Set up conferencing policies for your organization

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Skype for Business

Important

Skype for Business Online operated by 21Vianet in China will be retired on October 1, 2023. If you haven't upgraded your Skype for Business Online users yet, they will be automatically scheduled for an assisted upgrade. If you want to upgrade your organization to Teams yourself, we strongly recommend that you begin planning your upgrade path today. Remember that a successful upgrade aligns technical and user readiness, so be sure to leverage our upgrade guidance as you navigate your journey to Teams.

Skype for Business Online, excluding the service operated by 21Vianet in China, was retired on July 31, 2021.

Conferencing is an important part of Skype for Business Online: conferencing enables groups of users to come together online to view slides and video, share applications, exchange files, and otherwise communicate and collaborate.

It's important for you to maintain control over conferences and conference settings. In some cases, there might be security concerns: by default, anyone, including unauthenticated users, can participate in meetings and save any of the slides or handouts distributed during those meetings. In addition, there might be occasional legal concerns. For example, by default ,meeting participants are allowed to make annotations on shared content; however, these annotations are not saved when the meeting is archived. If your organization is required to keep a record of all electronic communication, you might want to disable annotations.

In Skype for Business Online, conferences are managed by using conferencing policies. Conferencing policies determine the features and capabilities that can be used in a conference, including everything from whether or not the conference can include IP audio and video to the maximum number of people who can attend a meeting. Conferencing policies can be configured at the global scope or at the per-user scope. This provides administrators with enormous flexibility when it comes to deciding which capabilities will be made available to which users.

Policy settings can be configured at the time a policy is created, or you can use the Set-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet to modify the settings of an existing policy.

Set your conferencing policies

Note

For all of the conferencing policy settings in Skype for Business Online, you must use Windows PowerShell and you can't use the Skype for Business admin center.

Start Windows PowerShell

Note

Skype for Business Online Connector is currently part of the latest Teams PowerShell module. If you're using the latest Teams PowerShell public release, you don't need to install the Skype for Business Online Connector.

  1. Install the Teams PowerShell module.

  2. Open a Windows PowerShell command prompt and run the following commands:

    # When using Teams PowerShell Module 

Import-Module MicrosoftTeams
$credential = Get-Credential
Connect-MicrosoftTeams -Credential $credential

    If you want more information about starting Windows PowerShell, see Connect to all Microsoft 365 or Office 365 services in a single Windows PowerShell window or Set up your computer for Windows PowerShell.

Block file transfers and desktop sharing during meetings

  • To create a new policy for these settings, run:

    New-CsConferencingPolicy -Identity DesktopConferencingPolicy -EnableAppDesktopSharing None  $true -EnableFileTransfer $false

    See more on the New-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet.

  • To grant the new policy you created to all users in your organization, run:

    Grant-CsConferencingPolicy -Identity "amos.marble@contoso.com" -PolicyName DesktopConferencingPolicy

    See more on the Grant-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet.

    If you have already created a policy, you can use the Set-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet to make changes to the existing policy, and then use theGrant-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet to apply the settings to your users.

Block recording of conferences and prevent anonymous meeting participants

  • To create a new policy for these settings, run:

    New-CsConferencingPolicy -Identity ConferencingPolicy -AllowAnonymousParticipantsInMeetings  $false -AllowConferenceRecording $false

    See more on the New-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet.

  • To grant the new policy you created to Amos Marble, run:

      Grant-CsConferencingPolicy -Identity "amos.marble@contoso.com" -PolicyName ConferencingPolicy

    See more on the Grant-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet.

If you have already created a policy, you can use the Set-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet to make changes to the existing policy, and then use the Grant-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet to apply the settings to your users.

Block anonymous participants from recording meetings and external users from saving meeting content

  • To create a new policy for these settings, run:

    New-CsConferencingPolicy -Identity BlockedConferencingPolicy  -AllowExternalUsersToRecordMeeting  $false -AllowExternalUsersToSaveContent $false

    See more on the New-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet.

  • To grant the new policy you created to all of the users in your organization, run:

    Grant-CsConferencingPolicy -Identity "amos.marble@contoso.com" -PolicyName BlockedConferencingPolicy

See more on the Grant-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet.

If you have already created a policy, you can use the Set-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet to make changes to the existing policy, and then use theGrant-CsConferencingPolicy cmdlet to apply the settings to your users.

Want to know more about Windows PowerShell?

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