Teams admins can block external meeting bots by policy
Reviewed by Helen Jones
Microsoft is adding a Teams meeting protection setting that lets admins automatically stop identified external meeting bots from joining calls. The control lives in Teams meeting policies and is tied to Roadmap ID 566201. The feature is off by default. Nothing changes in a tenant until an admin turns the setting on and assigns the policy. Targeted Release is due mid to late September 2026 after an earlier August window was pushed back. Microsoft frames it as an admin-side control so users do not have to chase unwanted bots meeting by meeting once the policy is in place.
Until now, unwanted external bots in Teams meetings were mostly a live-meeting problem. Organisers or co-organisers had to notice and remove them, while IT had little durable control beyond guest access habits and user education. That left small admin teams reacting after the fact. This shifts the response to a meeting policy you can assign once. It does not clean SharePoint permissions, guest links, or abandoned Teams, and it only covers bots Microsoft identifies as external meeting bots. Still, for tenants already juggling external sharing risk, it is a rare control that reduces meeting noise without another manual checklist per call.
Analysis
Treat this as a narrow meeting-security pilot, not a full external-access programme. Before broad rollout, enable the block on one restricted meeting policy for leadership or compliance-heavy groups, confirm legitimate third-party bots still work, then decide whether the Global policy should follow.
Source note
Pulse published by Collab365 Spaces, reviewed by Helen Jones on . Cite as "Teams admins can block external meeting bots by policy", Collab365 Spaces. 1 source referenced.