The default Microsoft Teams (Teams) meeting options are not suitable for clinical care and must be customised to protect participant privacy and provide the best user experience.
Meeting options can be customised when scheduling, before or during an appointment. It is preferrable to customise meeting options when the appointment is first scheduled, as some options will not be available while the appointment is in progress.
The following table provides recommended meeting options for clinical appointments and details to support the recommendations.
Contact your local Virtual Care Manager for advice, guidance and support navigating the considerations below in relation to your clinical service requirements and clinical use case. They can also connect you with the appropriate support across the district or statewide.
The functionality is active
The functionality is disabled (not active)
| Meeting options | Recommended Setting | More Information |
|---|---|---|
| Security | ||
| Who can bypass the lobby | Only organisers and co-organisers | This feature allows selected participants to enter directly into the meeting room. Unselected participants wait in a lobby until the organiser or co-organiser accepts their entry to the virtual appointment. If clinical support officers or administration officers set up the appointment, it is recommended that the clinician is included as a co-organiser. Caution: If the organiser or co-organiser are unable to attend, participants who join the meeting and are waiting in the lobby cannot be admitted. Ensure your Outlook calendar is shared with the service team, your manager, or administrative support so they can update meeting details or send new invitations on your behalf. Why use the lobby?
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| People dialling in can bypass the lobby | Meeting organisers need to accept participants who join by telephone from the lobby. This is because they appear as 'unknown' as they do not enter a name when joining the meeting. | |
| Enable Green room | This feature is not available for NSW Health users. It allows organisers and presenters to join a meeting to test audio and content sharing while participants wait in the lobby. Speak with your Virtual care manager or lead if this function is required for your use case. | |
| Audio and Video | ||
| Allow mic for attendees | Enable the microphone for meetings with a small number of attendees. Participants can mute and unmute themselves as needed and the meeting organiser can mute participants if required. For larger meetings, it may be best to disable microphones. Let participants know you have disabled their microphones and advise them of alternate ways of communicating. The organiser can change microphone settings as required. Microphone access can be enabled or disabled for all attendees, or managed individually. | |
| Allow camera for attendees | Allow all attendees to use their cameras so participants can see who is in the room, build rapport and provide visual cues for clinical assessment. Speak with consumers when it may be appropriate to turn their camera off. For example:
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| Provide CART captions | Communication access real-time translation (CART) is a service where a trained CART captioner listens to the speech and instantaneously translates all speech to text. The accuracy of the translation has not been tested in a clinical setting. The CART captioner uses a phonetic keyboard or stenography methods to produce an accurate translation that is broadcast to the recipient’s screen, laptop, or other device. CART is sometimes called open captioning, real-time stenography, or real-time captioning. | |
| Engagement | ||
| Meeting chat | Customise to use case | The meeting chat allows participants to send messages any time, during the appointment only, or not at all. This option is determined by the type of appointment and the participants. In-meeting only The chat is only accessible during the meeting. This feature is recommended when communication between participants is not required outside the meeting. Participants in the lobby are unable to send messages via the chat, but they can respond when the chat is initiated by the organiser or co-organiser. On Allows participants to chat any time via the meeting invite. Only recommended when all participants are trusted sources and communication is required outside of the appointment. Off No chat abilities at any time. This is recommended for appointments with a large number of participants where communication is not required. This includes organiser, co-organisers and presenters. |
| Q&A | Customise to use case | The Q&A function allows participants to ask questions, post replies and post anonymously during a meeting. They can be unmoderated or moderated by meeting organiser and co-organisers. This option is determined by the type of appointment and who the participants are. Consider whether you need both, the meeting chat and Q&A enabled. One option may be sufficient to limit the number of places to monitor and manage incoming messages. It is recommended to use the Q&A function for large events to make them more interactive and engaging. |
| Allow reactions | Customise to use case | Participants can send live reactions during a meeting to express how they feel about what’s being shared. Reactions may help with participant engagement. For example, working with children and using reactions as a reward or to animate an achievement. In group sessions hosts may encourage feedback from participants via reactions, which can be less of a distraction than receiving multiple chat messages. This option is determined by the type of appointment and who the participants are. |
| Allow attendance report | Attendance reports contain appointment details, including how long participants stayed and how long the appointment lasted. Use this function if you require an attendance report where you cannot manually record all participants. | |
| Roles | ||
| Announce when people dialling in join or leave | Keep default setting to receive alerts and monitor when people enter or leave the meeting room. | |
| Choose co-organisers | Customise to use case | Allows others in the meeting to be given the same technical abilities as the organiser. Only add people who will assist with the appointment, such as other clinicians or support staff. |
| Who can present | Customise to use case | Presenters have the same abilities as the meeting organiser. They can mute and unmute participants, manage the lobby and start or stop recordings. The meeting organiser should choose presenter permissions based on the purpose of the meeting and who is attending. The organiser can allow all participants to present or assign presenter rights to selected individuals. |
| Enable language interpretation | The NSW Health Policy Directive Interpreters – Standard Procedures for Working with Health Care Interpreters (PD2017_044) advises that NSW Health organisations and staff should not use apps or other online machine translation services to translate health information which is clinical or ‘official’ as current evidence indicates they are not accurate transcriptions. A NSW Health interpreter must be used to support patient care. Provide the meeting link and details to the Health Care Interpreter Service when booking to support interpreters attending meetings. | |
| Recording and transcript | ||
| Record automatically | While many devices have the functionality to record consultations, it is not standard practice to record virtual care sessions. Recording for an approved purpose, such as research or education, requires consent and secure storage to be arranged prior to the appointment. If you do record, the recording should be started once the appointment has commenced. It is good practice to re-confirm participant consent to record and note this in the consumer’s medical record. | |
| Copilot | This function should not be used for clinical appointments. Copilot supports transcription by summarising discussion points. Requires transcribing to be turned on. | |