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Require a watermark for sensitive Teams meetings

  • Article
  • 2 minutes to read
  • Applies to:
    Microsoft Teams

Information icon Some features described in this article require Teams Premium

You can enable a watermark to be displayed in Teams meetings both for content shared on screen and for attendee video. The watermark displays the email address of the meeting participant. Meeting participants can't turn the watermark off.

Watermarks are supported on Teams desktop and mobile. People joining meetings from unsupported platforms will have an audio-only experience.

The following participants have an audio-only experience when a watermark is in use:

  • Participants using the Teams web client
  • Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) participants
  • Anonymous participants
  • Overflow participants
  • Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows and Microsoft Teams Rooms on Surface Hub
  • Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android
  • Older Teams clients
  • Direct Guest Join on Microsoft Teams Rooms devices
  • Cloud Video Interop (CVI). Check with your CVI partner for watermark support information.

Note

Meeting settings in sensitivity labels, custom meeting templates, and watermarks require Teams Premium.

Meeting watermarks are enabled in the Teams admin center. They can then be added by the meeting organizer or enforced by a template or sensitivity label.

The following table shows where watermarks are configured:

Setting Admin policy Sensitivity label Template Meeting organizer
Apply a watermark to shared content Yes Yes Yes Yes
Apply a watermark to everyone's video feed Yes Yes Yes Yes

When a watermark is being used in a meeting, the following features are turned off:

  • Meeting recording, including automatic recording

  • Large gallery

  • Together mode

  • PowerPoint Live

  • Whiteboard

  • Content from camera

Watermarks for sensitive and highly sensitive meetings

Watermarks can be useful for protecting confidential information shared in meetings. This is most useful when sharing information with people who do not normally have access to the information. For example, a member of the finance organization might use watermarks when sharing quarterly estimates with managers from different divisions.

Since watermarks are designed to reduce the chances that confidential information will be exfiltrated, using them in meetings where all the participants have direct access to the content being shared, may not add to security.

For information about using watermarks with other meeting features to help protect confidential information in meetings, see Configure Teams meetings with protection for highly sensitive data.

Enable watermarks

For watermarks to be available in templates and sensitivity labels, and to the meeting organizer, they must be enabled in the Teams admin center.

To enable watermarking for meetings

  1. In the Teams admin center, expand Meetings and select Meeting policies.

  2. Select the policy you want to update.

  3. To enable watermark on attendee video, set Watermark videos to On.

  4. To enable watermark on content shared on screen in a meeting, set Watermark shared content to On.

    Screenshot of Teams admin policy for watermarks

  5. To see how the watermark will look on desktop and mobile devices, select Preview.

  6. Select Save.

You can also enable or disable watermarks by using PowerShell. Use the Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet with the -AllowWatermarkForCameraVideo and -AllowWatermarkForScreenSharing parameters.

For example:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global -AllowWatermarkForCameraVideo $True 

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global -AllowWatermarkForScreenSharing $True

Configure Teams meetings with three tiers of protection

Use Teams meeting templates, sensitivity labels, and admin policies together for sensitive meetings

Teams policies reference - Watermark