Microsoft Teams allows you to schedule meetings in advance— when scheduling a meeting, you’re able to send invites for your participants. The issue is that nobody wants to manually invite each meeting member individually; albeit, that’s not your only option.
The following methods can be used to invite multiple meeting participants easily:
| Invitation method | Explanation |
| Invite users via Outlook contact lists | Teams meetings can be scheduled in Outlook. Listing your contact list as a required member will notify all contact list members. |
| Invite users via SharePoint sites | You can list a SharePoint site as a meeting member when scheduling a meeting for Teams— doing so will invite the site’s members. |
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At this time, there are two easy ways to bulk invite members to a Microsoft Teams meeting. The first is achieved by using Outlook’s contact lists; The second is achieved via SharePoint’s sites. If you haven’t already used these features, you should consult our third and fourth step-by-step guides.
Here are the step-by-step guides for today’s post:
- How to bulk invite to Teams meeting via contact list
- How to bulk invite to Teams meeting via SharePoint site
- How to add members to a contact list in Outlook
- How to add members to a SharePoint site
- Blog post recap
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How to bulk invite to Teams meeting via contact list
When scheduling a Teams meeting in Outlook, you gain the ability to treat contact lists as invitees— this is perfect for bulk inviting your team.
Step 1 — Open your Outlook calendar
First off, open up Outlook and head for your calendar. You can access the calendar via the sidebar on the left— it resembles (expectedly) your specific calendar.
Step 2 — Schedule a meeting
Click a calendar date for your meeting (you may need to double click). A meeting does not require a title; however, it will help your team know what they’re being invited to. Below the title field, you can specify who you’d like to invite to the meeting— enter the name of your teams’ contact list. After, hit “Send.” lastly, assuming the “Teams meeting” toggle is enabled, you only need to ensure the date and time for your meeting are correct.
Step 3 — Ensure your message was delivered
If done correctly, members of your contact list will receive similar messages to the one shown below. Mobile application users will additionally receive an alert informing them about the meeting within the application.
How to bulk invite to Teams meeting via SharePoint site
If your team utilizes SharePoint, you can simply invite your site as opposed to individually inviting each site member.
Step 1 — Begin scheduling a meeting
In any channel of your Team, click the downward-facing arrow adjacent to the “Meet” button in the top-right. Doing so will produce a dropdown; click “Schedule a meeting” from the menu.
Step 2 — Begin scheduling a meeting
Enter your site’s name in the second text field. While additional fields are not required, I recommend ensuring you have provided the correct date, time, and title for your meeting.
Step 3 — Ensure your message was delivered
As with distributing invites to a contact list, your SharePoint site members will receive a similar message regarding your scheduled meeting.
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How to add members to a contact list in Outlook
A contact list is a group of correspondents who can be contacted simultaneously. While this is not recommended for general chats, the feature has significant use when distributing news or announcements to a large number of contacts.
Step 1 — Head to the people page
Under the calendar in your left sidebar, you can see a “people” icon; click the icon to proceed to the “people” page.
Step 2 — Begin creating a new contact list
The “people” page features a blue “New contact” button with an adjacent dropdown button. Open the dropdown and select “New contact list” to proceed.
Step 3 — Create your contact list
First, provide a name for your contact list— it should be memorable and appropriate. Next, use the “Add email addresses” box to input team members for the contact list. Lastly, hit “Create.”
How to add members to a SharePoint site
A SharePoint site often serves as a hub for your organization’s files, news, announcements, and project updates.
Step 1 — Open your site’s member list
In the top right of your corner, you will find the member count under your avatar. Click the member count to reveal a side panel.
Step 2 — Hit add members
From the “Group membership” panel, select “Add members.” The button will be listed above your existing site members.
Step 3 — Save your new member list
Use the text box in the “Add members” panel to specify which contacts you would like to add. After adding each of your contacts, click “Save.”
Blog post recap
When you schedule a meeting in Microsoft Teams, you can specify “required” or “optional” participants who will receive an invitation via email. However, many users are dissatisfied with this feature due to the idea of manually inviting each member of their team one by one; thus, various means to bulk invite meeting participants were discovered.
The first method exploits meeting scheduling in Outlook, where users can specify an entire contact list as a meeting participant. In doing so, they can distribute an invitation to each contact list member simultaneously.
The second method depends on your SharePoint site— unbeknownst to some, Teams accepts SharePoint sites as invitees. As such, you’re able to distribute invitations to every site member at once quickly.
You can read out related articles here:
- How to set Microsoft Teams to automatically record meetings – People are forgetful, if you’re tired of having to remember to hit record, this post is perfect for you.
- How to fix work week calendar missing days in Microsoft Teams – My favourite calendars are the ones that work. If your Teams calendar is missing days, you may want to see this.
- How to mute notifications for one user in Microsoft Teams – Chats are great, but sometimes we’d just like to get our heads down. If you’re looking to get rid of a distruptive colleague, I’ve got just the thing for you.
- How to duplicate a channel in Microsoft Teams – Channels are useful, though we don’t always want to set them up. Consider duplicating channels as shown in the following post.
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