Anonymous participants can interact with apps in meetings is On.

Anonymous participants can only interact with apps that are already available in a meeting and can't add or manage these apps.

To manage app access for anonymous meeting participants, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Teams admin center.
2. Expand Meetings > Meeting settings.
3. Under Participants, set Anonymous participants can interact with apps in meetings to On or Off.
4. Select Save.

PowerShell

To allow anonymous participants to interact with apps in meetings, use this script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingConfiguration -Identity <policy name> -DisableAppInteractionForAnonymousUsers $false

To prevent anonymous participants from interacting with apps in meetings, use this script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingConfiguration -Identity <policy name> -DisableAppInteractionForAnonymousUsers $true

Related articles

• Plan for meetings with external participants in Microsoft Teams
• Join a meeting without a Teams account
• Control who can bypass the meeting lobby in Microsoft Teams
• Using the Microsoft Teams admin center to configure organization-wide policy
• External participants receive "Sign in to Teams to join, or contact the meeting organizer"
• Assign policies in Teams – getting started