Learning how to create an effective Microsoft Teams retention policy is important for modern companies. Many organizations in today’s world are subject to strict guidelines for how they should store or manage data. Without a strong retention policy, you risk a host of legal complications.
Not to mention, storing data without a strategy can quickly lead to clutter and complexity in your data landscape. If your business is legally required to retain copies of digital communications, this means you need to be able to collect and store meeting data from Teams too.
Fortunately, Microsoft Teams does offer admin settings that allow companies to control how they record and store online meetings.
The question is, how do you create your own Microsoft Teams retention policy?
What is a Microsoft Teams Retention Policy?
The first step in creating a Microsoft Teams retention policy is understanding how data retention works on the MS Teams platform. Microsoft Teams offers users access to configurable retention policies which allow you to define how to retain, delete, and manage content.
The policies available with Microsoft Teams are relatively flexible. You can choose between “adaptive” or “static” policies for your chat, meeting, and file data.
Adaptive policies dynamically adapt to the changes that occur in an organization. For instance, an adaptive approach might be applied to the users in a specific department. When a new user joins the department, the policy will automatically apply to them.
Static policies are unchanging but can be updated by the business over time.
What is the Default Retention Policy for Microsoft Teams Meetings?
If your company uses Microsoft’s inbuilt recording capabilities for meetings (rather than an external recording tool), you’ll be subject to default retention policies.
Teams allows you to capture audio, video, and screen-sharing activity. The recording is then saved to OneDrive or SharePoint, depending on your “Live event recording policies” settings. Typically, private meetings are saved to OneDrive, and channel meetings are saved to SharePoint.
Recorded meetings on Teams are subject to Microsoft Purview compliance features (which we’ll cover in a moment). Plus, they’re indexed by Microsoft 365 search. You can also save meetings with automatic transcriptions, closed captions, and chat links.
By default, meetings recorded in Microsoft Teams expire after 120 days. However, users can set their own meeting retention policies. This allows you to set meetings to automatically expire at a specific time, or keep recordings for months. You can also use PowerShell to store recordings forever.
Why Use a Retention Policy for Microsoft Teams
Ultimately, the golden rule of data retention, governed by most data privacy regulations, is that companies should only store data for as long as it’s needed. Unfortunately, the definition of “necessary” can vary for each company and jurisdiction.
Keep your meeting files for too long, and you risk facing compliance issues. Plus, you’ll end up with more data you need to keep track of in your ecosystem. Don’t keep your data for long enough, and you risk not being able to comply with audit requests, or access crucial data.
Creating your own Microsoft Teams retention policy allows you to:
- Improve data hygiene: The more data you collect, the harder it is to analyze, audit and maintain. It’s important to keep on top of your data, and store only the information you need, to avoid overwhelming your database.
- Compliance: Retaining data correctly is crucial for compliance with local, federal, state, and international rules. A custom Microsoft Teams retention policy will allow you to adapt how you store data, according to the rules that govern your business.
- Insights: Collecting recordings from Microsoft Teams can be an excellent way to draw additional insights from your conversations. Meetings can be shared with other team members, and used to find crucial information.
How to Create a Microsoft Teams Retention Policy
There are two primary ways to adjust how data is captured and stored from Microsoft Teams meetings. The global admin for a Microsoft Teams instance has full permissions for creating retention policies. These policies govern shared channels, chats, messages, and call data records.
However, it’s worth remembering that retention policies in Teams don’t cover everything. They won’t support recorded voice memos, thumbnails, reactions, and code snippets. This is one of the reasons many companies choose to use compliance recording apps for Teams.
Admin users on Teams can also set recording policies using the Microsoft Teams admin center, or PowerShell. These policies allow companies to determine which meetings can be recorded, as well as how long recordings should be stored.
Setting Up Recording Policies in Teams
Adjusting recording settings in Microsoft Teams is one of the easiest ways to start developing your Microsoft Teams retention policy. Just log into your Microsoft 365 admin account, and open the Microsoft Teams Admin Center. Then scroll to “Recording and Transcription Settings”.
Here you can choose to adjust 5 core settings:
- Transcription: This is a simple toggle switch users can access to turn meeting transcription on or off. You can also choose to include transcriptions in recordings.
- Cloud recording: Enabled by default, this setting gives meeting organizers the option to record meetings, and save them within the cloud.
- Meeting Expiry: Here, you can choose whether to set meetings to automatically expire after a specific time. When meetings expire, they’re moved to the recycling bin. Usually, the recording will be deleted within 1 day.
- Default expiration time: You can change the default expiration time for recordings from 120 days, to as many days as you like between 1 and 99999.
- Meeting storage: Users can also allow meeting recordings to be stored in virtually any region outside of their own country. By default, this setting is switched off.
Notably, setting meetings to automatically expire won’t guarantee the meeting won’t be deleted before the expiration date. Users can still choose to delete recordings manually before they expire. The best way to address this problem is to create an official retention policy within Purview.
Creating a Microsoft Teams Retention Policy in Purview
File retention policies set in Microsoft Purview take precedence over file deletion. This means if you have an expiry setting on your Microsoft meetings, but a Purview retention policy contradicts it, Microsoft will adhere to your retention policy first.
To create a retention policy, open the Microsoft Purview console, and click on the Data Lifecycle Management container. Select “Microsoft 365”.
This will prompt Microsoft to open the “Create Retention Policy wizard”.
Purview will ask you to provide a name and description for your retention policy. These details can be helpful if you plan on creating various different policies in the future.
During the initial set-up stage, you may also be able to “Assign admin units”. This is a configuration feature currently in preview for Microsoft users. If your company uses administrative units in Azure Active Directory, you can automatically apply policies to specific users.
If you don’t want to apply retention policies to specific users, just click on “Full directory”.
Creating an Adaptive or Static Policy
When you click the “Next” button, you’ll be asked if you want to create a static, or adaptive retention policy. If you choose “Adaptive”, you’ll need to add one or more “adaptive scopes” for your policy, as well as locations where you want your policies to apply.
For instance, you could add the scope type of “User”, to create policies that apply to specific users using Microsoft Teams.
If you select “Static”, you’ll just choose the locations where you want the policy to apply. By default, Microsoft will retain channel messages, team chats, and private channel messages from all teams and users. However, you can choose and exclude specific options too.
Configuring Retain or Delete Policies
Next, you’ll be moved to the “retain content, delete it, or both” page. Here, you can specify how you want to retain and delete content. There’s the option to create a retention policy that just holds content for a specific period of time, or specifically deletes content after a certain time.
You can find guidance on how to manage your retention policies for Teams here. Once you’re done, save your configuration and close the window.
Creating Retention Labels
With meetings, you’ll also need to ensure you have retention policies established for SharePoint and OneDrive, where recordings are stored. This means adding retention labels to your document libraries and other content.
You can do this by heading to the Microsoft Purview Compliance portal, clicking on “Solutions > Data > Lifecycle management” then selecting Microsoft 365, followed by Labels. Follow the prompts to create a label, and decide whether you want to automatically apply it to SharePoint or OneDrive.
Issues with Microsoft Teams Retention Policies
Microsoft Teams has some useful features in place for recording and storing meeting content. However, it also has some limitations. There are more controls in place for storing chat data than meeting content, for instance. Additionally, retention policies don’t always apply to guest users.
What’s more, if you’re using Microsoft Teams for more than just chats and channel messages, you’ll need to set up additional policies. You might need to create a retention policy for your Viva platforms, as well as the Microsoft 365 mailboxes and sites.
Notably, when you create and submit a retention policy for Teams, it can also take up to 7 days for the policy to apply to your team. You can check the status of your retention policy by selecting it on the “Retention Policies” page within Microsoft Purview.
Can You Improve Microsoft Teams Compliance?
If you’re struggling with all the nuances of Microsoft Teams retention policies, you’re not alone. Staying compliant with Microsoft Teams can be a little tricky. The easiest way to ensure you’re implementing the right compliance policy for Teams, is with a certified app.
Leading Microsoft Teams partners offer recording, retention, and compliance tools which can help with collecting and managing data. These tools give you more control over capturing, archiving, and e-discovery. They’re also typically a lot easier to use than Microsoft’s own retention policies.
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