Fix Microsoft Teams: Users Stuck in Lobby

If you scheduled a meeting and many of the participants have yet to join, check if they’re stuck in the lobby. Sometimes, Microsoft Teams fails to notify the meeting organizer that people are still waiting in the lobby.

This issue can occur even if you disabled the lobby option. Yes, sometimes it’s exactly this option that does not seem to work reliably. Finding a solution to this problem is crucial if you want to launch the meeting as quickly as possible.

People Got Stuck in the Microsoft Teams Lobby

Automatically Admit People

First things first, if you enabled the lobby option, go ahead and disable it. In other words, allow the participants to jump right into the meeting.

1. Open the MS Teams Admin Center and change the settings.
2. Then navigate to Meetings (left pane) and select Meeting policies.
3. Under Participants & Guests, locate this option: Automatically admit people.

   

4. Set this option to Everyone. Check if the issue is gone.
5. Meanwhile, you may want to set Allow dial-in users to bypass the lobby to Everyone as well.

⇒ Note: Sometimes, you may need to wait up until 24 or 48 hours for the policy to take full effect.

Alternatively, you can also tweak these settings using the individual meeting settings.

1. After you scheduled the meeting, click on Meeting options.
2. When asked who can bypass the lobby, select Everyone.

Enter and Leave the Meeting

If you’re the organizer, enter the meeting, and check who’s there. If some participants are missing, leave the meeting. Wait five seconds and then rejoin the meeting.

You should now get a pop-up informing you that some participants are still waiting in the lobby. Let them in. On the other hand, if you’re the one stuck in the lobby, ask the organizer to leave the meeting and re-connect right afterwards.

Use the MS Teams Client

Some users noticed this problem often affects participants who are using a supported browser to join the meeting. Ask them to install the Microsoft Teams desktop or mobile app. Maybe they’ll be able to join the meeting in this manner.

Use PowerShell to Change Lobby Settings

You can also use PowerShell to configure the Teams room so as to allow external participants to bypass the lobby.

1. Launch PowerShell with admin rights.
2. Then enter the following commands:

• New-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity NoLobby -AllowOrganizersToOverrideLobbySettings $True -AllowPSTNUsersToBypassLobby $True -AllowAnonymousUsersToStartMeeting $False -AutoAdmittedUsers Everyone
• Get-CsOnlineUser -Filter {Enabled -eq $true} | Grant-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -PolicyName NoLobby
• Get-CsOnlineUser -Filter {Enabled -eq $true} | Format-List userprincipalname
• Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity NoLobby -AllowOrganizersToOverrideLobbySettings $True -AllowPSTNUsersToBypassLobby $True -AllowAnonymousUsersToStartMeeting $True -AutoAdmittedUsers Everyone
• Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity NoLobby -AllowOrganizersToOverrideLobbySettings $True -AllowPSTNUsersToBypassLobby $True -AllowAnonymousUsersToStartMeeting $False -AutoAdmittedUsers Everyone

Check if these PowerShell commands helped.

Clear the Teams Cache

Your app cache might also block the participants in the lobby. Follow the steps below to clear the MS Teams cache.

1. Close Microsoft Teams and kill all the related processes. Launch the Task Manager, right-click on the Teams processes, and select End Task.
2. Then, type in %appdata%\Microsoft\teams in the Windows search bar.
3. Open the Cache folder.
4. Delete all the files from %appdata%\Microsoft\teams\application cache\cache.
5. Then delete all the files from the following folders:
   • Blob_storage: \\%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\blob_storage
   • Cache: \\%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\Cache.Databases
   • \\%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\databases
   • GPUCache: \\%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\GPUcache
   • IndexedDB: Delete only the .db file from \\%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\IndexedDB
   • Local Storage: \\%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\Local Storage
   • Tmp: \\%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\tmp

Restart Teams and check if this solution fixed the problem.