Notifications to attendees when Teams meetings, Webinars and Town Halls start

Question

Notifications to attendees when Teams meetings, Webinars and Town Halls start

Lara Booth 0

Hi all,

I have a question about Microsoft Teams Meetings, Webinars and Town Halls.

When I create an event and enable a green room, I’ve noticed that attendees sometimes receive a notification that someone has started the event or entered the green room before the official start time. However, this doesn't seem to happen consistently across all events.

Can anyone clarify:

Which event types (Meetings, Webinars or Town Halls) send notifications to attendees when the organiser or presenters enter the green room early?
Under what circumstances are these notifications triggered?
Are there any settings that control whether attendees receive these notifications?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! 😊

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2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

With green room enabled, the supported attendee notification behavior in the provided documentation is only this:

In a Teams meeting, the meeting organizer may receive a Start Meeting notification if a participant joins a meeting.
That notification does not mean the meeting has officially started.
When green room is enabled, only presenters or organizers can start the meeting.

For attendee-facing behavior, the documented experience is:

While the green room is active, attendees stay in the waiting room.
They see a waiting screen.
They can interact via chat or enabled apps such as Q&A.
They can’t turn on mic or camera.
They can’t see or hear what’s happening in the green room.
They can’t access the participant panel, but they can view people in or invited to the meeting.
When the event ends, attendees are returned to the waiting room and continue to have access to the global chat.

For people joining by phone to a webinar, town hall, or structured meeting:

Organizers or presenters who join by phone enter as attendees until promoted to Presenter.
If someone is requested to join by phone, they enter the waiting room as an attendee until their role is changed to Presenter.
The setting People dialing in can bypass the lobby controls whether dial-in participants can join the green room directly; otherwise they must be admitted from the lobby.

Based on the provided context, there is no documented breakdown of:

which of Meetings vs Webinars vs Town Halls send attendee notifications when organizers or presenters enter the green room early,
the exact conditions that trigger attendee notifications for green-room entry, or
any attendee-notification setting specifically for that behavior.

The only explicit notification described for green room in the provided material is the Start Meeting notification to the organizer when a participant joins.

Answer 2

Hello @Lara Booth

Based on the Microsoft documentation currently available, I have not yet found an official Microsoft article that directly answers the notification-related scenarios you described. Specifically, I have not been able to find Microsoft documentation that identifies which event types (Meetings, Webinars, or Town Halls) send attendee notifications when organizers or presenters enter the Green Room, what conditions trigger such notifications, or whether there is a setting that specifically controls this behavior.

If this is something you would like Microsoft to consider in the future, you may wish to share your idea through the Teams Feedback Portal below, where suggestions are reviewed by the Microsoft Product Team.

Ideas · Community

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For your reference:

Using the green room in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Support

Host an event in the Microsoft Teams Events app | Microsoft Support

Host a town hall in Microsoft Teams

Kind regards,

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