We organize a weekly meeting on Teams, about thirty people are invited, and at the end, the manager asks who was really connected. Without preparation, the answer is often vague. Identifying participants in a Teams meeting and checking connections requires activating the right settings before the meeting, not after.
Teams Attendance Report: What the Administrator Controls in Advance
Most guides explain how to download the attendance report from the Calendar tab. They often overlook a point that frequently causes issues on the ground: the tenant administrator decides what the report contains.
In the Teams Admin Center, a meeting policy dedicated to “attendance and engagement report” allows several parameters to be adjusted. The admin can enable or disable report generation for certain categories of meetings. They can also choose which types of participants appear in the file and set the level of detail for the technical information associated with each connection.
In practice, if the option to download the report is not visible after a meeting, the problem rarely lies with Teams itself. It stems from the policy applied to the organizer’s account. A quick chat with the IT team is usually enough to resolve the situation, and you can see ia44webmail on Mobile Junky for additional steps on user-side verification.
Download the Teams Participant List During and After the Meeting
The organizer and co-organizers are the only ones who can access the attendance report. This is not a detail: a presenter or standard participant will never see this button, even if they started the recording.
Activate the Report Before the Big Day
Open the event in the Teams calendar, then the meeting options. The “Attendance report” setting must be set to “Enabled.” If this step is forgotten, no report will be generated, even afterward.
Retrieve the CSV File
There are two possible moments to download the list:
- During the meeting, by clicking on the Participants icon in the menu bar, then on the download icon in the side panel. The CSV file lands in the Downloads folder of the PC.
- After the meeting, from the Teams Calendar tab: select the past event, then access the report in the dedicated section. The organizer and co-organizers will find the names, entry and exit times of each participant there.
The file opens in Excel. It shows the displayed name, the email address associated with the account, and the timestamps for connection and disconnection. For meetings with external participants (invited via link), the report displays the name they entered when joining the session.
Privacy and Identity Masking in the Teams Report
A recent change deserves attention. A participant can now mask their identity in attendance reports. This privacy option alters what appears in the CSV downloaded by the organizer.
Feedback on this point varies depending on tenant configurations. In some organizations, the option is enabled by default for all users. In others, the administrator restricts it. The result: a report is downloaded and some names appear anonymized, with no visible explanation in the file.
If anonymous lines are observed in the report, the first check is to ask the admin if the tenant’s privacy policy allows for masking. This is not a bug.
Teams Waiting Room and Checking Suspicious Connections
Identifying participants is not limited to reading a report afterward. The waiting room remains the first filter to control who enters a Microsoft Teams meeting.
Configure the Waiting Room According to the Level of Trust
In the meeting options, the setting “Who can bypass the waiting room” offers several levels:
- Everyone (no filtering, not recommended for sensitive meetings)
- People in my organization (external accounts go through the waiting room)
- People in my organization and trusted guests
- Only me and co-organizers (maximum filtering, each participant is admitted manually)
For a training meeting with external speakers, the third level is usually chosen. For a board meeting, the last level provides complete control over each connection.
Anti-Bot Protection in the Waiting Room
Microsoft has deployed a mechanism that automatically places suspicious AI bots in the waiting room. When Teams detects atypical connection behavior (an automated agent trying to join the session), the participant is held in the waiting room instead of being admitted directly, even if the settings normally allow access.
This protection works without action from the organizer. It complements manual filtering for meetings where invitation links are widely circulated.
Live AI Switch and Control During the Meeting
Microsoft has added a switch to disable real-time meeting AI during a Teams session. This button, accessible to the organizer, turns off artificial intelligence functions (automatic transcription, summary, note-taking) for all participants.
The relevance for connection verification is indirect but real: by disabling AI, it prevents a third-party tool connected via a bot from recording or transcribing the meeting without explicit consent. Combined with the enhanced waiting room, this setting gives the organizer complete control over what is captured and by whom.
On the ground, the most effective combination remains simple: activate the attendance report before the meeting, configure the waiting room according to the required level of confidentiality, and check the CSV file in the hours that follow. The entire mechanism relies on the organizer’s preparation, not on corrective action afterward.