"Wait in lobby" for student (participants) in scheduled meetings
In order to use scheduled meetings for teaching is necessary that the meeting organizer can force student to "wait in lobby" if they try to enter the meeting before the teacher.
In my case, students are part of the organization, they are not guests. For this reason, this functionality for my school is not possible.
The possibility to force participants (even if part of the organization) in the lobby is necessary, because otherwise students could use the scheduled meeting to enter by their own and talk privately without the teacher.

We are happy to announce the “Only me” option for the “Who can bypass lobby?” setting is now available for Teams meetings. Details on the new lobby option can be found here, https://support.microsoft.com/office/change-participant-settings-for-a-teams-meeting-53261366-dbd5-45f9-aae9-a70e6354f88e.
Additionally, we have updated our EDU specific guidance for meeting management. Please visit https://support.microsoft.com/office/keeping-students-safe-while-using-teams-for-distance-learning-f00fa399-0473-4d31-ab72-644c137e11c8, for more information for both administrators and educators.
For the similar ask regarding hiding the lobby popup announcement, please upvote and comment this UserVoice item https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/599053/suggestions/41143039.
203 comments
Comments are closed-
Christopher Vella commented
Whilst the lobby feature was needed and we thank you for that, it is important that the lobby popup must be repositioned as students are spamming guest invites to disrupt lessons.
A simple lock meeting feature could at least be included to at least reduce these situations substantially.
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Anonymous commented
I agree with shearerka. THe way it is, we have to set all staff to wait in the lobby too. Otherwise it has to be done per meeting in the meeting options. But it would be great to be able to set this globally for students only.
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A commented
I know that you can use Powershell as well as the UI to make all students attendees which is great. But is there a similar global option to make all students wait in the lobby? I have 2 custom policie, one for stufents and one for staff. The wait in lobby only works if I set the staff one to Only Me, meaning staff have to wait in the lobby too. It doesnt work if i set the student one to Only Me in th emeeting settings.
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shearerka commented
This is not a good solution. When set this way, ALL administrator meetings turn into lobby entrance only, too. AND if we need a substitute for a class, there is no way to join that class meeting - the substitute must create their own meeting which is confusing to the students who joined the teacher's meeting.
We need the policy to be set per role. STUDENTS must enter through the lobby and are attendees. ADULTS automatically join a meeting *unless set otherwise by the owner* and are presenters.
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Anonymous commented
Can you please give more options than only me or everyone in my organization? I would like to allow other teachers and school staff to bypass but not students. Can you please allow us to select specific participants to bypass?
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Some Person commented
They have made it an admin setting.
https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/599053/suggestions/39962347 -
Some Person commented
Edgar Collado earlier asked to make this an admin setting.
My guess is that they have actually done this and school officials chose to change it without telling the teachers.
If not don't make it an admin setting.
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Some Person commented
There is also an option for who can let people from the lobby into the meeting.
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Some Person commented
If anyone has students that seem to be bypassing the lobby they may be putting themselves on hold rather than leaving the meeting. You should kick everyone out of the meeting to prevent this. Also make sure they didn't get elevated to the rank of organizer.
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Some Person commented
I am glad this is an option but at least at our school this got changed to be the default and it is really annoying and the teachers took a while to figure out how to change it back.
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Anonymous commented
Students seem to be able to bypass this if a friend invites them in.
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Anonymous commented
The "Only Me" setting is on for who can bypass the lobby. Yet, I still have one student who is able to bypass. It is very frustrating. When I am sharing my screen, I can only see video for one student at a time. So I have no idea that student was there unless I unshare my screen. Is there a way to send him to the lobby other than the option listed above?
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Anonymous commented
Please adjust so that even with student permission levels set high that other staff (i.e. subs and support staff) can enter the meeting with by pass allowed.
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Alastair Tams commented
Like some other commenters still find that students can bypass the lobby rather than waiting for me and start the meeting. Once the meeting is started, then the lobby comes into play. Perhaps a setting that prevents that is missing.
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Anonymous commented
As others have said, having an "on/off" switch for the lobby inside the meeting would be invaluable.
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Anonymous commented
I use the "only me" setting yet some students still bypass the lobby
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Edgar Collado commented
Can we make this an admin setting so that it can be set at the org level and not only at the user level. This is a key feature that many of your competitors offer and should be something that we can make standard for all meetings and not just a setting to select for each meeting. Thank you.
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Craig Tucker commented
This as a global policy would support safeguarding
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Anonymous commented
Is there a way to make it so if someone creates the meetings any owner of the team can start the meeting by passing through the lobby? This way if more than one teacher is on a team they would also be able to start the meeting.
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Anonymous commented
I have two to three students that can bypass the lobby each time. Any suggestions on ho to fix this. It is set to only me.