You can send a Teams meeting invite in just a few clicks from the Teams app, from Outlook, or from your phone. The process creates a calendar event with a join link automatically included, so every invitee gets everything they need to connect. Here’s how to do it from each starting point.
Schedule From the Teams Desktop or Web App
This is the most common route. Open Teams and select the Calendar tab on the left side. Click “New meeting” in the upper-right corner. From there, fill in the basics: a title, the date and time, and the names or email addresses of the people you want to invite. Teams will auto-suggest contacts from your organization as you type, but you can also type in a full email address for someone outside your company.
Once you’ve added your details, click “Send.” Teams generates the meeting join link and embeds it in the calendar invitation automatically. Every invitee receives an email with the date, time, and a clickable “Join” button. The meeting also appears on your Teams calendar and on the calendars of anyone in your organization who was invited.
Schedule From Outlook
If you live in Outlook, you can create a Teams meeting without ever opening the Teams app. This only works with Microsoft 365 business or enterprise Exchange accounts. Free email accounts (Outlook.com, Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, and similar providers) do not support the Teams meeting add-in.
In the newer version of Outlook for desktop or web, open your calendar and click “New event.” Next to the title field, you’ll see a Teams meeting toggle. Turn it on, add your attendees and meeting details, then click “Send.” The join link and dial-in info are added to the invite automatically once you send it. If you save a draft before sending, the Teams link won’t appear until you actually send the invitation.
In classic Outlook for desktop, the steps are slightly different. Go to the Home tab, click the dropdown arrow next to “New Email,” and select “Meeting.” In the Meeting tab, click the dropdown arrow next to “Teams Meeting” and choose “Schedule meeting.” A side pane will let you configure meeting options before you hit “Send.”
Schedule From Your Phone
The Teams mobile app on iOS and Android follows the same logic in a smaller format. Open the app and tap the Calendar icon. Tap the new event button (the plus icon) at the top of the screen. Give the meeting a title, tap “Add participants” to search for and select your invitees, then fill in the date, time, and any other details. Tap “Done” to schedule it and send the invitations.
If you want the meeting tied to a specific channel rather than sent as a private invite, tap the “Share to a channel” option before you finalize. More on channel meetings below.
Inviting People Outside Your Organization
You can invite external participants simply by typing their email address into the attendee field. They’ll receive an email with a join link just like internal attendees. How they show up in the meeting depends on their account type.
If the person has a Microsoft 365 account in an organization your company trusts, they’ll appear with “(External)” next to their name. If they’ve been added as a guest in your organization’s directory and sign in with that guest account, they’ll appear with “(Guest).” Anyone else, including people with no Microsoft account at all, joins as an anonymous participant and sees “(Unverified)” next to their name.
Anonymous access is turned on by default in most organizations, so in most cases your external invitees can click the join link and get into the meeting without any special setup. However, your IT admin can restrict anonymous access or require that external participants wait in a lobby before being admitted. If someone outside your company reports they can’t join, lobby settings or anonymous-access policies are the most likely culprits.
External participants can also dial in by phone using the conference number included in the meeting invite, if your organization has audio conferencing enabled. People who dial in are typically placed in the lobby until the organizer admits them.
Channel Meetings vs. Private Meetings
A standard meeting invite goes directly to the people you add as attendees. A channel meeting is different: it’s posted in a Teams channel, and anyone in that team can see it and join from the channel’s post feed. This is useful for recurring team standups or open discussions where you don’t want to manually manage an invite list.
To create a channel meeting, add a channel in the “Add channel” field when setting up the meeting. Keep in mind that everyone in the team can see and join the meeting, but they won’t receive a personal calendar invite unless you add them individually in the attendee field or turn on the “Send personal invites” toggle. Channel meeting conversations also appear as threaded posts in the channel rather than in a separate meeting chat.
One limitation: you cannot schedule channel meetings in private channels. If you need to meet with a subset of your team, use a standard private meeting instead and add those people directly.
Sharing a Join Link Without a Calendar Invite
Sometimes you just need to hand someone a link rather than send a formal invite. After you’ve created a meeting, open it from your Teams calendar. You’ll see the join link in the meeting details. Copy that link and share it through email, a chat message, or any other channel. Anyone with the link can attempt to join, subject to your organization’s access and lobby policies.
For a quicker option, you can start an instant “Meet now” session from the Calendar tab or from within a chat. This generates a join link immediately without scheduling a future event, which is handy for impromptu calls where you need to pull someone in fast.