MC953756 - Microsoft Teams: Email OTP verification for external participants to join meetings

Updated December 18, 2024: The experience for attendees to verify their email with OTP prior to joining meetings is available only for meetings created by organizers that has a Teams premium license. However, the new meeting option to require verification will be available to all meeting organizers without Teams Premium license as well, for these meetings, attendees can join meeting after verifying with their TFL account or Entra account.

After this rollout, Microsoft Teams meeting organizers will have a new meeting option to enable and require unverified (aka anonymous) participants joining meetings to verify their email addresses with a one-time password (OTP) verification code before joining the meeting. Tenant admins will have a new meeting policy to manage and control this setting in the Teams admin center. This message applies to Teams on Windows desktop, Teams on Mac desktop, Teams on the web, and Teams for iOS/Android.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 418125.

 When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out mid-January 2024 and expect to complete by late January 2025.

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out late March 2025 and expect to complete by early April 2025.

How this will affect your organization:

Tenants where the Anonymous users can join a meeting setting is currently disabled will be affected by this update. In the Teams admin center, a meeting policy controls whether anonymous users can join meetings. If this setting is turned off, users without an MSA (Microsoft Account) or Microsoft Entra account are currently unable to join meetings. With the introduction of this new feature, we are enabling an additional option for unverified (anonymous) users to join meetings without requiring an MSA or Entra account.

This change will be available by default.

Admin controls: Admins will have a new meeting policy called Anonymous users can join a meeting after verifying by email code that complements the existing meeting policy where tenant admins already have the control to enable Anonymous users can join a meeting (unverified): 

When admins choose to turn on both the meeting policies for the users in the organizations, they leave the choice of requiring email verification to the meeting organizers via a new meeting option that will be available for them.

Meeting Organizer Controls: When scheduling meetings, meeting organizers will now have a new meeting option called Require unverified participants to verify their info before joining that will be set to default off if you have enabled unverified joins. Organizers can choose to require participants to verify themselves by turning on this meeting option.

Participant Experience: When organizers choose to require unverified participants from joining meetings, participants will be required to authenticate themselves when attempting to join the meeting. Participants can use credentials from a Microsoft work account, Microsoft school account, or personal Microsoft account for authentication. Participants without any of these Microsoft accounts will need to verify by entering their email address, and then participants will receive a one-time passcode for verification.

Participants who verify the same email address that the meeting invitation was sent to will be allowed to join the meeting directly if the Lobby bypass setting permits invited participants. Conversely, participants verifying with a different email address will be placed in the lobby and labeled as Email verified:

The Email verified tag and the email address participants entered for verification will be shown on the profile card of the participant in the lobby, meeting roster, and meeting chat:

What you need to do to prepare:

For tenants where the Anonymous users can join meetings option is disabled, admins should assess the impact of the email OTP verification feature and update the meeting policy settings accordingly to suit their organization’s requirements. This new feature introduces an additional way for unverified (anonymous) users to join meetings without needing an MSA or Entra account.

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout.