How many Teams meetings did your staff set up last week without once opening Meeting options?
Plenty of organisers never touch them. They pick a time, add people and hit send. Whatever the defaults are, that's what the meeting gets.
Microsoft is adding default meeting templates to Teams, due for General Availability (GA) in November 2026. IT admins set a template as the default, and its settings apply automatically whenever someone schedules a meeting from Outlook or the Teams calendar.
That includes protection settings like who can bypass the lobby, whether chat is on, who can present and which sensitivity label applies. Admins can also decide which options organisers are allowed to change and which stay locked.
Microsoft’s overview of custom meeting templates
The catch is licensing. Only organisers with a Teams Premium licence assigned can use default templates. Teams Premium isn't included in Microsoft 365 A3 or A5, so even a top-tier education licence won't cover it.
The good news is the licence sits with the organiser. Parents, governors and external agencies joining the meeting don't need one.
So for most schools and trusts, the realistic approach is targeted. License the people whose meetings carry the most risk: Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs), Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs), HR and senior leaders. Everyone else stays on the org-wide meeting policies you already control in the Teams admin centre.
If you could only license a handful of organisers, whose meetings would you cover first?
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