Forum Discussion
Teams Meeting Recordings and Transcriptions - Retention Concerns
My company has concerns about meeting recordings and transcriptions sticking around for a long time and causing potential legal or audit issues down the road. I've been researching this, and transcriptions seem to be an issue.
First, I understand that we can put policies in place to restrict which users can record and/or turn on transcriptions for a meeting. We can also pay for Teams Premium to only allow meeting organizers to record meetings. The question still remains about how long recordings and transcriptions stick around and how we can make sure they are only retained for a specified amount of time.
All of our meetings are private (not channel) meetings, so recordings are stored in the OneDrive of the user who clicked the record button. As long as the recording stays there, other users can only view it and it will be deleted after the recording expires (I understand that users can extend the expiration). The transcription, on the other hand, is stored in some kind of special folder in that user's Exchange mailbox. The transcription is not deleted when the recording expires and any user who attended the meeting can download the transcription as a file and save it anywhere. The transcription is like an email as far as retention goes, so it would be covered under our email retention settings.
Questions:
- I see there is a way to use retention labels to automatically delete meeting recordings, but what about downloaded transcription files? (I'm not very familiar with retention labels.) Is it possible to only allow certain users (or groups) to download transcription files?
- Would meeting transcription text come up in a search in Exchange?
- Meeting attendees can access recordings and transcriptions via Teams chat for the meeting or the meeting calendar invite. The calendar invite would fall under Exchange's retiention, but how can we control how long chat messages are kept? This article specifies they're stored in two places but I am not sure how to set retention policies to cover both.
- Are there any other concerns or tips on controlling retiention for teams meeting artifacts?
Thanks!
There is a Teams Meeting Policy which can be assigned to users that determines if they are allowed to create a transcription, this should be your first choice in limiting transcription. Rather than having groups that can't download, have groups that can't create a transcription.
I'm not really sure what 'search in Exchange' you mean, if you mean an eDiscovery search by a compliance officer then yes they would come up.
Teams chat messages can be retained and deleted using a Retention Policy just like email messages. It perhaps makes little sense to have a different retention policy for chat compared to email.
StevenC365 Thanks for the response!
There is a Teams Meeting Policy which can be assigned to users that determines if they are allowed to create a transcription, this should be your first choice in limiting transcription. Rather than having groups that can't download, have groups that can't create a transcription.
Agreed. Since there isn't a way to view the transcription file without downloading it, the only protection is to not allow it to be created in the first place. I wish that meeting recordings and transcription expirations could be tied together though.
I'm not really sure what 'search in Exchange' you mean, if you mean an eDiscovery search by a compliance officer then yes they would come up.
I wasn't sure what I meant either! 🙂 Good to know - thanks.
Teams chat messages can be retained and deleted using a Retention Policy just like email messages. It perhaps makes little sense to have a different retention policy for chat compared to email.
I am not sure what upper management is doing to want to do, so it is good to know our options.
- Ukiman1014 RE: "Search in Exchange"
You can use a retention policy to retain data from chats and channel messages in Teams, and delete these chats and messages. Behind the scenes, Exchange mailboxes are used to store data copied from these messages. Data from Teams chats is stored in a hidden folder in the mailbox of each user included in the chat, and a similar hidden folder in a group mailbox is used for Teams channel messages. These hidden folders aren't designed to be directly accessible to users or administrators, but instead, store data that compliance administrators can search with eDiscovery tools.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/retention-policies-teams?view=o365-worldwide
Two more things I learned:
- By default, meeting organizers and presenters can record meetings, and, by default, anyone can preset, therefore anyone can record. A Teams meeting policy can be used to only allow organizers to present in meetings. If anyone else needs to present after the meeting starts, the organizer can change their role to presenter. (The presenter could then record the meeting, but you'd assume that the organizer would have done so already.)
- Using Teams Premium, a meeting policy can be set via sensitivity labels that will only allow organizers to record meetings (doesn't matter who can present).
Just some options other than having to control who can record on a per-user (or group) basis.
Just to add to the conversation about transcripts. One copy of the meeting transcript is saved in ODFB and a second copy is saved in Exchange in temporary storage. The ODFB copy expires when the recording auto-expires (deletion can take up to 4-5 days). When the ODFB copy get deleted, the original copy on Exchange won't be deleted. It will stay in Exchange storage until meeting organizer delete it manually, other cases will be when the Exchange storage reaches it's size limitation, or the meeting organizer leave the company and the account is entirely deleted. Unfortunately there’s no retention policy available for transcripts today.
Thanks for the extra info ChristianJBergstrom.
What do you mean by "ODFB"? If that copy and the one in Exchange expire at different times, which one is the one that's accessible in Teams? (Either via the original meeting invite in the calendar or in the original meeting chat.)
When you say that the user could delete it from Exchange, how would they do this? My understanding is that it's in some sort of hidden folder, only accessible by admins.
- By default, meeting organizers and presenters can record meetings, and, by default, anyone can preset, therefore anyone can record. A Teams meeting policy can be used to only allow organizers to present in meetings. If anyone else needs to present after the meeting starts, the organizer can change their role to presenter. (The presenter could then record the meeting, but you'd assume that the organizer would have done so already.)
- From a practical POV, outside of Microsoft's controls on the recordings and transcriptions it holds, it is trivially easy (and getting easier all the time) to record and transcribe any online meeting using local device services e.g. in the browser or operaating system.
- Agreed, but our Legal department is mainly concerned with lots of recordings and transcriptions (mainly transcriptions) hanging around, which could potentially be used against us. If we could put a cap on how long they stay around, it would greatly alleviate their concerns.
FYI, what we may resort to is:
- Only allowing certain users to record meetings. The meeting organizer should also be the recorder.*
- Train those users to download and delete the transcription after the meeting.
*The transcription is stored in the meeting organizer's Exchange mailbox and therefore they are the only ones who can delete it. There is a note somewhere in Microsoft's documentation that global admins (maybe just Exchange admins?) can also get to transcriptions, but no mention of how they would remove them.
The problem is, IMR (intelligent meeting recap) - now part of CoPilot - depends on the transcription to create its summaries.
The only real solution is a transcription retention policy. I haven't seen anything coming up on Microsoft's roadmap yet. 😔
- I've been having the same issues with transcription, and until we can fix them it's unlikely we can turn it on for users.
Which is annoying, because it's a big feature for copilot that we can't use.
I've heard via a third party that they were told by an MS employee that this was going to be addressed, but obviously take that with a pinch of salt... Looks like this will be available soon.
and delete Microsoft OneDrive for Business transcript filesMC726122 · Published 6 Mar 2024Service & monthly active usersMicrosoft Teams (2,940)RelevanceMediumPlatformAndroid, Desktop, iOS, Mac, WebRoadmap IDTagADMIN IMPACTNEW FEATUREMessage Summary
With this new feature, Microsoft Teams meeting transcript files will be saved in Microsoft OneDrive for Business for transcription-only meetings. Users will be able to view, download, and delete transcript files from one place (OneDrive for Business) instead of two places (OneDrive for Business and Microsoft Exchange Online). This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 365720 When this will happen: Targeted release: We will begin rolling out early April 2024 and expect to complete by mid-April 2024.Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, and DoD: We will begin rolling out mid-April 2024 and expect to complete by late April 2024. How this will affect your organization: Currently, if the admin turns on transcription for the organization, you can view, download, and delete transcript files saved on both OneDrive for Business and Exchange Online directly from the tile "Transcript" in the Microsoft Teams meeting chat or in the Recap tab in the Teams calendar invite. With this new feature, we will stop saving transcript files on Exchange Online. We will communicate this change here when it is set to begin. What you need to do to prepare: There is no action needed to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.blue_man Thank you so much for siting this!! Very exciting for us to test it out.
Another stipulation I wanted to ask about - the transcript would be available for internal employees to review, and for our admins to discover if needed. However, I'm trying to understand under what specific circumstances an external would have access to a transcription outside of an internal employee sharing them like any other file within our environment.
By default they wouldn't have access to the chat prior to or after a meeting takes place, which leads me to believe they wouldn't have access to the transcription as long as the transcription wasn't "ended" while the meeting was still taking place... right?
