Microsoft Teams will soon let you lock meetings

Microsoft Teams Note20 On Keyboard
Microsoft Teams Note20 On Keyboard (Image credit: Future)

What you need to know

  • Microsoft Teams will soon let you lock meetings.
  • When locked, people won't be able to attempt to join a meeting.
  • The feature could arrive on Microsoft Teams as soon as next month.

Microsoft Teams will soon allow people on desktops to lock their meetings. Once the feature rolls out, meeting organizers will be able to prevent people from attempting to join a meeting. The feature appears on the Microsoft 365 roadmap and could arrive as soon as May 2021, though dates on the roadmap are always subject to change.

Microsoft Teams already allows organizers to decide who can enter a meeting, but people could potentially see several requests to join a meeting once it's started. An organizer could turn these down, of course, but that requires action on the part of the organizer. Having to do this could be distracting and irritating. By being able to lock a meeting, an organizer can just stop requests altogether.

Here's the description from the Microsoft 365 roadmap:

Latest Videos From

In the Teams meetings desktop app experience, organizers can choose to lock their meetings to prevent subsequent join attempts. Anyone attempting to join a lock meeting from any device will be informed that the meeting is locked.

In addition to making things a bit easier for meeting organizers, the feature can also help meeting organizers know who is within a meeting. Once you have dozens of participants in a meeting, it can be difficult to keep track of who joins. This upcoming feature will make it easy to lock a meeting once all the desired participants arrive.

Sean Endicott
News Writer

Sean Endicott is a News Writer at Windows Central, where he covers Windows 11, Surface hardware, Microsoft 365, AI, apps, and the broader PC ecosystem. Since joining the site in 2017, he has written well over a thousand articles across the Microsoft landscape, covering breaking news, analysis, and feature reporting.

He writes Windows Wrap, a weekly column covering the biggest stories in Windows and the PC industry, and what they mean for the platform going forward.

Before joining Windows Central full-time, Sean worked in journalism and media production after earning a First Class degree in Broadcast Journalism from Nottingham Trent University. Outside of tech, he is an award-winning American football coach based in Nottingham, England, and was named BAFCA Youth Coach of the Year in 2024.