So, 2019 was a huge year for Microsoft Teams and there doesn’t seem to be any indication that 2020 is likely to slow down.

Microsoft have recently announced updated features to Teams and Yammer.

Lobby Control.

Teams will soon have a new setting to control the lobby for people joining a meeting via a telephone. Now, by default, anyone who uses dials in to a meeting by phone will bypass the lobby. If a lobby is required then a meeting organizer will need to set one up. There will now be two separate lobby settings on the meeting options page:one will control the lobby for joining via the Teams client and the other will be used to manage those that join via a phone.

Microsoft have stated that a new setting in TeamsMeetingPolicy, “AllowPSTNUsersToBypassLobby”, will control the default lobby experience for attendees joining via a phone.

Admins can configure a different default lobby experience for dial-in attendees by changing the value of “AllowPSTNUsersToBypassLobby” from True to False in the TeamsMeetingPolicy. However, the meeting organizer can override the default experience by using the “Meeting options” feature.

The “AutoAdmittedUsers” setting will no longer control the default lobby experience for all attendees. After this change, “AutoAdmittedUsers” will only control the experience for attendees joining via Teams client.

For further info on managing meeting policies click HERE

This update comes as part of Roadmap ID 54418

Joining/Leaving announcements.

Microsoft Teams will soon change the control that announces when a user who is on a telephone joins or leaves a meeting.

Tenant admins will continue to configure the default sound made when telephone dial-in users enter or leave a meeting. However, meeting organizers can now decide whether or not to play a sound on a per-meeting basis.

Microsoft have advised that if you have not already done so, consider customizing the default announcement sound when telephone dial-in users enter/exit a meeting. Do so via the “Bridge Settings” on the “Conference bridges” page of Teams meeting policies in IT Pro Modern Portal.Individual meeting organizers can turn the announcement sound on/off on a per meeting basis but they cannot select a new sound.

For further information on onfiguring entry and exit announcements click HERE

This article relates to Roadmap ID 59919

Yammer eDiscovery.

Microsoft also announced that from Mid-January they will be rolling out eDiscovery for Yammer, enabling users ti search, hold and export Yammer data.

For new customers, data is now automatically discoverable in eDiscovery.

For existing tenants, Yammer will release a tool, the Native Mode Wizard, that lets admins make their data discoverable in core eDiscovery.

For further information on Native Mode click HERE.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by. I hope this has been of some help.