How to Set Up a Microsoft Teams Meeting (Step by Step)

You can set up a Microsoft Teams meeting in three ways: schedule one from Teams or Outlook, start an instant meeting, or add an agenda to an existing calendar event. This guide walks through each, plus how to invite people, share the link, and capture notes once the meeting starts.

Schedule a Teams meeting from the calendar

1. In Teams, open Calendar in the left sidebar and click New meeting (top right).
2. Add a title, invitees, and a date and time. Teams shows attendees' availability if you're on the same tenant.
3. Optionally set it to repeat, choose a channel (to meet with a whole team), and add a location.
4. Click Save. Teams emails everyone an invite with a Join link.

Schedule from Outlook instead

If you live in Outlook, use the Teams Meeting button in a new calendar event (the Teams add-in installs automatically with the desktop app). Fill in the invitees and time as usual and send — the event carries a Teams join link.

Start an instant meeting

To meet right now, open Calendar → Meet now, or from any chat click the camera icon. Teams creates the meeting immediately and gives you a link to copy and share.

How to add an agenda to a Teams meeting

A meeting without an agenda drifts. To attach one:

• In the invite: type the agenda directly into the meeting's description/details field when you schedule it, so it travels with the calendar event.
• In the meeting chat: paste the agenda as the first message so it's pinned at the top when people join.
• As a shared file: attach an agenda doc to the event, or add it to the channel's Files tab for a channel meeting.

For a reusable structure, see our guide on how to write a meeting agenda.

Capture the meeting without taking notes by hand

Once the meeting starts, the last thing you want is to host and type notes. Nod captures the call from your computer's own audio and your microphone — no bot joins, nothing appears in the Teams participant list — and writes notes with a short summary, key points, and action items when the meeting ends. Any person or deadline in the notes should be verified against the transcript.

Both the transcription and the notes run on your device, and the audio is never written to disk. Each meeting is one encrypted file on your computer, with no account and no cloud AI provider in the path. Nod runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and isn't released yet: join the waitlist to hear when it is. See how it works for specifics, and Teams notes without a bot for how bot-free capture works in Teams specifically.

Frequently set-up questions

Setting up the meeting is the easy part — the value comes from a clear agenda going in and a clean record coming out. Pair a quick agenda with automatic capture and every Teams meeting leaves a usable trail without anyone playing scribe.