Anonymous Users Can Verify Identity with OTP

On 19 December 2024, Microsoft issued an update for message center notification MC953756 (Microsoft 365 roadmap item 418125) to clarify exactly what the new OTP verification feature for Teams meetings will do. Here’s the basic idea:

If enabled in the org-wide meeting settings (Figure 1), meeting organizers with a Teams Premium license can require anonymous users invited to join a meeting to verify their identity by requesting a one-time passcode (OTP) sent to an email address they provide.

After receiving the 8-digit OTP, the user completes the verification process by inputting the OTP. If the code matches, the user is deemed to be verified and can join the meeting. Other meeting participants can see an “Email Verified label for OTP verified participants, whose profile card notes that they “verified their email address before joining this meeting.”

Removing the Need for Entra ID and MSA Accounts

Adding OTP as a method for meeting participants to prove their identity is a new option that joins the existing methods to allow external participants verify identities before joining meetings. Essentially, OTP verification removes the current restriction that external participants must be able to sign in with an Entra ID or MSA account.

Targeted release tenants will see the feature in mid-January 2025 and general availability is scheduled for late March 2025 with worldwide completion due in early April 2025. The feature is enabled by default.

Meeting Organizer Option

Meeting organizers must have Teams Premium licenses to use OTP verification for anonymous users. When this is the case, organizers can modify meeting options to set the Unverified participants can join the meeting slider to Off (Figure 2). In this context, unverified means that the external user have not proved their identity by signing into Entra ID or MSA.

Inviting external participants proceeds as normal. When the unverified user attempts to join the meeting, Teams detects that they haven’t signed in and displays a challenge screen to prompt the user to enter their email address to receive the OTP (Figure 3).

The unverified participant receives an email containing the OTP and inputs it to prove their identity and join the meeting (Figure 4).

Propelling Growth for Teams Premium

Allowing external meeting participants to verify their identity using an OTP removes some friction from task of organizing meetings that involve many people from outside the organization. Given that Teams now has 320 million users (the most recent official number, now 15 months old), a fair chance exists that many external invitees for Teams meetings will have an Entra ID or MSA account and can verify themselves by signing in. But there’s a bunch of other people out there who don’t have a Microsoft account and don’t want to create a Microsoft account just to attend Teams meetings. Those folk can now be accommodated with OTPs.

Some will ask why OTP verification is a Teams Premium feature and not part of the base product. A good case can be made that Microsoft needs to make Teams as welcoming a meeting platform as it can for everyone who might be invited to a meeting, so the OTP option should be available to all meeting organizers. On the other hand, Microsoft will probably say that this is a feature that not everyone needs and that it’s only a small part of the additional functionality that Teams Premium brings to the table.

It’s true that Teams Premium does cover a lot more than OTP verification. But perhaps the core reason why this is a premium feature is Microsoft’s desire to convince more people to sign up for Premium licenses. After all, less than 1% of the current Teams installed base have premium licenses today, and the more features that Microsoft stuffs into Teams Premium, the better chance they have of upselling to the installed base.

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