Setting up meetings in Teams

CELCAT-generated meeting links are versatile and not tied to any specific module, making them suitable for various events.

Once an event is created in the CELCAT timetabling system (via Client or Live), a link to an online Teams meeting is automatically generated and displayed in attendees' Outlook calendars. Clicking the link will bring up the usual audio/video preview screen before joining the meeting.

NB: This is the only type of meeting link that can be generated using the CELCAT timetabling system. 

For instructions on adding a meeting link to an event, please refer to the information on the Meet Now tab.

Pros: 

• The Teams meeting link is automatically added to the event and available in both staff and students' Outlook calendars.
• It is not linked to a specific module, offering greater flexibility.

Cons: 

• Although the link can be created only by staff with access to the CELCAT timetabling system, anyone can join the meeting.
• If a new staff member is added after the link is generated, they will not have organiser/presenter permissions. The existing link will need to be deleted and regenerated.

Create a Teams meeting generated through CELCAT

1. Open the CELCAT timetabling system (Client or Live) and select an existing Event or create a New Event.
2. Enter the Event name, which will appear in attendees' Outlook calendars.
3. Add the Module associated with the event.
4. Ensure a named staff member with an Imperial email address is added to the event. A link will not be generated if there is no staff member or if a generic placeholder (e.g., Staff to Be Confirmed) is used. Staff will be Organisers for the meeting.
   Add any Groups you wish to attend. If unsure which groups to add, contact your Departmental Administrator. Students within groups or directly attached to the event will be attendees in the meeting.
5. Add any additional Students not in groups that you wish to attend.
6. If necessary, add a room in the Rooms section for a blended learning event. You can omit the room if the event is only online.
7. Select Equipment. In the popup window, choose the item listed as Microsoft Teams Meeting Link. This ensures a Teams meeting link is generated for online attendees. The URL will be added to the ‘Published Online Link’ field within CELCAT. Allow up to 60 minutes for the URL to be available to attendees.
8. Ensure the Published Online Link field is completely empty. Any character in this field may cause issues with creating the meeting URL. Even if the field appears empty, there may still be a character such as a space, which will prevent a meeting link from being generated.
9. To generate a new meeting link (e.g., after adding a new staff member, or changes to staff members), delete the current link in the Published Online Link field. This will trigger a new meeting link to be created in about 30 minutes.
10. Add an Event Category. There are several categories for online events.
11. Select your Department.

For more information about creating events and mandatory fields, visit the Timetabling webpages on Managing Events in Celcat and Mandatory Fields on Events. 

Once created, the CELCAT-generated link will appear in the Event Published Online Link field. When accessed through Outlook and CELCAT Calendar, the link will be clickable.

Download attendance

Meeting organisers will have access to an attendance list. 

Recording a CELCAT scheduled meeting

Meeting organisers will be able to record the session. The recording will be available on SharePoint.

A help sheet on generating a MS Teams link in CELCAT is available.

Meet Now meetings can be started in any channel. For a member of staff to have control over meeting options, they must start the meeting. Students do not have the option to start Meet Now meetings if the channel permissions are set to ‘Only owners can post messages’. In channels where the students can post messages, e.g. the Coffee break or Breakout Room channels in the auto-generated Teams sites, students can start Meet Now meetings.

Students and staff both access the link to the meeting via their individual calendars. When the Teams app has opened, they should join the Meet Now meeting in the relevant channel once the meeting has been started by a member of staff.

The Meet Now option can be used in conjunction with Celcat by adding a channel link to the Celcat Event.

Please Note:

• Town Hall events work best if you have more than one person assisting with the meeting.
• Public-Facing events cannot be scheduled without prior authorisation from the Imperial Events team. Please complete the appropriate form at least two weeks before the scheduled time of the event to allow for authorisation and assistance with testing for the event itself.
• A Town Hall is not specific to a Team or channel and can be accessible to any user that the link is forwarded to.

Teams Town Halls

• Max number of participants: 10,000 (or 20,000 with Teams Premium license)
• Presenter control of audio and video
  Presenter controlled screen sharing
• Multiple presenters with up to 7 presenters on screen with content
• Restrict access – Specific Internal groups, All Internal users only or Public access
• Live captioning – 4 languages (or up to 10 with Teams Premium license)
• Attendance reporting
• Anonymous audience – no on screen presence or audio capabilities
• Q and A – can be moderated if required through settings.
• Requires request form (https://forms.office.com/e/jdi6yP53EQ) to be completed at least 2 weeks in advance of your proposed session
• Broadcast meeting with 10 – 15 second delay to audience (for encoding and delivery to Content Delivery Network)
• Suitable for events where safeguarding is required or where minors may attend (e.g. general outreach for schools or virtual open day sessions)
• Fully supported by ICT
• AV support to deliver Town Halls via Campus Services (chargeable)

Teams Webinars

• Max number of participants: 1000
• Wait list (Teams Premium license required)
• Registration page with agenda, speaker bio's and links
• Controlled registrations (Teams Premium license required)
• Presenter control of audio and video
• Presenter controlled screen sharing
• Multiple presenters
• Instant messaging capability (Chat)
• Moderated Q and A capability
• Restrict access
• Breakout rooms
• Integration with Office 365 apps
• Live captioning (Translation if Organiser has Teams Premium license)
• Manage attendees permissions
• Attendees join muted and with no cameras by default
• Waiting room functionality
• Attendance reporting
• Attendee names can be removed (Teams Premium license required)
• Requires request form (https://forms.office.com/r/RDq7yw8Vmv) to be completed at least 2 weeks in advance of your proposed session
• Fully supported by ICT

You can schedule a Teams meeting from within the Teams desktop (and web) client. You can schedule a meeting via the Teams Calendar or within a specific Team, both instructions are provided below.  Once scheduled, the organiser has the ability to enable a number of meeting options including who can present and whether attendees go into a waiting lobby prior to the meeting. 

Pros:

• Meeting organiser can easily set the meeting options.

Cons:

• If you don’t change meeting settings then students have the potential to disrupt the meeting by muting the presenter or start a recording of the meeting.

Schedule a meeting in a specific Team channel

1. Open the Teams app and locate the Team that you would like to create a meeting in.
2. Select the down arrow next to Meet in the top right corner and choose Schedule a meeting.
3. Enter information into the scheduling form.  This is where you'll give your meeting a title, invite people, and add meeting details. Use the Scheduling Assistant tab if you want to check attendees availability. 
4. Click send on top right once you have entered the relevant meeting information.  There will be a notification posted to the team members.  Join by opening that channel in Teams and clicking join. This signposts the meeting to everyone in the team, so you don't need to add them individually.

Schedule a meeting via the Teams Calendar

1. Open the Teams app and go to Calendar on the left hand side of the app.
2. Select New Meeting at the top right corner of the screen.
3. Enter information into the scheduling form.  This is where you'll give your meeting a title, invite people, and add meeting details. Use the Scheduling Assistant tab if you want to check attendees availability. 
4. If you want to add the meeting to a specific Team, choose the relevant one from the add channel option on the form.  Please note that Channels can't be edited or added once the invite is sent. You'll need to send a new invite with the updated channel. 
5. Once information is entered click save on top right of the page.

Presenters – set who can present 

After scheduling a meeting in Teams the meeting organiser (person / account used for scheduling the meeting) has access to the “meeting options” to control access to specific elements. 

The meeting organiser may set meeting options for who may present.  They may do this in advance of the meeting or if they join the meeting first.  Caution: if a role or “non-person” account is used to set up the meeting and that account will not be attending the meeting then the “Only me” option should not be used, otherwise presenters will not be set and the scheduled meeting will be a “waste of time”.  

It is important to note that unless you change the meeting settings then students can potentially

• Mute the microphones of presenters
• Start a recording of the meeting
• Share their screen

To change the presenting settings

1. Open the meeting via calendar via the Teams channel and click Edit.
2. Click on Meeting options next to time zone near the top of the page.
3. This will open a browser and provide you with the meeting options.
4. Go to Who can present? and set this to only me or specific people. If you set ‘specific people’ you can select who from a list of participants.  Selecting one of these options then sets all others to be attendees. 

If you want to allow attendees to present you can change the Who can present? setting as stated above or you can do so once the meeting has started by doing the following:

1. Go to view the participants.
2. Click on the three dots next to the name of the person you want to give access to.
3. Make them a presenter from the popup menu. 

Microsoft have provided further advice on changing participant settings for a Teams meeting. 

Recording a meeting

It is important to make the participants of the meeting aware if it is being recorded.  Make sure you have checked your presenting settings as stated above if you do not want students to start recording the meeting.  A message will appear on screen notifying you that someone has started to record the meeting.   

To record a meeting, follow these steps:

1. Start the meeting.
2. Click on the more actions (displayed as three dots) tab at the top right of the screen.
3. Click on start recording.  A message will be displayed on screen confirming the meeting is being recorded.
4. To stop the recording, go to more actions and click on stop recording.  A link to the recording will appear in the chat area for this particular meeting. 

 Download attendance

 Organisers of a Teams meeting can download a record of who's attended it.

1. During the meeting, select Show participants then click on more actions (three dots) and choose Download attendee list.
2. The report will download as a .CSV file that can be opened in Excel. The .CSV file contains the name, join time, and leave time of all meeting attendees.

You will be able to download the attendance report from the meeting or meeting chat after the meeting finishes.  Only meeting organisers have the ability to download this list.

Imperial staff and students and individuals that are external to the College can both be added as Guests to meetings in Microsoft Teams. This can be done in advance, or after the meeting has started depending on what type of meeting has been setup.

Inviting an external Guest to a meeting in advance

For a meeting scheduled in the Teams Calendar

To invite an external guest to a meeting created via the Teams calendar, complete the following steps:

1. When creating the meeting, enter the guest’s email address in the Add required attendees field; if they are not already a guest member of the Team, you will be prompted to invite them. The invited guest will receive an invitation and, if accepted, the meeting will be added to their calendar

2. When the guest joins the meeting, they may choose to download the Teams app, continue on a web browser, or open the Teams app if installed on their local machine

3. The guest will now arrive in the meeting’s Lobby and you may approve their entry to the meeting from the Participants list. It is also possible to change participant settings in the meeting options so that guests can bypass the lobby.

For a meeting associated with a channel, the guest will only have access to the meeting chat if they are added as a guest member of the Teams site. Guests do not have permission to start recordings.

Inviting an external Guest to a Teams Town Hall event

If you are wishing to run a public live event in Teams where most attendees will be external to Imperial, please seek approval from the Events team first.  See Webinar and Town Hall tab above for more information.

Teams Meeting scheduled in Outlook

To invite an external guest to a Teams meeting scheduled in Outlook, enter the email address into either the Required or Optional field. The remaining steps to complete the process are the same as those for a meeting scheduled in the Teams calendar. These meetings are not associated with a Teams site channel.

Inviting an external Guest to a Celcat generated meeting

It is not possible to invite an external guest to a Celcat generated meeting in advance, however, they can be invited once the meeting has started. See below for instructions.

Inviting an external Guest to a meeting that has already started

To invite a guest to a meeting that is already taking place, complete the following steps:

1. Open the meeting’s Participants list

2. Select the linked rings icon Copy join info

3. Paste the joining details into an email and send it to the individual you wish to invite.

Microsoft Teams webinars provide the tools to schedule your webinar, register attendees, run an interactive presentation, and analyze attendee data for effective follow-up.