Teams Call Queues: automatic recording and transcription for quality assurance and coaching

Teams Call Queues are the telephony backbone of many organisations. A customer service team handling inbound queries, a reception distributing calls to available staff, an IT helpdesk taking incident reports: in all these scenarios, the call queue is where calls arrive and are routed to the right agent. Until now, an agent or administrator had to manually start a recording whenever a conversation needed to be captured. That changes in August 2026.

Microsoft is adding automatic recording and transcription to Teams Call Queues. An administrator configures it once per queue, and from that point every call answered by an agent is automatically recorded and transcribed, without the agent or caller needing to do anything. For quality assurance, coaching, and dispute resolution, this is a fundamental improvement to how Teams Phone environments work.

What does automatic recording do, exactly?

The feature has been deliberately kept simple. The moment an agent answers a call from a queue on which automatic recording is enabled, the recording starts immediately. The agent does not need to activate anything. The caller receives a notification that the call is being recorded, in line with Teams' standard recording behaviour.

Alongside the recording, a transcription is created. The transcription follows the structure of the conversation and identifies the contributions of the agent and caller as separate speakers. This is valuable when analysing conversations: you can search directly for what the customer said, or when a specific commitment was made, without having to listen to the full audio fragment. Automatic transcription makes conversations searchable and reduces the time supervisors spend on spot-check reviews.

How does an administrator enable the feature?

Configuration is per call queue. This is a deliberate design choice: not all queues within an organisation need to follow the same recording strategy. A technical helpdesk, a customer service team, and a sales department can each have their own settings based on their objectives and the applicable regulations.

In the Teams admin centre, navigate to the settings of a specific call queue. There, you enable the recording and transcription options separately. They can be switched on independently: recording only, transcription only, or both simultaneously. For organisations that manage settings through scripting or need bulk changes, the same configuration is available via PowerShell.

The feature is off by default. There is no risk that existing call queues will unexpectedly start recording after the feature rolls out in August 2026. Every administrator makes a deliberate choice about which queues to enable.

Storage in SharePoint and access via the Queues app

Recordings are automatically stored in SharePoint, consistent with how Teams Meeting recordings are already handled. Administrators can view the recording history per queue via the Queues app in Teams. The Queues app displays the transcription alongside the recording, so supervisors can quickly navigate to specific parts of a conversation.

A dedicated setting determines whether agents themselves have access to recordings and transcripts in the Queues app. This is relevant for callback scenarios where multiple agents interact with the same customer. If agent A handled the first call and agent B takes the callback, agent B can view the transcript of the previous conversation if the administrator has enabled that access. This gives the agent immediate context without asking the customer to repeat the situation.

Retention periods for recordings are managed through Microsoft Purview retention policy. This is not a new technique, but an additional content type that falls under existing retention rules. Organisations that already have retention policy for Teams Meeting recordings can extend that same policy or create a separate policy for call queue recordings.

Consent and legal obligations

Automatic recording is not automatically permitted, even when Microsoft makes it technically possible. The rules around consent for call recording vary by country, sector, and type of call. In most European countries, an information obligation applies: callers must be notified that a call is being recorded. In some situations explicit consent is required; in others, a notification is sufficient.

Under the GDPR, call recording falls under the processing of personal data. That means a legal basis for the processing is required, along with a defined purpose, a retention period, and the right for employees and callers to request which data about them has been captured. Microsoft processes recordings within the organisation's Microsoft 365 tenant; they are not used as training data for external models.

The recommendation is to have the legal framework reviewed by a privacy adviser or legal team before activation. Also check the greeting or on-hold message of the call queue: if the queue will automatically record calls, the caller must be informed before the agent picks up. This is a configuration change in the auto-attendant settings or the call queue greeting itself.

Automatic recording in call queues is not the same as a certified compliance recording as required in regulated sectors such as financial services or legal. Separate technical and contractual requirements apply to those. Consult your compliance officer about which type of recording applies in your sector.

Teams Premium: who needs which licence?

Automatic recording in call queues requires Teams Premium for the users involved. For organisations already on Microsoft 365 E5, Teams Premium is included; they can activate the feature without additional licence costs. For organisations on Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Business Premium, or E3, Teams Premium is a separate add-on assigned per user.

The licence model is targeted: only agents who actually answer calls from an enabled queue need a Teams Premium licence. Supervisors who exclusively listen to recordings via the Queues app without answering calls themselves fall outside the licence requirement when using a separate administrator account. This makes it possible to limit licence costs to the users for whom the feature directly adds value.

Four actions before August 2026

First: inventory which call queues are in use and for which ones quality assurance or coaching is the highest priority. Start with the queues that handle the most customer conversations or where quality variation is greatest.

Second: verify licences. How many agents fall under the queues you want to enable? Are they already licensed for Teams Premium, or is the add-on needed? Do this before the rollout to avoid delays.

Third: configure retention policy in Microsoft Purview. Decide how long recordings are retained, when they are deleted, and who has access. Document this as a policy so that it is reproducible and auditable. This is also a GDPR requirement that must be in place before activation.

Fourth: update the notification message for callers. If a queue will automatically record calls, the greeting or on-hold message must state this before the agent picks up. Set this in the auto-attendant or the greeting settings of the call queue.

The rollout starts in August 2026 and will become available worldwide during that month. Organisations that prepare now can activate the feature as soon as it becomes available without outstanding compliance or licensing issues to resolve. Want support configuring Teams Call Queues with automatic recording, drafting a retention policy, or reviewing your Teams Phone environment for compliance? Zarioh helps organisations with the complete setup of Microsoft Teams telephony. Get in touch for a practical conversation.