Notetaker stuck in the lobby? How to admit a bot on Google Meet and Teams

A notetaker stuck in the lobby is a participant waiting for somebody inside the meeting to let it in. It cannot admit itself, and nobody inside may have noticed it knocking. This guide is for anyone whose notetaker bot sits at the door of a Google Meet or Microsoft Teams call: where the request to join appears, who is allowed to accept it, which settings hold a bot and which refuse it outright, and what to ask a client's host before the next call. Why a bot can join a meeting you do not host at all is covered in can a notetaker join a meeting you don't host.

Why is the notetaker stuck in the lobby?

Because the meeting holds some participants at the door, and nobody with the right role has admitted it yet. The usual reasons are dull ones: nobody saw the request, the person who saw it was not allowed to accept it, or the platform flagged the bot and hid the quick Admit button.

A notetaker bot is a browser that opens the meeting link under its own name. It is not on the invitation, it is usually not signed in to an account the host's organisation trusts, and Teams can now recognise many bots as bots. Each of those can put it in the lobby while you, a named guest signed in to a work account, walk straight in.

How do you admit a bot on Google Meet?

Someone allowed to accept requests to join clicks Admit. When someone asks to join, Meet shows a prompt with Admit and Deny entry; with several people waiting, View all lists them, and Admit all or Deny all acts on everyone at once. Google describes these in tips to control meeting access and participation.

Who is allowed depends on Host management, a setting Google explains on its host controls page:

Host management	Who can accept a request to join
On	The host and co-hosts
Off	The host, co-hosts and anyone from the host's organisation

A guest from another organisation is in neither row. If you are a freelancer in a client's Meet call, you can see the bot waiting and still be unable to let it in. Ask the host, in the meeting chat if they are presenting.

One change from spring 2026: Meet now sorts requests to join into two queues, and the second holds "requests from connections where the host is more likely to need a closer look". Google's announcement says the default action in that queue is to deny entry. If the bot's request lands there, the host has to choose Admit deliberately rather than accept the suggestion.

How do you admit a bot from the Teams lobby?

From the People pane. Open People, look under Waiting in the lobby, and select the check mark next to the bot to admit it, or the X to deny it. By default the organiser, co-organisers and presenters can do this, and an organiser can narrow it with the "Who can admit from the lobby" option in Meeting options. The steps are on Microsoft's page on using the lobby in Teams meetings.

Teams now treats bots differently from people. Microsoft's admin page on managing external bots says that with the default policy, "When detected, require approval before joining", participants detected as bots are "placed in the meeting lobby irrespective of the lobby configuration for the meeting". What the organiser sees:

• The pop-up that announces someone in the lobby shows no Admit option for a detected bot.
• In the lobby list, registered bots appear under Waiting, and unverified bots Teams detects appear under Suspected threats, which offers Deny All.
• Admitting a detected bot shows a confirmation that it is an external bot and may record or transcribe the meeting.

So the steps for a host are: open People, find the bot by name in either section, admit it, and confirm. Microsoft also notes that detection is imperfect in both directions: some bots are missed, and a human is occasionally marked as a bot.

Which settings hold a bot, and which refuse it?

Holding and refusing are different problems. A bot that is held waits, and anyone with the right role can admit it. A bot that is refused never reaches the lobby, and no amount of watching for the knock helps.

Platform	Setting	What happens to a bot
Meet	Meeting access: Open	Joins without knocking
Meet	Meeting access: Trusted or Restricted	Knocks, because it was not invited through the Calendar event
Meet	"Anyone with the meeting link can ask to join" (Trusted) or "Anyone can ask to join, including people who dial in" (Restricted) unticked	Refused. Google: third-party bots, like note takers, that attempt to use "Ask to join" are automatically denied access
Meet	Host must join before anyone else	Waits until a host arrives
Teams	"Who can bypass the lobby?" set to anything but Everyone	Waits, if it joins without a work or school account: Teams counts that as an anonymous participant
Teams	Everyone can bypass	Anonymous participants still wait until someone verified has joined, unless the organisation changed that default
Teams	Bot detection on (the default)	A detected bot waits whatever the lobby setting says
Teams	Anonymous users can join a meeting: Off (an admin setting)	Refused

The Teams rows come from Microsoft's admin page on who can bypass the lobby. Several of these are organisation defaults that a host can change for one meeting, and some are policies only the client's administrator can touch. You will rarely know which applies until you ask.

What should you ask the client's host?

Ask before the first meeting, in writing, and make the request easy to say yes to. Something like:

Hi Priya, I use a notetaker so I can send proper minutes after our calls. It will appear as "Tom's Notetaker" and ask to join a couple of minutes before the start. Could you admit it when it knocks? On Teams it may show up in the lobby as a bot, under Suspected threats, and the pop-up won't have an Admit button, so it needs admitting from People. If your company's settings refuse outside bots altogether, just say so and I'll take notes by hand.

Then, at the start of the call, a one-line reminder: "My notetaker is in the lobby, could you let it in?"

Three things to check if the host says yes and the bot still never gets in:

1. Was the meeting started? If Meet requires a host to join first, or no verified Teams participant has joined, the bot waits for them.
2. Can the person who tried admit it? On Meet, only hosts and co-hosts when Host management is on. On Teams, the organiser may have limited admission to organisers and co-organisers.
3. Was it refused rather than held? If the ask-to-join box is unticked on Meet, or anonymous joining is off for the client's Teams, nobody can admit it. The host would have to change the meeting's settings, or ask their administrator.

If the client would rather not admit bots at all, that is their call. Take notes by hand and send a written recap.

How does TrackHeros handle a bot waiting in the lobby?

The TrackHeros notetaker joins about two minutes before the start, so it is usually knocking before the first person arrives, and it waits to be admitted like any guest. While it waits, the meeting reads "Joining…". It waits for a limited time and then gives up; the meeting list then reads "Not let in", and the meeting page says: "Nobody let the notetaker in — the host declined it, or the waiting room timed out. Nothing went wrong on our side; admit it from the meeting and try again." The "Try again" button sends it back with one click, and the app refuses to send a second bot into a meeting that already has one. What happens next is in what if nobody admits the notetaker.

Meetings where nobody admitted the bot are left out of the bot join rate on the Analytics page, because a closed door is the host's decision rather than a failed join. A meeting that refuses the bot outright, as in the table above, keeps it out, and admitting cannot fix that.

The bot's name is set per client, up to 64 characters with no emoji, so the host sees a name they recognise rather than one they have to guess at: see renaming the notetaker. Platform details are on the Google Meet notetaker and Microsoft Teams notetaker pages.