Security features are one of the pillars of Teams Premium. Today I will show you how to use sensitivity labels in Teams. You can create multiple labels, assign them to different scenarios and manage what is enabled and what’s not in a meeting. Together with Custom meeting templates it gives you control over meeting features available in Teams.
Introduction
A label is a tag that you can assign to a piece of information in Microsoft 365. It could be a document, an e-mail, a chat message, etc. Teams Premium allows you to assign a label to a meeting.
Each label has its own settings behind it and when applied to a meeting it enforces those settings. For example, when you apply the label Confidential to a Financial call, only organizers will be able to present content during the meeting, and so on.
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The label defines which feature is enabled during a meeting. It covers only a specific set of features.
Labels are configured in Purview (not in Teams Admin Center). It’s a service in Microsoft 365 that gives you tools to protect and govern your data.
Before you start
- The Teams Premium license is required. You can buy it or enable a 30-day trial license and test it. You can find the detailed instruction in my previous post – Overview of the Teams Premium features.
- Teams Admin role and Global Admin/Compliance Admin for Purview
Create a label
The first step is creating a label – a definition of what security features will be enforced when you assign the label to a meeting.
1. Navigate to the Purview compliance home page – https://compliance.microsoft.com/homepage, go to the Solutions section and open the Information protection page.
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2. Open the Labels section. There is a list with all existing labels (1) and a control panel where you can create a new label (2). To create a new label, click on + Create a label button
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3. Provide the required information (a name, a display name, and a description for users), choose a color, and click Next
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4. Select a scope for the label – check Items and Include meetings
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5. Choose protection settings. Select Protect Teams meetings and chats. Other settings are optional but add additional protection levels to meeting invitation e-mails (add a watermark and protect from forwarding).
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6. Now you can select settings for your label. Available options:
- Who can bypass the lobby
- Who can present
- Who can record
- End-to-end encryption
- Watermarks
- Chat options
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7. Auto-labeling for files and emails – this setting does not work for meetings. Click Next
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8. Skip Groups & sites and Schematized data assets (preview). There are no options related to meetings at this point.
9. Review all selected options and Create a label
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10. The last step is to publish a label. It requires creating a label policy and then publishing the policy. You can do it later but let’s do it now – select Publish label to users’ apps.
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Create a label policy
The second part is to create and publish a label policy.
1. Select a label that you want to use in your policy
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2. Select Next to start creating a policy
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3. Select users or groups who will be able to add labels to meetings. Keep in mind that those users required a Teams Premium license.
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4. Configure policy settings. Here you can specify if a user must provide a justification to remove a label. It could be helpful in more restrictive scenarios.
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5. Default labeling – you can specify if the label will be automatically applied to a meeting. None is the default setting.
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6. Enter a name for your policy
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7. Review your policy and click Submit. It can take up to 24 hours to publish the policy (usually it works within 2 hours).
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Use sensitivity labels in a meeting
A sensitivity label can be added to a meeting from the meeting setting page. When you create a new meeting go to the Settings page and select a label. All configured options will take effect immediately.
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Labels and meeting templates
- Navigate to Teams Admin Center, open the section Meetings, and click on Meeting templates. Now click + Add to add a new template. Sensitivity labels cannot be added to the existing template and you must create a new one.
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- Select the label. You can configure other settings in the template and publish it.
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Summary
Sensitivity labels add another level of security options available in Teams meetings. You can configure precisely what is possible during the meeting with the applied label. Adding a label to a meeting template combines options from both features and makes it easier to manage. Users can use only templates and do not think about 2 different options.
About the Author
Microsoft 365 consultant and architect. I create applications and solutions that improve and facilitate work using Power Platform, SharePoint, and Teams.
My adventure in IT began in 2005. Since then I have been creating and implementing business applications based on SharePoint and Office 365 platforms. I am a big fan of task and process automation (Power Automate) and Modern Workplace platforms (Microsoft Teams).
Reference
Siewnicki, M., 2023, How to configure sensitivity labels for Teams meetings, Available at: https://modernworkplace.site/how-to-configure-sensitivity-labels-for-teams-meetings/ [Accessed on 15 March 2023]