Upcoming Update: Microsoft Teams is rolling out screen capture blocking features in 2025 that turn meeting windows black whenever recording attempts are detected.
Purpose: Learn how to record Microsoft Teams meetings when screen capture is blocked, from built-in methods to bot-based solutions for businesses.
Key Focus: Compares Teams’ built-in recording with meeting bots and APIs that bypass Microsoft’s upcoming screen capture restrictions and Enhanced Meeting Protection features.
What You’ll Learn:
Who It’s For: Individual users needing reliable recording options or developers/builders creating meeting solutions for business needs.
Takeaway: Discover why meeting bots are becoming the most reliable long-term solution for secure and scalable recordings on Teams.
If you’re relying on desktop recording tools like Loom or Camtasia to capture Teams meetings, these tools will soon stop working when meeting organizers enable Enhanced Meeting Protection.
We’ll walk through five approaches to capturing Teams meeting data even when screen recording is blocked: From Teams’ built-in recording to API-based meeting bots that bypass these limitations entirely. Let’s start with the easiest answer, then show you the most reliable long-term solutions.
For immediate recording needs, Microsoft Teams’ built-in functionality does the job. Here’s the 30-second walkthrough:
Before you start recording:
Recording your meeting:
Accessing your recording
Recordings are automatically saved to the meeting organizer’s OneDrive for Business (non-channel meetings) or SharePoint (channel meetings) in a “Recordings” folder.
If you’re looking for a programmatic way to get meeting data for business use cases, then you might run into a few challenges.
Manual overhead: You have to remember to hit record for every meeting, then manually download files and process them for more granular business use cases. If you’re running fifteen meetings per week, that simple recording task becomes a major operational burden.
Storage bottlenecks: If organizers don’t have OneDrive accounts or storage quota is full, recordings fail to upload and get temporarily saved to async media storage for only 21 days. This creates compliance and data retention issues for business use.
No calendar automation: Like Google Meet, Teams doesn’t provide straightforward calendar sync capabilities to Microsoft Outlook. Despite sitting within the Microsoft ecosystem, users can’t automate recordings based on calendar events with built-in Teams functionality.
AI limitations: Teams’ built-in AI companions (Copilot and Facilitator) have restrictions that limit custom business applications. AI-generated notes can’t access call transcripts in some cases, can’t be customized for industry-specific workflows, and lack the conversational nuance that other AI models might be trained on. Action items aren’t automatically integrated into existing task management systems, so its benefits are still disconnected from the rest of your tech stack.
When Teams’ built-in recording isn’t enough, here are your options for capturing meeting data at scale.
How it works: Apps like Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, and Grain automatically join your Teams meetings as AI assistants, record conversations, and generate transcripts with speaker identification.
Best for: Individual users and teams who want automatic meeting notes without technical setup. Works without requiring Teams Premium licenses.
Limitations: Standalone tools offer limited APIs for custom integrations. Most don’t provide robust calendar sync capabilities, making it difficult to sync data with business systems that don’t have pre-built integrations.
How it works: REST API that lets you programmatically fetch completed meeting recordings and transcripts. Requires paid Microsoft 365 plans and host-initiated recording.
Best for: Organizations with existing Teams Enterprise accounts who want to archive recordings in their own systems.
Limitations:
How it works: Allows bots created through the Bot Framework SDK to retrieve live audio and video content frame-by-frame during Teams calls and meetings, with raw access to media streams for real-time processing.
Best for: Building application-hosted media bots that need real-time audio/video processing during live calls for interactive voice response (IVR) systems or live speech recognition.
Limitations:
How it works: Single API endpoint that deploys meeting bots across Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet. Send a meeting URL, get back recordings, transcripts, and structured data through webhooks.
Best for: Product builders who want automated Teams recording with Microsoft Calendar integration without building and maintaining bot infrastructure.
Limitations: Meeting participants will see meeting bots join, which may not work for scenarios requiring invisible recording. Nylas is designed to meet regulatory requirements for organizations needing clear documentation of recording consent.
We’ll walk through how to use Nylas to automatically deploy a meeting bot from your business application to a Microsoft Teams meeting.
Before you start, make sure you have:
Development environment setup
# Install the Nylas SDK
npm install nylas
# Set environment variables
export NYLAS_API_KEY="your_api_key_here"
export NYLAS_GRANT_ID="your_grant_id_here"
Import packages and initialize Nylas SDK
import Nylas from 'nylas';
// Initialize the Nylas client
const nylas = new Nylas({
apiKey: process.env.NYLAS_API_KEY,
});
const grantId = process.env.NYLAS_GRANT_ID;
If you don’t already have a Grant ID, you’ll need to authenticate a user through Nylas’s OAuth flow to connect their Microsoft Calendar.
Obtain Grant ID
// For existing authenticated users, the Grant ID is available
// For new users, implement OAuth flow to get Grant ID
const userGrantId = "41009df5-bf11-4c97-aa18-b285b5f2e386"; // Example Grant ID
Deploy a meeting bot
// Create a notetaker for a specific Teams meeting
async function createMeetingRecorder(meetingLink, meetingTitle) {
try {
const notetaker = await nylas.notetakers.create({
identifier: grantId,
requestBody: {
meetingLink: meetingLink, // e.g., "https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/..."
name: `Meeting Recorder - ${meetingTitle}`,
settings: {
speakerLabels: true, // Enable speaker identification
audioRecording: true, // Record audio
videoRecording: false, // Audio-only for efficiency
transcription: true // Generate transcripts
}
}
});
console.log(`Notetaker created with ID: ${notetaker.data.id}`);
return notetaker.data.id;
} catch (error) {
console.error('Error creating notetaker:', error);
}
}
// Example usage
const meetingId = await createMeetingRecorder(
"https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_...",
"Weekly Executive Sync"
);
OR use Microsoft Calendar integration to automatically monitor your Outlook calendar and deploy Notetakers based on rules you configure:
Deploy a meeting bot with Microsoft calendar integration
// Set up automatic Notetaker deployment for Microsoft Calendar meetings
async function setupCalendarSync() {
try {
const calendarSync = await nylas.notetakers.calendarSync.create({
identifier: grantId,
requestBody: {
// Monitor the primary Microsoft Calendar
calendarId: "primary",
// Define rules for when to automatically deploy Notetakers
rules: {
// Only join meetings with 3-10 participants (avoids large all-hands)
participantCount: {
min: 3,
max: 10
},
// Only join meetings that have Teams conferencing links
requireConferencing: true
},
// Configuration for all auto-deployed Notetakers
settings: {
speakerLabels: true, // Identify who said what
audioRecording: true, // Record audio
videoRecording: false, // Audio-only to save storage
transcription: true // Generate transcripts
}
}
});
console.log('Microsoft Calendar Sync configured:', calendarSync.data.id);
return calendarSync.data.id;
} catch (error) {
console.error('Error setting up Calendar Sync:', error);
}
}
Download the media files
// Webhook notifications (recommended for real-time processing)
app.post('/webhooks/notetaker', async (req, res) => {
const webhookData = req.body;
// Check for media availability notification
if (webhookData.type === 'notetaker.media' &&
webhookData.data.object.state === 'available') {
const notetakerId = webhookData.data.object.id;
const mediaUrls = webhookData.data.object.media;
console.log('Recording available:', mediaUrls.recording);
console.log('Transcript available:', mediaUrls.transcript);
// Download and process the files
await processRecordingAndTranscript(mediaUrls.recording, mediaUrls.transcript);
}
res.status(200).send('Webhook received');
});
async function processRecordingAndTranscript(recordingUrl, transcriptUrl) {
try {
// Your custom processing logic here
// Integrate with your CRM, compliance systems, or AI models
} catch (error) {
console.error('Error processing meeting data:', error);
}
}
With automated Teams recording and Outlook integration set up, you can build meeting intelligence for different types of apps.
If you’re an individual user looking for personal note-taking, Teams’ built-in recorder works fine. If you want to scale those recordings but aren’t particular about integration flexibility with existing systems, then you can consider external AI notetakers.
But if you’re building meeting recording capabilities into a SaaS application, internal tools, or compliance system, you have two strategic options:
Custom builds with Microsoft APIs: Use the Microsoft Graph API and Real-time Media Platform if you’re committed to a Teams-only experience and have dedicated Windows/.NET developers. Expect significant upfront development, ongoing maintenance, and metered API costs.
Ship fast with Nylas: Choose Nylas Notetaker when you want to add Teams recording, Microsoft Calendar integration, and cross-platform coverage (Teams + Zoom + Google Meet) to your product without building bot infrastructure. You get enterprise compliance built-in and transparent pricing as you scale.