Meeting policies in Teams are deceptively complex. On the surface, they seem straightforward — a list of toggles that control what users can do in meetings. In practice, there are subtle interactions between settings, a not-always-obvious split between organiser-level settings and attendee-level settings, and a few settings whose downstream implications aren't clear until you've dealt with the support tickets they generate.
This walkthrough covers the settings that matter most for governance, explains the interactions you need to understand, and offers concrete recommendations based on what tends to work well and what tends to cause problems.
How Meeting Policies Work: Organiser vs Participant
Before diving into individual settings, it's important to understand a structural distinction: meeting policies apply differently depending on whether the setting governs what an organiser can do or what an attendee can do.
When a meeting is created, the meeting policy of the organiser determines certain aspects of the meeting environment — including who can bypass the lobby, whether recording is enabled, and whether transcription is available. The meeting policy of individual attendees determines what those attendees can do within the meeting, regardless of the organiser's settings.
In practice this means: if you want to prevent all users from recording meetings, you need to disable recording in the policy applied to attendees (specifically, the recording setting controls whether the user can initiate a recording). If you want to control the lobby experience for an entire meeting, that's an organiser-side setting.
General Meeting Settings
Allow scheduling private meetings. Controls whether users can schedule one-on-one or private meetings. In most organisations, this should be enabled. Restricting it is only appropriate for specific user populations like frontline workers or kiosk users who don't need independent meeting scheduling.
Allow Meet Now in channels and chats. Controls whether users can start an ad-hoc meeting directly from a channel or chat. Useful for collaboration; generally should be left on for standard users.
Allow channel meeting scheduling. Controls whether users can schedule meetings within channels. This is distinct from scheduling private meetings; channel meetings appear on the channel calendar and are visible to all channel members.
Audio and Video Settings
Allow IP video. This is a bandwidth setting as much as a governance setting. Disabling IP video turns off the camera for all meetings the user joins or organises. This is useful for reducing bandwidth on constrained network segments — some organisations disable video for frontline workers who are on cellular or poor-quality Wi-Fi.
Mode for IP audio. Determines whether users can use VoIP audio in meetings, and if so, whether it can be in- or out-going. The default (Two-way audio enabled) is right for most users.
Allow NDI streaming. Network Device Interface streaming enables broadcast of a Teams meeting feed to third-party streaming software. Off by default and should remain off unless you have a specific broadcasting use case.
Recording and Transcription
This is the section that generates the most governance questions.
Cloud recording. This setting controls whether a user can initiate a recording in a meeting they're attending or organising. If you disable this for a user, they cannot start a recording in any meeting they participate in, regardless of whether the organiser has recording enabled.
The governance question is who should be allowed to record. For most enterprise deployments, the answer is "meeting organisers and co-presenters, not random attendees." You can achieve this with a combination of policy and meeting options. The meeting policy setting enables the capability; the meeting organiser can further restrict it per-meeting through meeting options.
Transcription. Controls whether a user can initiate live transcription in a meeting. Transcription creates a real-time text record of spoken audio. This is a compliance-sensitive feature: in some regulated industries, transcription has legal implications for data retention. Know your requirements before enabling this broadly.
Store recordings outside of your country or region. Teams recordings are stored in OneDrive or SharePoint for the meeting organiser. This setting controls whether that storage can be in a datacentre outside the organiser's home country. For organisations with data residency requirements, leave this off.
Auto-recording. When enabled, meetings are recorded automatically when they start. This is appropriate for certain compliance scenarios — some financial services firms are required to record all client calls, for example. For general enterprise use, auto-recording is intrusive and not recommended.
Recording governance tip
For most enterprises: enable cloud recording for organisers and co-presenters, disable it for anonymous attendees, and consider whether you need auto-recording for any user population. Store recordings in the organiser's OneDrive with a retention policy applied via Microsoft Purview.
Lobby Settings
The lobby is the waiting room for Teams meetings. When someone joins a meeting and is placed in the lobby, they wait there until an organiser or presenter admits them. Lobby settings are some of the most impactful for meeting security.
Automatically admit people. This organiser-side setting determines who bypasses the lobby by default for meetings the organiser schedules. The options are: Everyone, People in my organisation, People in my organisation and guests, and People in my organisation, trusted organisations, and guests.
The key governance consideration here: if you set this to "Everyone," anyone with the meeting link — including external users who were forwarded the invite without the organiser's knowledge — bypasses the lobby automatically. For most enterprise meetings, "People in my organisation and guests" is the right default. Organisers can override this per meeting if needed.
Dial-in bypass lobby. Controls whether users who join by phone (PSTN dial-in) bypass the lobby. Turn this off unless you have a specific reason to admit phone users automatically.
Content Sharing
Screen sharing mode. Controls whether users can share their entire screen, a specific application window, or neither. "Entire screen" is the most permissive; "Single application" reduces the risk of accidentally sharing something sensitive. For high-security or regulated-industry users, single application sharing reduces data leakage risk.
Allow participant to give or request control. When a user is sharing their screen, this setting determines whether they can give keyboard/mouse control to another attendee. Disable this for users in sensitive roles — giving control of a screen to an external attendee is a significant security risk.
Allow external participants to give or request control. This is the external-user version of the above. Default is on in the Global policy. For most enterprises, this should be off.
PowerPoint Live. Allows presenters to share PowerPoint files directly through Teams, with navigation controls visible to attendees. This is a functionality setting, not usually a security concern.
Whiteboard. Controls whether users can use the Microsoft Whiteboard feature in meetings. Whiteboard data is stored in SharePoint and subject to normal SharePoint retention and compliance policies.
Participant and Guest Management
Let anonymous people start a meeting. When off, a meeting cannot start until an authenticated user (someone from your tenant) joins. This prevents anonymous attendees from having a private meeting in a room that was set up with your tenant's conferencing bridge, without your tenant users present. Keep this off.
Allow meeting chat. Controls whether chat is available during meetings. Options include: on, off, and in-meeting only (chat is available during the meeting but not before or after). For compliance scenarios where meeting chat creates a persistent record, "in-meeting only" prevents the chat thread from being accessible afterward.
Allow reactions. Emoji reactions in meetings. Generally a non-issue for governance, but useful to know it's configurable.
Recommended Baseline Configurations
For a standard enterprise deployment, a baseline Global policy might look like this:
- Cloud recording: Enabled (for organisers)
- Transcription: Enabled (review compliance requirements first)
- Automatically admit people: People in my organisation and guests
- Anonymous bypass lobby: Off
- External participant control: Off
- Let anonymous people start a meeting: Off
- Screen sharing mode: Entire screen (adjust for high-security users)
Add a restricted policy for frontline workers or regulated users that disables recording, transcription, and external control features. Add an elevated policy for executives or broadcast organisers that enables advanced features like live events or NDI streaming.
The exact configuration depends on your industry, your compliance requirements, and how your users actually work. But the framework — a sensible Global policy, a more restricted tier, and an elevated tier — covers most scenarios without creating an unmanageable number of policy variants.
