Both are entries on the Microsoft 365 roadmap, and Microsoft does not guarantee roadmap dates. Here is what has been announced, what has not, and what admins can check now.
Change one: simpler AI controls for meetings
Roadmap ID 577399 is titled "Microsoft Teams: Enhanced Copilot and AI controls for meetings." The description is short. It says organizers will control who can turn on and use AI in a meeting. IT admins get what Microsoft calls a simpler policy model for governing AI in meetings and in post-meeting experiences. Microsoft says the goal is more predictable administration and more room for compliance and governance needs.
Windows Report's summary is that admins will get one simpler place to configure AI policies instead of separate controls, and organizers will get more say over whether participants can use AI features.
Details from the roadmap archive:
- Roadmap ID: 577399
- Status: In development
- Release phase: General Availability, targeted for November 2026
- Platforms: Android, Desktop, iOS, Mac and Web
- Cloud: Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant)
- Published: October 22, 2026, with a minor update on October 23
What Microsoft has not said. The roadmap entry does not name the new policy settings. It doesn't describe an admin workflow, a staged rollout plan, or how current policy values will carry over. Anyone claiming to know the exact new toggle is guessing.
How Copilot meeting controls work today
Microsoft Learn's documentation on managing Copilot in Teams meetings explains why a simpler model would help. Today, admins set Copilot behavior in the Teams admin center under Meetings > Meeting policies, in the Recording & transcription section. The same setting is the -Copilot parameter on Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy in PowerShell.
| Admin center value | PowerShell value | Organizer's default | Can organizer change it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| On | Enabled | Only during the meeting | Yes |
| On with saved transcript required (default) | EnabledWithTranscript | During and after the meeting | No, it's enforced |
| On with transcript saved by default | EnabledWithTranscriptDefaultOn | During and after the meeting | Yes |
| Off | Disabled | Off | Yes |
The policy setting also interacts with others:
- "Only during the meeting" uses temporary speech-to-text data that isn't kept after the meeting ends. "During and after" depends on transcription, so the separate transcription policy (
-AllowTranscription) affects whether Copilot works at all. - Turning Copilot off for a meeting also turns off recording and transcription.
- Purview retention policies can keep Copilot prompts and responses in the Commercial cloud even when recording and transcription are off. Microsoft says this does not apply to GCC or DoD.
- Copilot doesn't work in end-to-end encrypted meetings, and Microsoft says it isn't currently available in GCC High.
- Licensing: users need an add-on Copilot license. In meetings with up to 1,000 attendees, licensed participants can send prompts that only they see. In events optimized for large audiences, only organizers, co-organizers and presenters can use Copilot.
So admins currently have four policy values, a transcription policy that changes how they behave, organizer settings per meeting, and retention rules that vary by cloud. A simpler model is easy to justify. Whether Microsoft's version actually turns out simpler, nobody can say until the settings are published.
In short: Microsoft has confirmed simpler AI governance and more organizer control over who can use AI, targeted for November. It hasn't published how any of it works.
Change two: default meeting templates in Teams Premium
The second item, roadmap ID 576609, is more concrete. Default meeting templates enable IT admins to automatically apply their organization's preferred meeting settings whenever users schedule a Teams meeting through Outlook or Teams calendar. Microsoft says it helps organizations apply meeting settings (including protection settings) at scale, and reduce the need for organizers to manually configure meeting options.
There is a licensing condition: only organizers with a Teams Premium (T-Pre) license assigned can use Default Meeting Templates. The license requirement applies to the organizer, not the admin. Some third-party summaries have described it as a requirement on admins, which is not what the roadmap says.
The roadmap archive shows the item was published Oct 20, 2026, is in development, and targets General Availability in November 2026 for the Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) cloud. Sources disagree on platforms. One roadmap tracker lists the Outlook entry as Platform: Web, while earlier WindowsForum coverage of the entry listed Desktop, Mac and Web. Expect that field to change.
How this differs from current templates
Teams already has templates, and the new feature is easy to confuse with them. According to Microsoft Learn, Microsoft Teams Premium includes the ability to create custom meeting templates. Each template option can be locked so the meeting organizer can't change it, or can be left unlocked for the meeting organizer to change if needed. Meeting options can also be hidden so meeting organizers don't see them.
The difference is that today's templates only apply if the organizer picks one. The roadmap describes defaults that apply automatically when a meeting is scheduled. If it ships as described, an organizer who never opens a template menu still gets the organization's chosen lobby, recording and protection settings.
The new defaults are also separate from Microsoft's built-in templates. Teams includes the following default meeting template: Controlled-content meeting. Teams Premium includes the following default meeting template: Virtual appointment. Education tenants also get Class, Lecture and Webinar. The roadmap uses the phrase "default meeting templates" for something different: settings applied automatically when meetings are scheduled.
What current templates can control
Microsoft Learn lists the options custom templates can control today: sensitivity labels, lobby bypass, end-to-end encryption, watermarks for screen sharing and video, sensitive-content detection, attendee mic and camera, recording, the Copilot setting, meeting chat, reactions, Q&A and Manage what attendees see. The default-template roadmap item doesn't say which of these it will support, so don't assume it covers all of them.
The Copilot setting is on that list, so the two roadmap items probably overlap. Admins may end up setting AI behavior through a meeting policy, a template, or both. How those layers will take priority under the new model hasn't been documented. One precedence rule is already documented: if a sensitivity label sets an option that a template also sets, the label wins.
In short: default templates are confirmed to apply automatically when meetings are scheduled from Outlook or the Teams calendar, and only for organizers with Teams Premium. Microsoft hasn't said which settings are supported, whether you can target different groups, or whether organizers can override the defaults.
Questions Microsoft hasn't answered
- Will the new AI policy replace the four-value
-Copilotsetting, sit on top of it, or move existing policies over automatically? - Will default templates be assigned through template policies by user or group, or set once for the whole tenant?
- What happens with meetings organized by people without Teams Premium? Based on the licensing note, they won't get the defaults, so you'll still need meeting policies as a baseline.
- Will government clouds get either feature? Both roadmap entries list only Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant).
What to check before November
Everything below uses features that exist today. It's preparation, not configuration of the new features.
- Check who has Teams Premium. Default templates only apply to licensed organizers. If the people running your sensitive meetings don't have Premium, the new feature won't cover those meetings.
- Export your current Copilot meeting policies. Run
Get-CsTeamsMeetingPolicyand record each policy'sCopilotandAllowTranscriptionvalues so you have a baseline if the model changes. - List your custom templates and template policies. In the Teams admin center, go to Meetings > Meeting template policies and see which templates each group can see. Clean up unused or duplicate templates before one of them becomes a default.
- Check sensitivity label conflicts. Labels override templates where they set the same option, so a default template could silently lose to a label.
- Tell your compliance team about retention. Copilot prompts can be retained in the Commercial cloud even without a transcript. They should know that before anyone describes the new controls as a privacy feature.
The takeaway
Both items move meeting settings from individual organizers to IT. Many organizers never open Meeting options, so defaults that apply automatically are more reliable than training people to do it. Simpler AI policy is welcome too, given how many settings currently affect Copilot. Two caveats: default templates only help in meetings run by Teams Premium organizers, and the AI governance item has no published details yet. Do the audit now and wait for Microsoft's documentation before planning around either feature.