If Vinyl is consistently being held in the meeting lobby and not joining automatically, even though your anonymous join and lobby settings are configured correctly, Microsoft Teams' external bot detection feature may be the cause.
Microsoft Teams has a built-in feature that detects external AI tools and note-taking bots when they attempt to join a meeting. When a participant is identified as a bot, Teams automatically places it in the meeting lobby, regardless of how your lobby settings are configured, and requires the meeting organiser to explicitly admit it before it can join.
The default policy setting is Require approval when detected, which means this behaviour is active for all Teams organisations unless a Teams admin has changed it. Vinyl, as an external recording assistant, can be detected and held in the lobby as a result.
What this looks like in a meeting
When external bot detection holds Vinyl in the lobby:
Vinyl will appear in the meeting lobby rather than joining automatically
The meeting organiser (or a presenter, depending on your lobby settings) will see a prompt to admit Vinyl
Teams will display a reminder about the risks of admitting external bots before the organiser admits it
Once admitted, Vinyl will join and record as normal
Vinyl waits in the lobby for up to 10 minutes after the meeting starts. If nobody admits it in that time, it leaves, the meeting shows as failed in Vinyl, and it won't be recorded. Admitting it after that point won't bring it back, as it has already left.
Short-term fix: admit Vinyl from the lobby
If you don't want to change the admin policy, the organiser or a presenter can admit Vinyl from the lobby at the start of each meeting, within 10 minutes of the meeting starting. Look for Vinyl in the lobby panel when the meeting starts and click Admit.
Tip: To make sure only trusted participants can admit from the lobby (and avoid someone accidentally letting in an unknown bot), configure your meeting settings so that only Organisers and Co-organisers can admit participants from the lobby.
Admin fix: update the external bot policy
To prevent Vinyl from being held in the lobby automatically, a Teams admin can change the external bot detection policy to Do not detect bots. This disables bot detection entirely for meetings created by users the policy applies to.
Via the Teams admin center:
Go to the Teams admin center
Expand Meetings → select Meeting Policies
Open the relevant policy (or the org-wide default policy)
Navigate to the Meeting join & lobby section
Find Manage external bots and their access to meetings
Change the setting to Do not detect bots
Click Save
Once saved, Vinyl will no longer be placed in the lobby by the bot detection system and will join meetings as it normally would.
Via PowerShell:
A Teams admin can also update this setting using the following PowerShell command:
Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -ExternalBotAccessMode AllowBots
Microsoft updates its admin settings from time to time, so if anything looks different, Microsoft's own guide (linked below) has the latest steps.
What if a real person is held as a bot?
Microsoft's bot detection occasionally misclassifies a human participant as a bot. If this happens in a meeting, the organiser can admit the participant from the lobby and select "This is not a bot" to restore their normal participant status for that meeting. Microsoft uses this feedback to improve detection accuracy over time.
Related articles
If Vinyl is still not joining after checking bot detection, also review: Allow Anonymous Participant Access to Teams Meetings, covers anonymous join settings and CAPTCHA verification checks that can also block Vinyl.
For more detail on Microsoft's external bot management policy, see: Microsoft Docs – Manage external bots and their access to meetings