Microsoft Teams now allows Teams meeting organizers to allow participants to change their display name in a Teams meeting, allowing adding company/department name or pronouns.
There are some important limitations to know about this feature -
- Changing one’s display
name for Teams meetings is not persistent. It must be changed each meeting
from the default
- The option to allow changing display names can only be enabled by the meeting organizer
- By default, the option to allow name changes is turned off for each meeting, and there is currently no option to enable by default
- The slash character ("/") is not an allowed character, however one can use the - character to separate pronouns, such as "he-him-his"
- You can enable this option at any time for each meeting, either when creating the meeting, or when the meeting has already started
How to allow changing display name in a Teams meeting as the meeting organizer
When setting up your Teams meeting beforehand in Teams or Outlook:
- Click the "Meeting Options" button
- In the Teams meeting options, click "Participation"
- Find and turn on the "Let people edit their display name" option
When turning on during a Teams meeting:
- You must be the meeting organizer
- Click on the "Controls" button from the Teams toolbar
- Choose "View more options"
- In the Teams meeting options, click "Participation"
- Find and turn on the "Let people edit their display name" option
For meeting participants:
After enabling this option, participants will see the following message:
Participants can now change their display name in the meeting by clicking the three dots next to their display name, and choosing "Edit display name"
NOTE: A reminder that this display name change is not persistent, and will not carry over to subsequent meetings.