Start an Audio Conference over the phone without a PIN in Skype for Business Online

Important

Skype for Business Online operated by 21Vianet in China will be retired on October 1, 2023. If you haven't upgraded your Skype for Business Online users yet, they will be automatically scheduled for an assisted upgrade. If you want to upgrade your organization to Teams yourself, we strongly recommend that you begin planning your upgrade path today. Remember that a successful upgrade aligns technical and user readiness, so be sure to leverage our upgrade guidance as you navigate your journey to Teams.

Skype for Business Online, excluding the service operated by 21Vianet in China, was retired on July 31, 2021.

Note

For information about starting an Audio Conference without a PIN in Microsoft Teams, see Start an Audio Conference over the phone without a PIN in Microsoft Teams.

It might be frustrating for users who dial in to a meeting to be held in the meeting's lobby listening to music because the Skype for Business meeting organizer hasn't started the meeting.

If a meeting organizer calls in to the meeting, by default, a PIN is required to start a meeting. You can set it up so that anyone can dial in to a meeting and not be prompted for a PIN to start the meeting. You can use the Skype for Business admin center to enable or disable this setting for a single user.

A PIN isn't required for the meeting organizer if someone has started the meeting from the Skype for Business app. A PIN is only required when a meeting organizer joins their meeting over a phone. The PIN for meetings is sent to the audio user when they are assigned the Audio Conferencing license and are enabled for Audio Conferencing. See Send an email to a user with their Audio Conferencing information and Emails that are automatically sent to users when their Audio Conferencing settings change.

Note

We are frequently updating how you can manage features found in Skype for Business Online, so the steps here might be a little different.

Enable or disable anonymous callers from joining a meeting

  1. In the Skype for Business admin center, in the left navigation, go to Audio conferencing > Users.

  2. In the list, select the user and in the Action pane click Edit.

  3. On the user's properties page, under Meeting options, select or clear Allow unauthenticated callers to be the first people in a meeting. If not, then they will wait in the lobby until an authenticated user joins.

  4. Click Save.

Using Windows Powershell

  • Run the following:

    Set-CsOnlineDialInConferencingTenantSettings -AllowPSTNOnlyMeetingsByDefault $true | $false
    

What else should you know?

  • If you want to reset the PIN, see Reset the Audio Conferencing PIN.

  • If anonymous access, or not requiring a PIN to start a meeting, is disabled:

    • If the meeting hasn't started (there's no one in the meeting yet): A caller will be prompted if he's the organizer; if he says yes, he'll be prompted for his PIN, and after he inputs the PIN, the meeting will start and the user will join the meeting.

    • If the meeting already started (someone else is already in the meeting): A caller won't be prompted if he's the organizer and he'll never be prompted for the PIN; the meeting is already started, and the caller will join it.

  • If anonymous access, or not requiring a PIN to start a meeting, is enabled:

    • If the meeting hasn't started (there's no one in the meeting yet): A caller won't be prompted if she's the organizer, and she'll never be prompted for the PIN. Because the setting of the organizer is set to off, the meeting will start and the anonymous callers will join the meeting.

    • If the meeting already started (someone else is already in the meeting): A caller won't be prompted if she's the organizer, and she'll never be prompted for the PIN,;the meeting is already started, and the caller will join it.

Want to know how to manage with Windows PowerShell?

Try or purchase Audio Conferencing in Microsoft 365 or Office 365