Microsoft 365: Every Meeting Online (EMO) includes third-party online meeting providers

Microsoft has announced they will be improving the make Every Meeting Online (EMO) feature in Outlook by turning it on by default and including partner online meeting providers. If your users do not have Microsoft Teams or Skype enabled, once this feature rolls out, all meetings created in Outlook will include an online meeting link using the preferred partner online meeting add-in, provided it’s deployed and available to your users.

Note: This applies to Microsoft 365 accounts and Office Add-ins only.

Key points

• Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID: 88527
• Timing: We will begin rolling this out in early April and expect to complete rollout mid-June 2022.
• Action: If you don't want all the meetings in your organization to be online by default and you haven’t previously disabled this setting for your organization, you’ll need to disable this feature (can be turned off at any time) using the Set-OrganizationConfig PowerShell cmdlet. (There is currently an issue where the results of Get-OrganizationConfig do not display the correct value. Microsoft is working on addressing this, but it will not be fixed before this update is released.)
• Roll-out: user level roll-out v tenant level

How will this affect my organization?

If your users have one of the following partner online meeting add-ins installed, Outlook will automatically set it as the default provider. Please note that other online meeting providers are currently not supported for this feature.

• Zoom for Outlook
• Cisco WebEx Scheduler
• BlueJeans Meetings
• GoToMeeting for Outlook
• Google Meet Add-in
• JioMeet for Outlook

Users and organizations who have previously disabled the Add online meeting to all meetings option—either from an Outlook client or from PowerShell—will be unaffected. Their meetings will continue to be offline by default.

Users and organizations who have kept the Add online meeting to all meetings setting enabled and use Teams or Skype will also be unaffected. Their meetings will continue to have an online meeting link using Teams or Skype.

This affects only users who don’t have Teams or Skype and haven’t disabled the EMO setting. When users create a new meeting, they’ll see a partner online meeting link added, provided it’s supported.

• If only one online meeting add-in is installed on the user's mailbox, that add-in will be set as the default.
• If more than one online meeting add-in is installed, priority is given to the one installed by the organization’s admin.
• If the user has multiple add-ins installed by the admin or has installed multiple add-ins themself, then no provider will be set automatically, and meetings will not be online by default. These users can turn on the setting themselves and choose their preferred online meeting provider.

Only meetings with at least one attendee, other than the organizer, and meetings with a duration of less than 24 hours will be online automatically.

What do I need to do to prepare?

If you want all the meetings in your organization to be online by default, there is nothing you need to do. You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

• If you don't want all the meetings in your organization to be online by default and you haven’t previously disabled this setting for your organization, you’ll need to disable this feature using the Set-OrganizationConfig PowerShell cmdlet. (Can be turned off at any time)

For more information about this feature, contact Paradise Computing, your local Microsoft Gold Partner on 01604 655900 or send us a message using our online contact form.