Microsoft Teams to Add New Recording Policies for Town Halls and Webinars

Microsoft Teams is set to roll out new recording policies specifically for town halls and webinars. This feature will be available across the Microsoft Teams desktop app for Windows, the Teams web client, and mobile apps next month.

Microsoft Teams introduced support for town halls in October 2023. This feature allows organizations to host large, internal events like company-wide meetings, internal broadcasts, and global team meetings. Microsoft Teams town halls provide advanced production capabilities, structured attendee management, and support for up to 20,000 participants.

On the other hand, Microsoft Teams webinars are designed for external-facing events, including customer presentations, marketing events, and training sessions. This feature also includes registration capabilities, an interactive Q&A experience, and support for up to 1,000 interactive participants.

Previously, the recording policies for Microsoft Teams town halls and webinars automatically inherited the recording policy configured for meetings. With this update, town halls and webinars will have separate recording policies, allowing administrators to enable or disable recordings independently. This feature will be available to all users, regardless of their license type.

How the new Microsoft Teams’ recording policies will affect your organization?

Microsoft advises organizations to update the default recording policy settings for town halls and webinars through PowerShell commands. After the rollout, administrators will have the flexibility to adjust these settings through either the Teams admin center or PowerShell commands.

Microsoft notes that this change will be available by default for all users by late February 2025. The company recommends administrators review the existing configuration to determine the impact on their organizations.

Last month, Microsoft added several new features to its Teams collaboration service. The Microsoft Teams web client now allows users to take control of the screen shared by other meeting participants. Microsoft has also rolled out some major improvements to the Whiteboard app on Teams Rooms on Android, and you can find more details in our previous post.