Starting Teams meetings 5-10 minutes early

[MagicStarrz]

Where I work, we have a lot of meetings on Teams, and certain people (not the meeting hosts or chairs, just attendees) will join the Teams meetings 5-10 minutes early which means everyone invited will get a notification that the meeting has started.

If you join early you just end up making pointless small talk with other attendees. I would understand this if it's people who want to have a social catch up but it's generally people who don't know each other so why to they join so early? Today it was 13:52 for a meeting scheduled to start at 2.

AIBU for just waiting until 13:59 or even 2 pm and then joining to avoid the pointless chat and also because I have other things to do?

lighthearted

Are you still working in 2020, what kind of workplace hasn't got that all sorted nearly 6 years after people started with?

teams has decided to uninstall itself

😂😂😂

What do you mean, "load the slides"?

Where are the slides?

I just click join when it's convenient to me (for example when I get my 10 minutes notification), but keep my camera/mic turned off and continue with my work until it officialy properly starts.

Trying to connect exactly on time would take more of my attention, and there is a risk that I'd get deeper into something and miss the start time entirely.

We can agree to disagree but the idea that ten people joining at say 10.00 get started with the actual business on time is for the birds. I work in a field where if you were my next appointment, in person, I can tell you that you wouldn’t want me to be keeping you waiting.

Have a colleague who does this and just sits there waiting for others to join. It really annoys me, more than once there was a team
meeting she’d join early and those of us in the office would be waiting outside a meeting room for the previous meeting in there to finish and leave.

on principle I log in bang in time but this colleague and another colleague at another office are both early starters. When I join, on time,there will always be a ‘oh there she is!’ As if I’m late and usually i’ll say ‘i thought the meeting started at 2?’ What I really want to day is ‘I’m busy and didn’t want to chat shit whilst waiting!’

I've never used Teams for work but for other things I just normally join a couple of minutes early to be sure to be on time.

In PowerPoint - I use the 'present in Teams' option so all the navigation, notes etc. are available in teams, but it can take a few minutes for them to load if it's a big pack or has embedded media.

I always join at the start time, so I don't have to make small talk!

It's actions like that which makes me deliberately join at 1 or 2 minutes past!
There's one person in our wider team who without fail is the first to start any meeting that she's invited to.
Why??

I genuinely don't have the capacity for shit-chat at the start of every meeting.

Why not just open it on your laptop before you join the Teams call?

Because you can't load it into the Teams call until the meeting is open. It has to be open on your laptop anyway before you select 'present in Teams', it's the loading of the pack into the Teams app that takes time - it's not the same as simply sharing your screen because it loads up all the navigation and media, notes etc. into the Teams app so you can control it from within Teams.

I have got most people onboard with punctual meeting start times - I now have one habitually late person who always arrives huffing and puffing with a reason, usually they got talking someone.

i need to tackle it in 2026 because it has real business impacts. But I don’t want to it to become a big issue - I can’t tell if this is genuinely disorganized person or if they are doing it to make a point!

People join early in case the tech glitches. A sensible measure, but no reason to start until everyone is present/on-line

That is just plain rude.

You can create a lobby so no one can start the meeting till you are ready

If I’m leading a meeting then I’ll start early to check the tech, check my hair and just take a breath.

If I’m an attendee I just join on the dot.

the problem isn’t people being early - it’s that damn passive aggressive bouncy puppy Teams telling everyone that Colin has started the call!!

no need, Teams… I know what time the meeting is, just pipe down!

I don't understand.

I have an open deck on my laptop.

I join a Teams meeting.

I press the Share button and select the deck.

Nothing has to load into Teams.

Not the done thing where I work; people would wonder what the heck was going on 😂

Right, but if you do it that way, you have to be in the deck to navigate it, so you can't see meeting interactions easily unless you are working with dual monitors.

If you use the 'present in Teams' button at the top left of PowerPoint it will integrate your deck into the Teams app so you can navigate through it, see the presentation notes, run media and animations from within Teams, rather than from PowerPoint.

I join some meetings at one minute in to avoid the small talk 😆

OMG yes

I open my deck in Presentation mode and I can do all that.

The other people on the call pop up in a separate window.

The separate window is OK if there aren't many on the call but if there are more than 10 people or so, you can't see raised hands etc. and it's hopeless on big calls with 100+ people.

Ok. I don't think I've ever been on a Teams meeting with 100 people and honestly I'm not sure it matters if people are 1 or 2 minutes late in that case! Who's going to know? How are they going to contribute?