How do you set a default non-english language for auto-transcription in Microsoft Teams

Question

The situation:

• We book a calendar event in a users calendar using the Microsoft Graph API. When we book the meeting we set the "IsOnlineMeeting" flag to true to create an associated Microsoft Teams Meeting.
• Next, we find the the newly created Microsoft Teams meeting ID by querying using the "OnlineMeeting.JoinUrl" in the newly created calendar event.
• Lastly, we patch the Microsoft Teams meeting using the Microsoft Graph API to set the following three flags: "{AllowRecording = true, AllowTranscription = true, RecordAutomatically = true}". This is done to ensure that a transcription automatically starts when the Online Teams meeting is started by the users.

All of the above steps are done using the Microsoft Graph API with an App Registration using App API permissions.

 

The problem:

• When the users starts the Microsoft Teams meeting the transcription automatically starts as expected. However, even though the user is danish and all Microsoft Teams settings show that the users preferred language is danish, the automatic transcription always defaults to starting in English.

We have tried the following to attempt to fix the problem:

1. We have explored the Microsoft Graph API for any language settings on the Microsoft Graph entities "calendar/events" and "onlinemeetings", but have not found any options on the entities that specify what language the transcription starts in.
2. We have tried identifying transcription and language settings in the "admin.teams.microsoft.com" portal but without luck. This includes:
   • "Meetings->Meeting Policies->Global->Recording & transcription"
   • Setting the location of the tenant to denmark
   • Explored all policies (meeting policies, call policies, all voice policies etc.) to identify any language or transcript related settings
   • We have tried setting the language and location settings for the users:
   • Using the Microsoft Graph API regionalAndLanguageSettings to set all the following options to "da-DK":

          - authoringLanguages
          
          
          - defaultDisplayLanguage
          
                
          - defaultSpeechInputLanguage
          
                      
          - defaultTranslationLanguage
          
                            
          - translationPreferences
          
                                  
          - Using PowerShell to set user language preferences following the Microsoft documentation: [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/troubleshoot/access-management/set-language-and-region](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/troubleshoot/access-management/set-language-and-region"https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/troubleshoot/access-management/set-language-and-region")
          ```None of the above attempted fixes have resolved the issue of automatic transcription defaulting to English instead of Danish.
     
     

Answer 1

There is currently no way to set the default transcription language for Teams meetings via API or admin settings. The default is always English, regardless of user or tenant language settings. This is a known limitation, and the only workaround is for users to manually change the language during the meeting.

Thanks, 

Nivedipa 

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Answer 2

Thank you for your response and clarification.
It seems we have to look for alternatives to support our non-native English customers.