How to configure Outlook to set new appointments as online by default?

Overview

Users can configure their Email preferences to set new appointments as online meetings or not. When a customer creates a new appointment in Outlook, and adds one or more attendees to the appointment, Outlook will automatically set such appointments as online meetings in the meeting client of the users choice.

Here is how an online meeting looks:

This image is an example of an online meeting. The red arrow points out that the search for a room location setting should be turned on.
 

 

How to configure online meetings by default

The user only needs to set this preference in one place. Their Outlook clients will synchronize the setting.

 

Outlook for the Web

Select the gear icon, then "View all Outlook settings".

This image demonstrates how to view all outlook settings.

Select "Calendar", then "Events and invitations". The option is under "Events you create".

This image demonstrates how to navigate to the events and invitations section.

When the option "Add online meeting to all meetings" is NOT selected, new appointments will not be set to online meetings by default; the user can still set created appointments as online on an appointment by appointment basis.

When the option is selected, the  user can select from a list of installed online meeting providers such as Zoom and Teams. In this example, only Microsoft Teams is available.

If you wish to cancel, you may click discard.

Once the user has made their selection, they must click "Save".

 

Outlook for MacOS

With Outlook for MacOS opened, select Preferences from the menu bar, under "Outlook".

This image shows how to navigate to the preferences for Outlook.

In Outlook Preferences, click on "Calendar" under "Other".

It is in the bottom left of the grid of selections.

Under "Calendar Options", Click on the "Configure..." button next to "Add online meeting to all events".

This is a picture of the calendar options.

The setting can be found in the "Online meeting" window.

This is a picture of the online meetings window.

 

Outlook Desktop App for Windows

Right click on the Calendar in the left side navigation and select "Options..."

Options is located in the bottom of a drop down menu from the calendar.

Click on "Add Meeting Provider..."

This photo shows where the add meeting provider button is.

The "Online Meeting" dialog will provide available options to enable or disable online meetings.

Click ok when finished

 

Exchange Online global setting for Online Meetings by Default

In order to enable users to select whether or not they wish to have online meetings by default, we have set the global Exchange option "OnlineMeetingsByDefaultEnabled" to False.
This is done with Powershell and the Exchange powershell module, using the Set-OrganizationConfig commandlet. Here is an example of making the setting and viewing the result.

Connect-ExchangeOnline
Set-OrganizationConfig -OnlineMeetingsByDefaultEnabled $false
(Get-OrganizationConfig).OnlineMeetingsByDefaultEnabled
 

There are three places that Online Meetings by Default can be set, at the global level, at the mailbox level, and at the mail client level. Microsoft support provided the following table of the expected behavior of the setting depending on what these three places have set.

Tenant Setting

Single user Mailbox setting

Single user Outlook setting

Expected behavior

OnlineMeetingsByDefaultEnabled

OnlineMeetingsByDefaultEnabled

(Set-Organizationconfig)

(applied with powershell)

FALSE

FALSE

FALSE

Meetings will not be created Online ( Teams Meeting ) 

FALSE

FALSE

TRUE

Meetings are created Online ( Teams ) for this User 

FALSE

TRUE

FALSE

Meetings are created Online ( Teams ) for this User 

FALSE

TRUE

TRUE

Meetings are created Online ( Teams ) for this User 

TRUE

FALSE

FALSE

Meetings are created Online ( Teams ) for this User 

TRUE

FALSE

TRUE

Meetings are created Online ( Teams ) for this User 

TRUE

TRUE

FALSE

Meetings are created Online ( Teams ) for this User 

TRUE

TRUE

TRUE

Meetings are created Online ( Teams ) for this User 

 

 

 

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