Now that most of us are working from home and joining meetings remotely, we often discuss our best practices for online meetings. In our case that means: meetings in Microsoft Teams. A special case is the Executive Board meeting. For such meetings, the requirements more stringent than for the informal meetings that I have with my colleagues. In this article, you read how we set up those executive meetings.
Of course, the regular tips for online meetings also apply to executive meetings. So can also check out the 12 Practical tips for online meetings using Microsoft Teams and the 20 tips for presenting online.
But for the Executive Committee it is even more important that they can:
- Join a secure meeting that others cannot access
- Allow guests to join (part of) a meeting, without seeing the rest of information
- Have a secure place to collect input for meetings
- Have a secure place to store and collaborate on information
- Quickly & easily find meeting documents for current and past meetings
The short version of what we advise is: set up a Team for the ExCo, plan the meetings in a channel of that Team, invite guests separately, ask the guests to upload their meeting documents in a separate library and enable the meeting lobby when you expect guests.
Now lets take a look in more detail….
1.Set up a Microsoft Teams environment for the ExCo
A Microsoft Teams environment is a great place to collaborate with a clearly defined team, like an Executive Committee. Only the members of that Executive Committee and the executive assistants are members of that Microsoft Teams, so only they can access the information shared within that Teams. Nobody else can see it. Actually, usually the assistants are the owners: they manage the Team.
In this Team, we include elements like: general information about the Team and instructions on the Teams meeting, an agenda topics list, a decision list, the OneNote notebook, and a Planner plan board to manage tasks.
Microsoft Team for the Executive Board (a demo, Team to avoid leaking sensitive info), with details on how to join online meeting.
I know some executives are wary of a plan board in which tasks are assigned to them, but I have seen it work. The executives obviously did not have detailed tasks, because they delegate a lot, but they were responsible for high level actions. Most of them updated their tasks in the plan board before the next meeting, and the others did so after some prodding by the executive assistant.
The Planner plan board in the demo ExCo Board Tem.
2.Plan the meetings in a channel of the ExCo Team
Once you have set up a Team for the ExCo, you can organize the ExCo meetings in a channel of that Team. We usually create a channel called ‘ExCo Board meetings’ for that purpose. These are the advantages of setting up the meeting in a Team channel, instead of a regular meeting scheduled from Outlook.
- Everything is in one place: before, during and after the meetings
- All meeting files are in the same place, in the Files tab of the Team channel: this meeting as well as previous meetings.
- The meeting chat remains available in the Team channel after the meeting.
- The recording is available in the Team channel after the meeting.
- You can use channel posts to have discussions or ask questions before and after the meeting.
- Integration with Planner tasks and SharePoint lists like a decision list
- The MS Teams meetings notes become part of the channel (in a tab). We actually don’t use the meeting notes option offered by the Teams meeting, but we use OneNote. We include that OneNote notebook in the Team channel.
- Everything is secure: before, during and after the meetings.
- Only Team members have access to the meeting content
- New ExCo members have access to the meetings and all materials, as soon as you add them to the Team.
- You have the option to invite guest participants without sharing the meeting files or chat
Note: Unfortunately, it is not possible at this time to organise a channel meeting on behalf of someone. Delegation still only works for meetings scheduled from Outlook for individual participants. That means that the Executive Assistant who schedules the meeting is the organiser. Fortunately, Microsoft will address this point, according to the User Voice item MS Teams meeting delegation. In the meantime, you may get by without delegation, because the invitations are sent in the name of the Team, not in the name of the assistant. And the assistants usually join these meetings anyway. Even if the assistant is not present, the executives all have presenter permissions, so they don’t need the organising assistant to get started with the meeting.
Schedule the meeting in Teams. Tip: first connect to the channel, before you configure the recurrence – otherwise you can no longer connect to the channel… Invite the guests separately.
A Teams channel meeting as seen in your Outlook calendar: the invitation comes from the Team, not the organiser.
3.Invite guests separately
In the ExCo meetings I’ve seen, they often asked guests from elsewhere in the company to join part of the meeting, to present and discuss specific agenda topics. For example, somebody from HR to talk about an ambitious programme to find, hire and onboard new talent.
These guests are not part of the Executive Committee, so they are not members of the Microsoft Team for the ExCo. But you can invite them separately as individuals, in addition to the ExCo team members who are invited automatically via the connection to the Team channel.
If you invite the guest in this manner, they can join the meeting in a secure way:
- The guests can
- Join audio and video: hear & speak, see & show their video feed.
- See the PowerPoint slides and desktop shared by others while they are in the meeting.
- Present their topic: PowerPoint slides or share their desktop.
- The guests CANNOT:
- See the chat. So they cannot take a peak at what was discussed earlier
(This is different from a regular Teams Meeting organised in Outlook, where they can see the entire chat). - Read the meeting notes.
- Read the meeting documents, except when they are shown in the meeting at the time the guest is present.
- View the recording afterwards, even if the find the address: they don’t have permission.
- See the chat. So they cannot take a peak at what was discussed earlier
This is what a guest sees in a channel meeting, especially: no chat option.
Please note: you can only invite guest from your organisation to a channel meeting. Not external guests from outside the organisation. In the cases that I have seen, the guests always had accounts from the organisation, because they were either regular employees or consultants provided with such accounts.
A table summarising what Team members, guests inside the organisation and guests outside the organisation can do in a Teams Meeting organised in a Teams channel or in Outlook. (click for the readable version). See also Roles in a Teams Meeting.
4.Ask the guests to upload their meeting documents in a separate library
The executives want to have the documents to pertaining to a meeting all in one place, so the executive assistant creates a folder for each meeting in the Files tab of the meeting channel. The ExCo Board members can simply upload their own meeting documents in that folder – it is just as easy as mailing them to the executive assistant.
The meeting documents are gathered in a folder per meeting, in the Files tab of the meeting channel.
However, guest invited to present a specific topic in a Board meeting do not have permission to see, let alone upload, files in that Teams library. So we set up a separate library in the Team, which we call the upload library. The assistants ask the guests to upload their file in there, with an email that offers them a direct link to that library.
Mail to a guest: please upload your meeting documents in the library – just follow the link.
We configure that library in such a way that all guests can upload their documents into the library, but they can only see their own documents. After all, other guests may be invited to different sections of the meeting, to discuss sensitive topics. So we configure the ‘Upload library’ as follows:
- Add a separate library in the SharePoint site associated with the Team.
- In the Library settings > Permissions for this document library, stop inheriting permissions from the site and give ‘Everyone except external users’ contribute permission on this library – ONLY this library.
- In the Library settings > Versioning settings, switch on content approval and specify who should see draft items: Only users who can approve items (and the author of the item). Then the guests uploading their files cannot see the files uploaded by others.
- The executive assistants set an ‘Alert Me’ on this library, so that they receive an e-mail notification when somebody uploads a file.
Then the executive assistants move the uploaded files to the meeting folder where the other document for that meeting are being gathered, so that all documents can be found in one place.
The executive assistant moves the documents uploaded by the guests to the meeting folder.
5.Enable the meeting lobby when you expect guests
The standard setting for meetings is usually that the participants can enter the meeting directly, without waiting in the lobby. The lobby is quite annoying for the regulars after all.
However, if you have invited guests, you may want them to join only for their own topic and NOT join the meeting for previous, sensitive topics. In that case, activate the lobby. The meeting organiser can do that before the meeting or during the meeting, after the regulars have already joined.
Changing the Meeting Options from inside the meeting, to activate the lobby.
Please note: Only the meeting organiser can change the meeting settings to activate the lobby. So if an executive assistant has scheduled the meeting, he or she should activate the lobby.
So: in this manner you can help the executives collaborate and meeting in a safe and user-friendly way.
