Microsoft Teams: Admin policy to automatically block identified external meeting bots from joining meetings

Microsoft Teams will introduce a new admin policy, starting August 2026, allowing automatic blocking of identified external meeting bots from joining meetings. This enhances meeting security by giving admins control over bots. The policy is off by default and requires admin activation and evaluation before deployment.

[What and why]

Microsoft Teams is introducing a new meeting protection policy that allows administrators to automatically block identified external meeting bots from joining Teams meetings.

Today, Teams can identify meeting bots and provide visibility to organizers and administrators. With this update, organizations can strengthen meeting security by configuring Teams policies to automatically block detected external meeting bots from joining meetings. This gives administrators additional control over how identified bots are handled and can help reduce organizational risk.

[Rollout schedule]

• Targeted Release: Beginning in early August 2026 and expected to complete by late August 2026
• General Availability (Worldwide): Beginning in late August 2026 and expected to complete by late September 2026

[Impact on your organization]

Who is affected

• Teams administrators who manage meeting policies and security controls.
• Meeting organizers and participants in organizations that choose to enable this policy.

Platforms and services

• Microsoft Teams
• Teams admin center
• Teams meeting policies

What will happen

A new policy option will be added to the existing Manage bots meeting protection settings in the Teams admin center.

Administrators will be able to configure Teams meeting policies to automatically block identified external meeting bots from joining meetings.

When the setting is enabled:

• Identified external meeting bots will be prevented from joining meetings governed by the assigned policy.
• Existing bot detection and visibility experiences for organizers and administrators will continue to be available.
• The policy can be assigned to specific users or groups through existing Teams meeting policy management.

Organizations that do not enable this setting will continue to use the current bot detection experience with no change to meeting participation behavior.

Default state: Off. No changes occur unless an administrator enables the policy.

[Action required and recommendations]

No action is required unless you plan to use this capability.

If you intend to enable automatic blocking of identified external meeting bots, we recommend that you:

• Review your organization's use of meeting bots and automated meeting applications.
• Evaluate the feature with a pilot group before broader deployment.
• Review existing Teams meeting policies and determine which users or groups should receive the policy.
• Update internal documentation and help desk guidance as appropriate.
• Communicate the change to meeting organizers and users who rely on automated meeting bots in their workflows.

[Compliance considerations]

No compliance considerations identified. Review as appropriate for your organization.