The “Unknown participant is now joining” alert can be really annoying and disruptive at times. Teams usually push these alerts when someone calling in by phone joins or leaves the meeting.
Unfortunately, when you’re attending a large meeting, hearing this alert countless times can break your focus. That’s why many users prefer to disable it completely. If you’re planning to do the same, keep on reading this guide to learn what settings you need to tweak to get the job done.
Teams: How to Turn off “Unknown Participant Is Now Joining”
The good news is that meeting organizers can quickly disable this alert in the Meeting options before the meeting starts or during the event.
So, if you don’t want to receive alerts about attendees joining or leaving the meeting, you need to switch the toggle off for Announce when callers join or leave.
Of course, the downside to disabling this feature is that you won’t always know’s attending your online meeting. But you can simply skip this detail if the alerts become really disruptive for your meeting experience. At least you won’t get distracted when someone joins a call late.
⇒ Quick Tip
If you don’t want anonymous users to join your meeting, go to the MS Teams Admin Center and select Meeting settings. Under Participants, toggle off the option that reads Anonymous users can join a meeting.
Microsoft Can Improve This Feature
The only problem with this option is that it’s available only at a meeting organizer level. Many Teams users believe this feature should actually be open to all users. Having the option to disable the announcement stating an unknown participant has joined or left would come in very handy.
The meeting organizer may need to keep track of all the attendees. Still, the other participants aren’t necessarily keen on learning when an unknown user joined or left the meeting.
If you’re not the organizer, you can try to disable all notifications during the meeting. Check if setting your status to Do Not Disturb and enabling Focus Assist helps.
Conclusion
Only the meeting organizer can disable the alerts about unknown attendees joining or leaving the meeting. The setting is available under Meeting options. Do you find these alerts annoying as well? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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