Microsoft Teams and Bridge: capture calls and get past the lobby

Two ways to capture a Teams meeting

	Bridge Agent	Mac desktop app
How it captures	Joins the Teams meeting as a participant	Records your computer's audio; nothing joins the call
Setup	Nothing to install; paste the link, or connect a calendar for auto-join	Install on an Apple Silicon Mac and grant microphone, screen and accessibility permissions
Who sees it	Everyone in the meeting sees the agent	Other participants don't see anything in Teams
Lobby	Often waits in the lobby until someone admits it	Not affected by the lobby

Send Bridge Agent to a Teams call

Bridge Agent works with Teams out of the box. You don't connect a Teams account first.

One meeting: click New, choose Capture on Zoom, Meet, or Teams, paste the Teams meeting link and click Add To Meeting.
Every meeting: connect Outlook Calendar or Google Calendar, then turn on Agent Auto-Join in Preferences. You can limit it to meetings you host, meetings where everyone shares your email domain, or meetings you accepted.
Choose whether the agent joins at the start time, 2 minutes early or 5 minutes early.
Rename the agent and set its image in Preferences. The custom name shows on Zoom and Teams only.

Getting Bridge Agent out of the Teams lobby

The Teams lobby holds some participants until someone lets them in. When someone arrives there, Teams notifies the organizer, co-organizers and presenters. By default, organizers and presenters are the ones who can admit people.

So if the agent seems missing, it is usually waiting. Ask the organizer or a presenter to open the lobby list and admit it. If you aren't the organizer, tell them before the call that the agent is coming.

Organizers can change who bypasses the lobby in Meeting options for their meeting.
Admins set the default in the Teams admin center, under Meetings, Meeting policies, Meeting join & lobby.
Paste the Teams join link itself, not the calendar invite text or a dial-in number.

When your Teams admin settings block it

Some organizations stop people outside the company from joining Teams meetings at all. Teams has separate switches for guest access, external access and anonymous join. If one is off, that type of participant can't join, whatever the lobby settings say.

If Bridge Agent never appears in the lobby, ask your Teams admin which of these your organization allows. If the policy won't change, use the Mac desktop app instead. It records from your computer and never asks to join.

What you get after the call

A captured Teams meeting lands in Meetings, Completed, like any other Bridge meeting, with a source icon showing where it came from.

Structured notes with a summary, decisions and assigned action items.
The speaker-labeled transcript, which you can copy or export as PDF, Word or Markdown.
An Assistant scoped to that meeting, plus agents that run after every meeting on paid plans.

Sources & further reading

Keep readingUse Bridge with Zoom: capture calls, import transcripts, fix joins →