Did you know that there’s a new setting in the Microsoft Teams meeting strategy that allows you to impose that your meetings organized by some or all users must obtain explicit user consent before they can be recorded. This innovative feature is designed to offer greater transparency and enhance the security of communications within the Microsoft Teams ecosystem. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of requiring Consentir to be registered, how it works and how it can improve the experience of Teams users.
Overview
Explicit consent recording” is a Microsoft Teams feature that allows meetings and calls to be recorded only when all participants have given their prior consent. It’s a proactive privacy measure that gives users total control over the recording of their conversations.
Operation
When a user wishes to record a meeting or call in Teams, the “Explicit consent recording” feature is activated. All meeting participants then receive a clear notification that the recording is about to begin, and that they must give their consent to participate. Each participant has the option of accepting or refusing registration. If a participant refuses, the recording does not start and no audio or video data is stored.
Advantage
- Transparency and privacy: Explicit Consent Recording emphasizes transparency and respect for users’ privacy. Each participant is informed of the registration and has the power to decide whether or not to participate.
- Regulatory compliance: In regulated work environments where data confidentiality is paramount, Explicit Consent Recording offers the right solution. Companies can more easily comply with data protection regulations by ensuring that records are kept in a legal and transparent way.
- Enhanced security: Explicit Consent Recording helps to strengthen the security of communications in Teams by limiting the risk of capture or misuse of sensitive data. Recordings are only made when all participants have given their consent, which reduces opportunities for privacy violations or unauthorized disclosure of confidential information.
- Supporting learning and collaboration: Explicit Consent Recording can also be used constructively to share knowledge and improve performance. Meeting recordings can be used as a reference for training, mentoring and problem-solving, promoting continuous learning and team collaboration.
How to activate it
Explicit consent to registration is disabled by default, which means that Teams works as it always has, unless an administrator enables the feature. Today, to enable this feature, you’ll need to update Teams meeting policies with PowerShell. The graphics option via the Teams Administrative Center (TAC) is not yet available.
To activate explicit registration consent for a meeting strategy, run the command
Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy from the MicrosoftTeams PowerShell module.
Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity "YourPolicyName" -ExplicitRecordingConsent Enabled
When the meeting organizer (or a presenter) starts a meeting with explicit consent, Teams highlights the need to obtain consent before allowing the recording to start via the window below:
When the recording starts, your users will see that Teams has disabled their microphone and video in the participation screen. After joining the call, Teams will inform participants that they must give their consent to be recorded. To start the consent process, you’ll need to reactivate your sound or switch on your camera.
The final step is for the user to give their consent. When this happens, Teams activates microphone sound, camera and participant sharing.
Limitation
Microsoft mentions that the Recording Consent Activation feature relies on the Attendance Report to track when users give their consent. If your company blocks the generation of attendance reports, explicit consent simply won’t work!
Some clients, like the older ones, don’t include the necessary user interface to give consent, so to ensure that people can give consent for registration, these users will need to use a Teams client released after March 1, 2023 to be able to give consent. Microsoft makes an exception for Teams meeting rooms and PSTN calls, as these interfaces cannot give explicit consent.
