Understanding External Meeting Assistant Bot Detection in Microsoft Teams

Overview

External meeting assistant bots are automated participants from outside the organization, usually transcription, note-taking, or summarization services, that join meetings to capture content. These tools can be useful, but when one joins without the organizer's awareness it can record or store meeting content outside the university's control and create security and compliance risks.

To address this, Teams now identifies external bots as they attempt to join a meeting hosted by the organization. When a participant is identified as a bot, Teams places it in the meeting lobby and labels it so the meeting organizer can decide whether it is admitted or not.

Note: Microsoft is rolling this feature out in stages, from June-August 2026. It may reach some UO meetings before others due to Microsoft’s rollout strategy.

What to expect as a meeting organizer

When the feature is active, you will see new indicators and prompts while hosting a meeting:

  • A participant identified as a bot is placed in the meeting lobby, even if your lobby settings would normally let participants join directly.
  • The detected bot is clearly labeled in the lobby, so you can tell it apart from human participants.
  • You must explicitly admit or deny the bot. When you admit one, Teams reminds you of the risk so a bot is not admitted by mistake.
  • You can remove a detected bot during the meeting if needed.
  • If a person is mislabeled as a bot, you can admit them and select "This is not a bot" to correct the label for that meeting.

Confirmation dialog warning about admitting a detected bot to a meeting.

What to expect as a meeting participant

If you are not the organizer, you generally will not manage bots yourself, but you may notice a short delay while the organizer reviews and admits a detected bot from the lobby.

Note: If you rely on a transcription or note-taking tool that joins as an external bot, be aware that the organizer now must admit it, so it may not join automatically.

Reporting undetected or misidentified bots

Detection is not perfect. Some bots may join without being detected, and occasionally a person may be flagged as a bot. If this occurs, take one of these steps:

  • If a bot joins without being labeled, report it using the Feedback option in Teams.
  • If a person is mislabeled, admit them and select This is not a bot to correct the label for that meeting.

Need help?

If you have questions about this feature or need assistance with Microsoft Teams meetings, see Microsoft Teams Support.

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