Microsoft Teams is rapidly emerging as the go-to solution not just for internal team communication and collaboration, but also external conversations. With the rise of more solutions like Operator Connect and Direct Routing to bring CCaaS and UCaaS functionality into Teams, the service is becoming a central hub for business operations.
However, to ensure a successful implementation of Microsoft Teams for business communications, companies investing in the future of work need to ensure they’re following the right compliance standards. This means understanding how information is stored and managed in Teams.
Microsoft Teams allows companies to record meetings and conversations both through the native recording feature and the “Compliance call recording” functions offered by partners.
So, where are these conversations stored?
Finding Microsoft Teams Call Recordings
When you record a Teams meeting in Microsoft Teams using the “record” function enabled by your administrator, the service will automatically capture video, audio, and screen sharing activities. You can also set recordings with “automatic transcriptions” so, users can review important information and search for keywords quickly.
The recording happens within the cloud, which means it’s automatically saved to your Microsoft OneDrive for Business accounts, and Microsoft SharePoint Online applications. By default, every recording is uploaded to the two primary Microsoft cloud environments, and permissioned to the people who were invited in the meeting.
You should be able to find a link to the recording within the chat to the meeting once its been upload, and it will also be displayed within the Recordings and Transcripts tab added to the meeting in your Teams calendar. Microsoft even automatically adds your meeting to various file lists across Microsoft 365, such as “Recommended”, Recent, “Shared with Me”, and so on.
If you’re organization is still using Microsoft Stream in place of OneDrive and SharePoint, you can go into your Stream service and select the “My Content” tab to play the recording.
Managing Meeting Recording Storage and Permissions
Users in Microsoft Teams have the ability to adjust the recording storage and permissions features associated with their meetings. Typically, Teams meeting recordings are automatically uploaded to SharePoint from channels, and OneDrive from an in-chat meeting.
Notably, only meeting organisers and those within the same Teams organisation will gain automatic access to the recording. They’re also the only users who can start and stop a meeting, while guests and external users can simply attend a meeting.
You can set policies for whether channel meeting recordings can be downloaded. If an admin “blocks” downloads, channel owners will have full access to the recordings in their SharePoint or OneDrive folder, while channel members will receive “read” access online.
All meetings come with “expiration” dates. This allows businesses to establish how long a meeting is preserved before its removed from the Teams interface. To check the expiration date on a recording, you can visit the recording in SharePoint or OneDrive, and click on “details” section. Opening the drop-down menu given next to the expiration date allows users to set a specific expiration date, or turn expiration off entirely.
If you record a meeting with a transcription, then the file will automatically be linked to the Teams Meeting, along with closed captions. In most cases, the link to the closed captions functionality will remain for the full life of the file, but it can be broken if a file is copied within the same OneDrive or SharePoint account.
