Microsoft Teams Recording Announcements
With Luware Recording, you can customize your Microsoft Teams recording announcements. This article will take you through some options you have to personalize your announcement experience to suit your requirements.
Announcement Types
There are two types of announcements that are used with Microsoft Teams, detailed below.
Visual Banner
Participants joining from a Microsoft Teams client see a banner in the call window indicating that the call is being recorded for compliance purposes. The banner remains visible for the duration of the call and cannot be dismissed by the user.
Audio Notification
Participants who join from endpoints without a visual interface, such as PSTN callers, federated users on non-Teams clients, SIP devices, and analogue phones, hear a spoken audio notification when they join the call. This ensures external and non-Teams participants are informed that the call is being recorded, even when no banner can be displayed to them.
Configurable Announcement Directions
These are the core call directions that can have the announcements customized.
| Call Type | Announcement Type |
|---|---|
| Internal | Visual Banner Only |
| Conference | Visual Banner Only |
| Federated / PSTN In | Visual Banner & Audio |
| Federated / PSTN Out | Visual Banner & Audio |
Announcement Options
There are two main types of announcements that can be applied for compliance call recording in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Teams Default and Custom Announcements.
Microsoft Teams Default Announcements
When a user is assigned a Microsoft Teams compliance recording policy, Microsoft Teams automatically delivers built-in recording notifications to participants. These default announcements are managed by Microsoft Teams itself, not by Luware Recording, and are designed to satisfy the participant-notification requirements that underpin policy-based compliance recording.
💡 When the Default Announcement Is Sufficient
For most organisations operating under standard regulatory frameworks (MiFID II, Dodd-Frank, GDPR), the default Microsoft Teams announcements are sufficient and require no additional configuration. Custom announcements and disabled notifications should only be considered where a specific business, regional, or regulatory requirement justifies the change.
☝ Default Announcements Cannot Be Replaced Per User
Microsoft Teams does not allow the default announcements to be edited, shortened, or replaced with a tone on a per-user basis through the Teams client. Any modification, whether suppressing the audio notification or substituting a custom audio file , must be applied at the "Teams Compliance Recording Policy" level using PowerShell, as described in the sections below.
Custom Audio Announcements
Luware Recording supports Microsoft Teams' Custom Announcement feature, enabling organizations to upload their own audio notification files.
This is commonly used to:
- Provide company‑specific compliance messages
- Align with internal policies or regional regulations
- Replace default Microsoft audio prompts
Custom announcements can be put in place of the Microsoft Teams default announcements, and are used to replace such default announcements.
If using Custom Announcements with Luware Recording, you must disable the MS Teams default announcements, otherwise you will hear both the default and custom announcement played over each other.
See how to disable the MS Teams default audio announcements here - Disable Microsoft Teams Default Audio Announcements - Luware Recording
Custom Announcement Audio File Specifications
To use the custom announcements, an audio file will need to be provided to Luware to apply to your environment to apply the announcement audio file.The audio file will need to be in a specific format in order for it to work as expected.
The Luware Recording Microsoft Teams Bot service is using the Graph Communications Bot Media SDK which supports 16 kHz Mono PCM Wave audio files as input.
Below, find the full specifications required:
| Parameter | Value Recommended |
|---|---|
| Codec | PCM16 |
| Bit rate | 256 kbps |
| Container | .wav or .wma |
| Frequency | 16 kHz |
Custom Banner Text
In addition to the default Microsoft Teams recording banner, administrators can configure their own custom banner text that participants see when compliance recording starts. This is useful for organisations that need to:
- Display a specific compliance message required by their regulator
- Reference an internal policy or privacy notice
- Provide region- or jurisdiction-specific wording on the recording banner
- Replace the generic Microsoft Teams banner text with company-branded language
Custom banner text is configured directly against the Teams Compliance Recording Policy in PowerShell and is independent of the Custom Audio Announcements feature — the two can be used together or separately.
How It Works
Custom banner text is stored as a separate object in the Microsoft Teams configuration, identified by a GUID. The GUID is then referenced from one or more compliance recording policies via the CustomBanner parameter. This means a single banner text entry can be reused across multiple policies, and updating the text in one place applies the change wherever it is referenced.
☝ Please Read Before You Start
Custom banner text replaces the default Microsoft-provided banner text for users assigned the policy. Confirm the wording with your compliance team before applying it — once published, the text is visible to every participant on every recorded call covered by the policy, including external and federated participants.
Configure Custom Banner Text
Follow the steps below to create custom banner text and attach it to a compliance recording policy.
Connect to the Microsoft Teams PowerShell module.
Connect-MicrosoftTeams
Create the custom banner text entry. Replace the description and text values with your own wording.
New-CsTeamsCustomBannerText -Description "Compliance Recording Banner" -Text "This call is being recorded for compliance purposes in line with company policy."
The cmdlet returns an Id (a GUID) for the new banner text entry. Make a note of this value — you will need it in the next step.
Attach the banner text to your compliance recording policy. Replace {Identity} with your policy identity and {BannerTextId} with the GUID from the previous step.
Set-CsTeamsComplianceRecordingPolicy -Identity {Identity} -CustomBanner {BannerTextId}
Verify the change.
Get-CsTeamsComplianceRecordingPolicy -Identity {Identity}
Confirm that the CustomBanner field now shows the GUID of the banner text entry you created.
Updating or Removing Custom Banner Text
To change the displayed text without changing the policy assignment, update the existing banner text entry rather than creating a new one:
Set-CsTeamsCustomBannerText -Id {BannerTextId} -Text "Updated compliance message."To remove custom banner text from a policy and revert to the Microsoft Teams default, clear the CustomBanner parameter:
Set-CsTeamsComplianceRecordingPolicy -Identity {Identity} -CustomBanner $null💡 Custom Banner Text vs Custom Audio Announcements
These two features address different parts of the recording notification experience and are often confused. Custom Banner Text customises the visual banner shown in the Microsoft Teams client and is configured by the customer via PowerShell. Custom Audio Announcements customise the audio notification played into the call and are configured by Luware using a customer-supplied audio file. For full coverage across both visual and audio notifications, configure both features on the same compliance recording policy.