Meeting policy settings for audio & video
APPLIES TO: ✔️Meetings ✔️Webinars ✔️Town halls
This article describes the audio and video meeting policy settings for meetings, webinars, and town halls. In town halls, only presenters, organizers, and co-organizers can use their cameras and microphones.
To access audio and video settings, follow these steps:
- In the Teams admin center, expand Meetings and select Meeting policies.
- Either select an existing policy or create a new one.
- Navigate to the Audio & video section and select your desired values (described in the following sections) for Mode for IP audio, Mode for IP video, Video conferencing, Media rate (Kbps), and Participants can use video effects.
- When you've completed your changes, select Save.
Explore the following articles to learn how to manage these additional meeting audio and video policies:
- Stream Teams meetings
- Broadcast meeting content
- Manage your network topology for cloud voice features in Microsoft Teams
Mode for IP audio
This is a per-user policy. This setting controls whether audio can be turned on in meetings and group calls. Here are the values for this setting.
| Setting value | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Outgoing and incoming audio enabled | This is the default setting. This user can both use and access outgoing and incoming audio in meetings. |
| Not enabled | This user can still schedule and organize meetings. However, they can't use audio during the meetings. To join a meeting, they must dial in or have the meeting call them and join by phone. |
Meeting participants who don't have any policies assigned (for example, anonymous participants) have Mode for IP audio set to Outgoing and incoming audio enabled. On Teams mobile clients, if this setting isn't set to Outgoing and incoming audio enabled, the user must dial in to the meeting.
This setting doesn't apply to 1:1 calls. To restrict 1:1 calls, configure a Teams calling policy and turn off the Make private calls setting in the Teams admin center. This setting also doesn't apply to conference room devices such as Surface Hub and Microsoft Teams Rooms devices.
This setting isn't available for Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC), GCC High, or Department of Defense (DoD) environments.
Mode for IP video
This is a both a per-user and per-organizer policy. This setting controls both outgoing and incoming video for meetings and group calls that a user organizes or attends. The following table shows the behaviors for this setting:
| Mode for IP video policy value | Meetings the user organizes | Meetings the user attends |
|---|---|---|
| Outgoing and incoming video enabled | All attendees can use video unless the policy you assigned to them prevents it. | This user can use video unless the organizer's settings prevents it. |
| Not enabled | No participants can turn video in the meeting. | This user can't turn on or view video. Other participants can only turn on and view video if both their assigned policy and the organizer's assigned policy allow it. |
If set to Not enabled for a user, that user can't turn on video or view other meeting participants' videos. Meeting participants who don't have any policies assigned (for example, anonymous participants) have Mode for IP video set to Outgoing and incoming video enabled.
This setting doesn't apply to conference room devices such as Surface Hub and Microsoft Teams Rooms devices.
This setting isn't available for Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC), GCC High, or Department of Defense (DoD) environments.
To learn more, see Manage audio/video for meeting participants.
Video conferencing
Important
Currently, the Video conferencing setting doesn't turn off video for meetings and events. Your organizers should instead use the Allow camera for attendees setting in their Meeting Options to control video access in their meetings and events. To learn more, see the Which video conferencing policy setting takes precedence and Manage audio/video for meeting participants sections in this article.
This is a combination of a per-organizer and per-user policy that controls which users' meetings have outgoing video. The Video conferencing setting controls whether video can be turned on in meetings a user organizes and in 1:1 and group calls a user starts. On Teams mobile clients, this setting controls whether users can turn on their cameras in a meeting.
When both the meeting organizer and participants have this policy set to On, participants can share video during the meeting. Meeting participants who don't have any assigned policies (for example, anonymous and trusted participants) inherit the meeting organizer's policy.
If you set Video conferencing to On for a user:
- Meetings they organize allow video
- They can use their video in meetings they attend.
If you set Video conferencing to Off for a user:
- Meetings they organize don't allow video
- They can't use their video in meetings they attend.
Which video policy setting takes precedence?
For a user, the most restrictive policy setting for video takes precedence. Here are some examples.
| Video conferencing | Mode for IP video | Meeting experience |
|---|---|---|
| Organizer: On Participant: On |
Participant: Not enabled | The Mode for IP video setting takes precedence. The participant who is assigned this policy can't turn on or view videos shared by others. |
| Organizer: On Participant: On |
Participant: Outgoing and incoming video enabled | The participant who is assigned this policy can turn on or view videos shared by others. |
| Organizer: On Participant: Off |
Participant: Outgoing and incoming video enabled | The Video conferencing setting takes precedence. The organizer can use the Allow camera for attendees setting in their Meeting Options to control video access in their meetings and events. |
| Organizer: On Participant: Off |
Participant: Not enabled | The Mode for IP video setting takes precedence. The participant can't see incoming or outgoing video. |
| Organizer: Off | The Video conferencing setting takes precedence. The organizer should instead use the Allow camera for attendees setting in their Meeting Options to control video access in their meetings and events. |
Manage audio/video for meeting participants
| If you want to... | Set the following policy settings |
|---|---|
| Turn on audio and video for participants in meetings | Mode for IP audio: Outgoing and incoming audio enabled (default) Mode for IP video: Outgoing and incoming video enabled (default) Video conferencing: N/A |
| Turn off audio and video for participants in meetings | Mode for IP audio: Not enabled Mode for IP video: Not enabled Video conferencing: N/A |
| Turn on video for participants in meetings (participants have audio only) | Mode for IP audio: Outgoing and incoming audio enabled Mode for IP video: Not enabled Video conferencing: N/A |
The most restrictive policy between the meeting organizer’s policy and the user’s policy applies. For example, if an organizer has a policy that restricts video and a user’s policy doesn't restrict video, meeting participants inherit the policy of the meeting organizer and don't have access to video in meetings. This means that they can join the meeting with audio only.
Teams mobile clients
For users on Teams mobile clients, the ability to share photos and videos during a meeting is also determined by the Video conferencing or Video conferencing mode setting. Depending on which policy setting takes precedence, the ability to share videos and photos won't be available. This doesn't affect screen sharing, which you configure using a separate Screen sharing mode setting. Additionally, you can set a Teams mobility policy to prevent mobile users from using video conferencing over a cellular connection, which means they must use a WiFi connection.
Media bit rate (Kbps)
This is a per-user policy. This setting determines the media bit rate for audio, video, and video-based app-sharing transmissions in calls and meetings for the user. It's applied to both the uplink and downlink media traversal for users in the call or meeting. (For example, if you set a value of 2,000 Kbps, it is 2,000 Kbps for the uplink media and 2,000 Kbps for the downlink media.) This setting gives you granular control over managing bandwidth in your organization. Depending on the meetings scenarios required by users, we recommend having enough bandwidth in place for a good quality experience. The minimum value is 30 Kbps and the maximum value depends on the meeting scenario. To learn more about the minimum recommended bandwidth for good quality meetings, calls, and live events in Teams, see Bandwidth requirements.
If there isn't enough bandwidth for a meeting, participants see a message that indicates poor network quality.
For meetings that need the highest-quality video experience, such as CEO board meetings and Teams live events, we recommend you set the bandwidth to 10 Mbps. Even when the maximum experience is set, Teams adapts to low-bandwidth conditions when certain network conditions are detected, depending on the scenario.
The Media bit rate policy doesn't affect the Teams web client.
Participants can use video effects
This is a per-user policy. This setting controls whether users can customize their video background in a meeting. The following table lists the options.
| Setting value in PowerShell | Setting value in Teams admin center | Behavior |
|---|---|---|
| NoFilters | Off | User can't customize their video background. |
| BlurOnly | Only background blur | User has the option to blur their video background. |
| BlurandDefaultBackgrounds | Only background blur and default backgrounds | User has the option to blur their video background or choose from the default set of images to use as their background. |
| AllFilters | All video effects | User has the option to blur their video background, choose from the default set of images, or upload custom images to use as their background. |
Use Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy or New-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy with the VideoFiltersMode parameter to configure the values in PowerShell.
To learn how to customize your users' backgrounds, see IT Admins- Manage and create custom meeting backgrounds for Teams meetings.
Note
Teams doesn't screen the images your users upload. When you use the All video effects setting, you should have internal organization policies to prevent users from uploading offensive or inappropriate images, or images your organization doesn't have rights to use for Teams meeting backgrounds.
Far end camera control (FECC) for pan tilt zoom (PTZ) cameras
Far end camera control is a policy that can be assigned to Teams Rooms resource accounts. It allows PTZ cameras that are connected to Teams Rooms to be controlled by meeting participants in the Teams client app during meetings.
To use far end camera control, meeting participants need to get the PTZ Camera Controls app. To learn how to make the app available in your organization's app store, see Allow and block apps.
To specify who can use far end camera control in a meeting, create and assign a new policy to a Teams Rooms resource account using the New-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet, or use Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy to modify an existing one. Set the TeamsCameraFarEndPTZMode parameter to one of the following values:
| Setting value | Behavior |
|---|---|
Disabled |
This is the default setting. When set to Disabled, no one can use PTZ camera controls. |
AutoAcceptAll |
PTZ camera controls are automatically available to any meeting participant. |
AutoAcceptInTenant |
PTZ camera controls are automatically available only to participants in the same organization as the Teams Room. |
When TeamsCameraFarEndPTZMode is set to AutoAcceptAll or AutoAcceptInTenant, camera control can still be manually turned off from Teams Rooms at any point during a meeting. Camera control is also unavailable when the camera is turned off.
Any camera with mechanical PTZ and UVC controls is supported. For a list of cameras certified for Teams, including both PTZ and non-PTZ cameras, see Teams Rooms certified systems and peripherals. This feature isn't yet supported on cameras with digital PTZ controls.
Note
Update your camera firmware before testing PTZ controls. See the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) documentation to update firmware.