Organising Teams and Outlook Meetings
What will this topic cover?
These learning pathways are designed to help you learn fundamental digital skills and think about how you can use them to enhance your daily working practices and processes. This learning topic, within the Organisation & Management pathway, introduces you to techniques for organising and running meetings through Outlook and Teams in a university setting.
This learning topic focuses on Microsoft Outlook and Teams and how to enhance productivity and collaboration within the University of Lincoln through the efficient scheduling and creation of meetings, ensuring that the meetings details and purpose are clearly and effectively communicated.
Know the options available to you within online and in-person meetings.
Focus on the core settings for online meetings that can help meetings flow effectively.
How to use Schedule assistant and polls to identify when people are free for meetings.
How to use this topic page
This topic page is split up into different sections. Each section has a step and an activity to complete. These include scenarios and links off to instructions to try elements for yourself. Each learning unit also has a reflective section to think about how this will be used within your own practice.
Step 1: Difference between meetings in Outlook and Teams
When should I use Outlook or teams meetings for?
Both MS Outlook and MS Teams can be used to create basic meetings either for an online or in-person session. If you create an online meeting this will automatically set up a teams meeting link. Outlook calendars talk directly to Teams to ensure your meetings are synced together.
However, the main difference between them is the way which they can support you with certain meeting functions.
MS Outlook
- Used to create meetings for individuals or groups
- Can create in-person or online sessions.
- Has a scheduling assistance, including polls and highlighting times that are free for the group.
- Can be useful to email colleagues/clientele as a group.
MS Teams
- Can be more specific by setting up scheduled meetings for core groups or channels rather than individuals.
- Can give an overview of everyones schedules.
- Focusses on Online meetings but can do in-person meeting arrangements.
- Allows wider options for collaboration and role allocation within Online meetings (e.g. co-organisers, breakout rooms, polls…)
- Enables you to create registration pages for webinars and wider options for delivery.
Activity 1: Scenario
Read through this scenario and think about the questions below. Click on the answer button to find our an example solution.
Alex wants to create an online meeting, but wants to focus on using interactivity and setting up elements before attendees arrive. This includes being able to ask people to register, setting up breakout rooms and wider interactive elements. They are setting this meeting up for their manager to run so need to make sure that their manager can access all of the features in the meeting.
Which tool would you recommend for this person? Outlook or Teams?
Alex wants wider interactivity and needs to share running the meeting with their manager. Alex has decided to use Microsoft teams to set up the meeting to ensure they have complete control over the meeting options, interactive elements and to ensure that they can make their manager co-organiser.
Step 2: Scheduling outlook meetings
How can I schedule a meeting for multiple people?
MS Outlook has many features which can help with scheduling either online or in-person meetings. However, one of the most common challenges is creating meetings for groups of people.
*please note that these approaches work best when everyone’s outlook calendar is up to date.
Method 1: Using the scheduling assistant (small groups in meetings)
Once you have set up a meeting invitation and added the people to the invitation, you can use the scheduling assistant on the top menu of the invitation to look at everyone’s schedules to find an appropriate time. If you are trying to invite over 15 people, this can be quite difficult to manage, so we would recommend this approach for smaller groups.
Method 2: Using schedule poll to see an overview (larger groups)
Schedule poll will summarise who is available on key dates and times for you across everyone’s calendars. It will allow you to set the duration, change the date and time and see an overview of all of the best times available. This is useful to get a quick overview of appropriate dates and times. It even let’s you know who isn’t and who is available at each time and can save a lot of effort in enable you to choose a time that is suitable for you and the other participants.
Method 3: Using Schedule poll to send a poll (larger groups)
To save us using outside software, such as doodle poll, you can use the schedule poll to choose several dates from the selected list to ask your participants which is the best time for them. This will help to maximise the amount of people who can attend your sessions.
Activity 2: Try it yourself
Visit the link below and learn how to set up and organise a meeting within outlook, including links to how to use schedule poll. Please be aware
Step 3: Managing online meeting settings for Microsoft Teams.
How do I access a normal online teams meeting settings?
As long as you organised the meeting, or have been given permissions you can access teams meetings settings in two different ways.
- Open up the meeting within the MS Outlook calendar and at the bottom of the online meeting you will see some text which says ‘meeting options’.
- Open the calendar invitation in the teams calendar and on the top row next to the title of the meeting, you will see an item called ‘meeting options’.
Their are no differences between the options you can change using each approach.
Common element to be aware of when looking at meeting options.
There are several common questions that are asked when looking at meeting options.
Lobby
The lobby enables you to create a waiting area for attendees to wait whilst you are setting up the room. Usually, this is used to ensure that all microphones or private conversations can be done before allowing access to the room. The most common setting for ‘who can bypass the lobby’ is ‘only organisers and co-organisers‘. This means only anyone who is seen as being in charge of the meeting can enter.
Engagement
You my want to think about the control over microphones and cameras, for common meetings allowing both of these should be fine. However, if you are running town hall or presentation, you may want to turn these options off so there are less interruptions.
You may also want to look at the following options:
- Q & A – Enables a question and answer chat box so that it’s easy to find questions and replies whilst the meeting goes on. This is great for town halls or group based events to ensure questions aren’t lost in the regular chat box.
- Allow attendance report – Useful to help with digital registers and attendance information. Only the organisers & co-organisers will be able to see this.
Co-organisers
Co-organisers are an important role and have the majority of the same access as the original organiser. They will be able to control the meeting, see attendance and control polls and breakout rooms.
Some important elements to be aware of with this role:
- You can only set the co-organiser roles once the invitation has been sent. Teams needs to know who is invited to generate list of people to choose from.
- You can choose multiple co-organisers.
- Setting up meetings from shared inbox can cause issues since no-one can sign in as a shared inbox account. Using the co-organiser role can help navigate this.
Activity 3: Scenario and try
Visit the links below to gain an overview of teams meeting settings and wider elements to be aware of.
Scenario
Below is a scenario, what meeting options would you advise Alex to turn on based on their needs.
Alex needs to setup a meeting for his manager, which they will need to be able to control what happens during the meeting. This is a town hall event where staff will be spoken to by a senior team leader, however, they will be given an opportunity to ask questions through out the session using the chat box.
What settings would Alex need to consider for the meeting?
Since this is a big town hall event and Alex is setting up the meeting for another person, it is recommended to think about the following settings:
Bypassing lobby: Only organisers & co-organisers to ensure they have time to setup and check equipment before the event.
Choose co-organiser: Since Alex is setting up this meeting for another person, it’s important that after everyone is invited, Alex opens the invitation to add the presenters as a co-organiser. This will enable presenters to control the meeting if needed.
Cameras/Microphones: To lower distractions Alex may decide to not enable microphones and cameras during the initial part of the meeting. However, later on during the Q & A Alex can enable people’s cameras and microphones where necessary.
Q & A
Adding a question and answer box will make it easier for the presenters and their supporters to reply to people’s questions throughout the session.
Recording automatically
It is recommended to turn off automatic recording, especially if you are having a lobby, this will mean you can control what is recorded and what isn’t.
Step 4: Webinars and conferences.
Why would I use a webinar meeting?
Webinar meetings are different to ordinary meetings as they are usually more structured and usually limits down the interaction of the audience via camera and audio permissions. These are usually useful for one off presentations or conferences and can add a professional approach to presentations.
Webinars also enable you to add the following elements:
- Registrations via a unique webpage
- Email to attendees (pre-made and custom at key times)
- Branded themes
- Presenter bios
- Webinar reports
Activity 4: Try it yourself
The resource below highlights how you can setup a webinar and the different options that are available to the co-ordinator. We also do have a guide for how to create an academic conference. We have placed both links below to help support you with wider context.
Step 5: Reflection
What have I learnt from this learning module?
This step is designed to help you think about what you have learned and how this applies to your own practice and context. Learning Activity 5 will ask you some questions to help you with this reflection.
Activity 5: Reflect
Use the following questions to help you think about your own practice.
- Can you think of any situations where you need to share meeting organisation and management with another member of staff?
- What options do you think will be the most suitable for your common meetings?
- How will you plan to use the scheduling poll or assistant within your role?
- Are there any elements from this page that would be useful for other colleagues in the department.?
Return to Learning Pathways
