MC971031 - Microsoft Teams: New transcription policies for town halls and webinars

Updated February 20, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Before this rollout, for a Microsoft Teams town hall or webinar, the transcription behavior respects the current Teams meeting transcription policies. After this rollout, new transcription policies will be available for town halls and webinars to allow finer control over transcriptions. The policies may be changed in the Teams admin center or with Microsoft PowerShell commands. This message applies to Teams for Windows desktop, Teams for the web, and Teams for iOS/Android.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 473886.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC): We will begin rolling out early April 2025 (previously early March) and expect to complete by mid-April 2025 (previously mid-March).

How this will affect your organization:

These new transcription policies for webinars and town halls will determine whether transcription is allowed for a town hall or webinar. Town halls and webinars will no longer respect the Teams Meeting transcription policies.

The new policies will be available by default for admins to configure.

What you need to do to prepare:

Before the rollout, we encourage you to use PowerShell commands to update the default values of the transcription policies for webinars and town halls. After the rollout, you can use Teams admin center or PowerShell commands to update the values.

Examples of PowerShell commands to set the town hall or webinar policy:

Set-CsTeamsEventsPolicy -Identity Global -TranscriptionForTownhall Enabled

Set-CsTeamsEventsPolicy -Identity Global -TranscriptionForWebinar Enabled

Review your current configuration to determine the impact for your organization. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Learn more: New-CsTeamsEventsPolicy (MicrosoftTeamsPowerShell) | Microsoft Learn