explicit consent for others to record and transcribe teams meeting

Question

how to have explicit consent for others to record and transcribe teams meeting

Answer 1

Dear @Sophie Firmin,

I hope you’re having a good day.

By default, Microsoft Teams does not require participants to actively “agree” before a meeting is recorded or transcribed. Instead, Teams shows an in‑meeting notification (a banner/notice) when recording or transcription starts, and participation continues under that standard notification model.

If your goal is explicit consent (meaning participants must actively consent before their audio/video/content can be included), that behavior is only available when your organization enables the Explicit Recording Consent policy. When this policy is enabled, participants are prompted to provide consent when recording starts; until they consent, their ability to contribute (for example, unmuting) is restricted. This is an admin-controlled capability and is configured via policy.

If you’re an end user, the best next step is to contact your IT administrator and ask whether your tenant can enable Explicit Recording Consent for meetings.

You can share Microsoft’s official guidance with them here:

• Explicit recording consent for Audio Conferencing.
• Manage whether meetings require participant agreement for recording and transcription

If your organization decides not to enable an explicit-consent policy (for example, due to operational constraints), you can still improve transparency through meeting practice and communication. Many teams choose to make recording/transcription intent very clear ahead of time by stating it explicitly in the meeting invite, noting it in the agenda, and reiterating it at the start of the meeting before recording/transcription begins.

I hope the information above helps you choose the approach that best fits your organization’s compliance and collaboration needs.

Warm regards, 

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Answer 2

To require explicit consent from participants before they can be recorded or transcribed in Teams meetings, configure a Teams meeting policy with explicit recording consent enabled and assign it to the organizers.

1. In the Teams admin center (admin role required), open Meetings → Meeting policies.
2. Edit an existing policy or create a new one for the target organizers.
3. Turn on the setting that requires participant agreement for recording and transcription (this corresponds to ExplicitRecordingConsent in PowerShell).
4. Save the policy and assign it to the organizers who schedule the meetings.

Or use PowerShell:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -ExplicitRecordingConsent Enabled

Behavior when this policy is enabled:

• When recording or transcription is started (or in auto‑recorded meetings, when participants join), all other participants are muted and their camera and content sharing are turned off.
• The user who starts recording/transcription is treated as having given consent and remains unmuted.
• When participants try to unmute, turn on video, or share content, they must choose Yes or No to consent to being recorded/transcribed.
  • If they choose Yes, they can participate normally and are included in the recording/transcription.
  • If they choose No, they have a view‑only experience and cannot unmute or turn on video, and they cannot start recording or transcription.
• Each participant’s consent choice is captured in the attendance report and is also available to admins in audit logs.

If using Azure Communication Services Calling SDK to build a custom client that joins Teams meetings, use the isTeamsConsentRequired and grantTeamsConsent() APIs on the recording or transcription feature to detect when explicit consent is required and to programmatically grant consent after collecting it from the user.

Example (web, recording):

const isConsentRequired = callRecordingApi.isTeamsConsentRequired;
// After collecting user consent in the app UI:
callRecordingApi.grantTeamsConsent();

Example (web, transcription):

const isTranscriptionConsentRequired = callTranscriptionFeature.isTeamsConsentRequired;
// After collecting user consent in the app UI:
callTranscriptionFeature.grantTeamsConsent();

Until consent is granted, attempts to enable audio, video, or screen sharing will fail and the related capabilities will show ExplicitConsentRequired as the reason.

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References:

• Manage Teams recording policies for meetings and events
• Configure call recording, transcription, and captions in Teams
• Show call transcription state on the client (platform-web)
• Manage call recording on the client (platform-web)
• Manage call recording on the client (platform-windows)
• Manage call recording on the client (platform-ios)
• Custom in-meeting notification for recording and transcription