After Microsoft introduced virtual backgrounds for MS Teams meetings, I saw some interesting background images in meetings. Nevertheless, I do not think it is necessary to prohibit the free selection of backgrounds. Since this is handled differently by different companies, I describe the configuration options here. The meeting policy can be used to restrict the background selection.

Configuration options

The option “VideoFiltersMode” can currently only be set via PowerShell, not via the Teams Admin Center. The following configuration options exist:

Option nameBackground blurDefault backgroundsCustom backgrounds
NoFilters❌ No❌ No❌ No
BlurOnly✅ Yes❌ No❌ No
BlurandDefaultBackgrounds✅ Yes✅ Yes❌ No
AllFilters (default)✅ Yes✅ Yes✅ Yes

By default, the AllFilters option is enabled for all users. If needed, several Teams meeting policies can be used to allow different background options for different users.

Prerequisites

  • Administrator rights for Teams in the tenant
  • Microsoft Teams PowerShell module (TL;DR Install-Module MicrosoftTeams)
  • Optional: if the current Teams PowerShell module version is not installed, you may also need the Skype for Business Online PowerShell module

Connect to Microsoft Teams PowerShell Online

First, we must connect to the Microsoft Teams service via PowerShell:

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Connect-MicrosoftTeams
$session=New-CsOnlineSession
Import-PSSession $session

Retrieve the policies

To check which meeting policies are currently configured, run the following command:

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Get-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy | ft Identity,Description,VideoFiltersMode

Because no new policies were defined in my case, we will adjust the default policy “Global”.

Adjust the policy

If you want to adjust a different policy instead of “Global”, you must change the -Identity parameter.

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Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global -VideoFiltersMode BlurandDefaultBackgrounds

Bonus tip: Teams PowerShell for Delegated Access Permission (DAP)

As a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner, this configuration can also be performed via the delegated permission “Administer On Behalf Of (AOBO)”. To do this, the name of the customer tenant must be provided when connecting to the online services. Then you can sign in with the authorized user account from the Microsoft partner tenant. Of course, the placeholder <TenantName> must be replaced by the correct name of the customer tenant.

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Connect-MicrosoftTeams -TenantId <TenantName>.onmicrosoft.com
$session=New-CsOnlineSession -OverrideAdminDomain <TenantName>.onmicrosoft.com
Import-PSSession $session

Further Reading