Turn on multilingual Teams meeting invitations

Working with colleagues or customers who speak another language? Then you can show the join information in Teams invitations in two languages, for example Dutch and English, or English and French. In a country like Belgium, where meetings often cross language borders, it's a small setting with a big effect. An admin sets it up through the meeting policy with PowerShell. This article explains how it works, who it applies to and what to check if it doesn't seem to work.

What changes?

At the bottom of every Teams invitation there's a fixed block with the meeting link, meeting ID, passcode and any dial-in details. By default that block appears in the organizer's language. With the MeetingInviteLanguages setting you decide that this block appears in one fixed language or in up to two languages, regardless of the organizer's language.

Text the organizer types, such as an agenda or explanation, isn't translated. It stays in its original language. The setting belongs to the meeting policy and therefore applies to the meeting organizer: whoever sends the invitation determines through their policy which languages appear in it.

Install the Teams PowerShell module

This setting isn't in the Teams admin center, so you need PowerShell. Open PowerShell as an administrator and run:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser
Install-Module MicrosoftTeams
Update-Module MicrosoftTeams
Connect-MicrosoftTeams

Sign in with an account that has the Teams Administrator role. You don't need an Unrestricted execution policy; RemoteSigned is enough. More in install the Teams PowerShell module. New to this? Start with PowerShell for Microsoft 365 beginners, and then look at these handy PowerShell scripts to manage Teams.

Set it for the whole organization

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global -MeetingInviteLanguages "nl-NL,en-US"

Use language codes such as nl-NL, fr-FR, de-DE or en-US, separated by a comma without a space. You can choose up to two languages. If you specify just one code, you enforce one common language. Not every language is supported; Microsoft publishes the list of valid codes in the documentation for the cmdlet.

Note: Global is the organization-wide default policy. Users who have been assigned a custom meeting policy follow that policy, not Global. So apply the setting to those custom policies as well.

Set it for specific users or groups

Create a separate policy and assign it to a user:

New-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity "Invites EN-FR" -MeetingInviteLanguages "en-US,fr-FR"
Grant-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity "jan@contoso.com" -PolicyName "Invites EN-FR"

A new policy starts with default settings, not with a copy of Global. So check the other meeting settings too, such as recording, transcription and the lobby, and options like restricting downloads of meeting recordings. For a whole department it's better to assign the policy to a group, through the Teams admin center (Meetings > Meeting policies > Group policy assignment) or with New-CsGroupPolicyAssignment. A policy assigned directly to a user takes precedence over a group assignment.

Verify and reset

Get-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global | Select-Object MeetingInviteLanguages
Get-CsUserPolicyAssignment -Identity "jan@contoso.com" -PolicyType TeamsMeetingPolicy

The first line shows the languages in the policy, the second which meeting policy a user actually gets. To go back to the default behavior, clear the value again with -MeetingInviteLanguages $null.

Common problems

• Still one language. Policy changes can take a few hours. Test with a new invitation, not an existing one.
• Existing meetings don't change. The join information is added when you create the invitation. For recurring meetings you may want to create a new series.
• Works for one colleague but not another. That colleague probably has a different meeting policy. Check it with Get-CsUserPolicyAssignment.
• Error about the language code. Check the spelling, use the language-REGION format and no more than two codes.

Tips

Combine multilingual invitations with clear text of your own: add one sentence at the top in both languages stating the purpose of the meeting. If you want the Teams app itself in another language, read change the Teams language; that's separate from this setting. External participants without an account can simply join via the link. You can also change the logo and footer of invitations in the Teams admin center, under the settings for email invitations.

Nederlandstalige versie: Meertalige uitnodigingen voor Teams-vergaderingen activeren

Related articles