We have all learned how to work from home, and a lot of companies are slowly transitioning into a more hybrid model, with only working from an office space once or twice a week. With this transition, we need to start looking at ways to ensure the that our meetings stay productive, and keep everyone on track. Here are a few tips and tricks that will make your meetings more efficient.

Avoiding Disruptions with Muting Participants

We have touched base on this in the past with our blog on Managing meeting attendees, but we will reiterate and expand, as this is one of the best ways to manage, especially in large meetings such as town halls or presentations, your meeting to ensure no disruptions. There are a few ways that you can go about muting an individual that may be distracting with background noise or may just have a few too many questions to continue the flow of the meeting.

The first way is by simply clicking on their name under their video, then on the more icon “…” beside their name, and selecting “Mute participant”.

The next way you can accomplish this is by selecting “Show Participants” and finding the participant's name. You can click the more icon “…” beside the name, and select “Mute participant”.

Finally, the best way that you can make sure that there are no disruptions is by muting all participants, and not allowing them to unmute. You need to be the meeting organizer to do this, but it is a very easy process. Click into the "Show Participants", and beside the Presenters drop down, you will see a “Mute all” button. Simply click that to mute everyone.

Now, to make sure that they cannot unmute. Beside the Participants banner, you will see the more icon “…”, now click on the “Don’t allow attendees to unmute”. From here, if a participant has a question, or needs to speak, they can use the raise your hand function, and you can manually unmute them.

Manually Ending Your Teams Meetings for Everyone in Attendance

Sometimes, you need to end your meeting at your time and ensure that there are no stragglers. This is normally meant for larger meetings, such as town halls, or classes. Once you have completed your meeting, instead of clicking the "Leave" button as you normally do, you are going to click on the drop-down beside it and select “End Meeting”. This will kick everyone out of the meeting and ensure that there are no stragglers left.

Determining Presenters in Your Meeting

As an organizer, you are going to need to decide who can present, and who can share screens in your meetings. We discussed the way to provide the roles in Managing Meeting attendees, but here is a very easy process that can use to grant presenters permissions, even if it is just temporarily, and on the fly.

To promote an attendee to a presenter role, in which they can present and share screen if required, you just need to go to the “Show Attendees” menu,  right-click on the attendee that you want to promote, and click on “Make a presenter”.

If you need to remove someone from the presenting role, you will do the same thing, just now removing them from presenting. This will allow you as the owner of the meeting, to get numerous presenters in your meetings, but not having any sort of crossover. This would be a great use case for a large meeting setting, with a few topics, allowing you to promote presenters only when it is their turn to present. This will help avoid any confusion regarding who is presenting next and allow you to have a smooth experience for your attendees.

Start Managing Meetings Like a Pro

You now have the tools to own a great meeting, and ensure that there are no issues, arguments, stragglers, or confusions during meetings. With these three tips, you'll be able to confidently control anything from a small 2 or 3 person meeting, to much larger conference calls, and keep them running smoothly. Having the ability to manage your attendees is a great way to keep your meetings efficient, to the point, and not any longer than you need. Giving you some time back in your busy day.