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Video Conferencing

Microsoft Teams

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Microsoft Corporation · www.microsoft.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Accessibility Advocate

Weighted verdict

Judges the product by whether a deaf colleague and a screen-reader user can run the meeting, not merely attend it. Wants live captions, keyboard operation, a published conformance report, and dial-in for people with no usable connection. Treats an accessibility page with no report as a marketing page.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Accessibility Advocate

The meeting itself

How this is scored

Whether the call works: participant capacity, video and audio quality under load, screen sharing, breakout rooms, moderation, and what happens on a bad connection.

0 — Small meetings only, no screen sharing worth the name, no moderation controls, and the call degrades without telling anyone.

3 — Standard meetings with screen sharing and mute-all, but low participant limits, no breakout rooms and no bandwidth adaptation stated.

5 — Meetings at the scale most teams need with screen sharing, breakout rooms, host moderation, and documented behaviour on constrained connections.

8 — Large meetings and webinars with published capacity limits, per-participant moderation and waiting rooms, layout control, simulcast or adaptive bitrate stated, and reliable behaviour on mobile networks.

10 — Scale and control are engineering claims the vendor stands behind: capacity published per plan and per region, selective forwarding with adaptive quality documented, live streaming, hardware-room support, and diagnostics an admin can read after a bad call.

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The Accessibility Advocate

Published capacity of 300 participants, 30-hour meetings, hardware-room support through certified Yealink, Crestron, Lenovo, Polycom and AudioCodes partners, and Teams admin center management give a real meeting platform. But we found no public information on screen sharing, breakout rooms, moderation controls, or what happens on a constrained connection, so the core mechanics of an ordinary call rest on inference. 1 2 6 7

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Encryption & meeting access

How this is scored

What is actually encrypted and against whom, plus who can get into a meeting. Judged on documented mechanism rather than on the word "encrypted".

0 — Transport encryption only, undocumented; meetings joinable by anyone with a link and no lobby.

3 — TLS in transit and encryption at rest, with the vendor holding all keys; access control is a passcode.

5 — The above plus a lobby or waiting room, host-controlled admission, per-meeting passcodes, and a clear statement that the vendor can technically access media.

8 — Optional end-to-end encryption for meetings with the trade-offs named (which features stop working), documented key handling, SSO-gated joining, and per-meeting access policies.

10 — End-to-end encryption available without surrendering the product — its cryptography documented or open source, key management explained, identity verification for participants, and the vendor stating plainly what it can and cannot see.

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The Accessibility Advocate

Encryption appears as a single feature line — data encryption for meetings, chats, calls and files — and we found no public information on the mechanism, key handling, or what the vendor can technically see. Microsoft Entra ID identity management comes with all plans, but we found no public information on lobbies, per-meeting passcodes, or host-controlled admission. 2 2

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Reach & accessibility

How this is scored

Whether everyone who needs to join can: browser without an install, dial-in, low bandwidth, guests without accounts, captions and keyboard operation.

0 — A desktop client is the only way in; guests must create an account.

3 — Browser joining exists but is degraded, guests can join by link, and there is no dial-in and no accessibility statement.

5 — Full-feature browser joining without an install, guest access by link, mobile apps, and a stated accessibility posture.

8 — Telephone dial-in with numbers listed, live captions, keyboard-navigable and screen-reader-tested interface, and documented low-bandwidth behaviour.

10 — Reach is designed for: browser parity with the client, dial-in across the regions the customer operates in, live captions and translation, a published accessibility conformance report, and a usable experience on a poor mobile connection.

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The Accessibility Advocate

Live captions in over 30 languages (English only on Essentials), translation into up to 41 languages with a Teams Premium license, and a global dial-in number as a free audio-conferencing add-on mean my deaf colleague and the colleague with no usable data connection both have a way in. But we found no public information on a published accessibility conformance report, keyboard operation, or screen-reader testing — captions without a conformance report tell me the deaf colleague can attend, not that the screen-reader user can run the meeting. 2 2 7

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Recordings, retention & admin control

How this is scored

A recording is personal data about everyone in the room. Who may record, who is told, where it is stored, how long it lives, and what the works council can switch off.

0 — Anyone can record, storage location unstated, no retention rule, no admin policy.

3 — Host-only recording with a notification, but storage region unstated, retention manual, and no organisation-wide policy control.

5 — Admin policy over who may record, participant notification and consent prompt, stated storage region, and manual deletion that works.

8 — Automatic retention and deletion per policy, recordings encrypted at rest with access logged, transcription handled with its own retention rule, and attendance or analytics features that can be switched off for co-determination.

10 — Built for a works agreement: every recording, transcript and analytics feature independently switchable and documented, retention executed and evidenced, an audit trail of who accessed which recording, and no participant-level behavioural scoring at all.

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The Accessibility Advocate

The governance facts I can find are deletion of all data when the subscription is cancelled and admin-center management of video calling; we found no public information on who may record, participant notification, storage region, retention rules, or access logs. For a works council the sharper problem is the privacy statement: customer data may be used to develop and train Microsoft's AI models, with no documented switch for meeting recordings or transcripts. 3 2 6

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Integrations & deployment

How this is scored

Calendar, identity and the wider stack — plus, in this category, whether the product can be run on the customer's own infrastructure at all.

0 — No calendar integration, no SSO, no API; cloud-only with no alternative.

3 — One calendar integration and basic SSO, no API worth building on, cloud-only.

5 — Calendar integration for the major suites, SAML or OIDC SSO, a documented API for scheduling, and room-system support.

8 — The above plus SCIM provisioning, embedding via SDK, webhooks for meeting events, and either a self-hosted option or a documented private-cloud deployment.

10 — Deployment is the customer's choice: a genuine on-premises or private-cloud option with the same features, open protocols or open source, embeddable SDKs, and identity integration that does not require the vendor's directory.

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The Accessibility Advocate

A genuinely documented developer surface — Microsoft Graph REST APIs, SDKs, Teams bots, PowerShell provisioning, change notifications via Azure Event Hubs — plus certified room systems and PSTN options including Operator Connect and Direct Routing. We found no public information on calendar integration for other suites, SCIM provisioning, embedded meeting SDKs, or any self-hosted and on-premises deployment. 7 8

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where media and metadata are processed, who the contracting entity is, which subprocessors carry the traffic. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as this buyer weighs it — which in this category is heavily.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, media routed through unstated regions, subprocessors unnamed.

3 — EU data residency for storage while media relays or metadata remain non-EU, or the contracting entity sits outside the EU.

5 — EU hosting and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — relays, analytics, support tooling, transcription — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — Media and metadata processed in the EU on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, complete subprocessor list published, any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: media never leaves the EU, every subprocessor European, certification published, and an on-premises option that removes the question entirely.

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The Accessibility Advocate

Microsoft is a US vendor headquartered in Redmond, and the privacy statement says personal data may be stored and processed in your region, in the United States, and in any other jurisdiction where Microsoft, its affiliates or its service providers operate — so media and metadata routing is left open, and subprocessors appear only as unnamed classes. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework certification and a Microsoft Ireland contact entity are the only European touchpoints in the captured pages. 3

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the annual invoice for their host count — including the capacity, dial-in and recording storage they actually need — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A per-host headline exists, but participant caps, dial-in minutes or recording storage are unpriced or unmentioned.

5 — Per-host prices public with billing period stated and capacity limits given, but at least one commonly needed piece (webinar capacity, dial-in, storage) sits in an unpriced add-on.

8 — Every tier and add-on priced publicly with per-host maths, capacity limits, dial-in rates, storage allowances, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator producing the annual invoice for a given host count, meeting size and recording volume, including overage and per-region dial-in.

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The Accessibility Advocate

Per-user prices are public with billing period, auto-renewal and VAT treatment stated — Teams Essentials at 3,50 €, Business Basic at 6,07 €, Teams Premium as an add-on at 8,70 € per user per month — alongside capacity of 300, storage limits, included dial-in minutes and a 7-day refund window. The gaps: pay-per-minute dial-out runs through a Communications Credits prepaid wallet and an international calling add-on with no published rates, and webinar capacity is not stated. 2 2 7

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (8)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Product page www.microsoft.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +2 earlier captures: 28 Sep 2026, 31 Aug 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing www.microsoft.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +3 earlier captures: 16 Sep 2026, 11 Sep 2026, 31 Aug 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy statement privacy.microsoft.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 31 Aug 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Security / trust page www.microsoft.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  5. 5 The meeting itself — found from sitemap www.microsoft.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 The meeting itself — found from sitemap www.microsoft.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Reach & accessibility — found from sitemap www.microsoft.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Integrations & deployment — found from sitemap developer.microsoft.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →