Forum Discussion
Teams Meeting Recordings and Transcriptions - Retention Concerns
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.
- I'm assuming OSFB is OneDrive for Business. I've done a number of tests and I've not yet seen a recording transcription stored there. I only have the .mp4 recording files and I've looked in "Microsoft Teams Chat Files", "Microsoft Teams Data" and "Recordings". 🤷🏻:male_sign:
I don't use the feature really, been a long time since at least. But it's not a very straightforward process as far as I remember. The transcript is stored in the meeting organizer's EXO account and can be accessed through the meeting chat and Recording & Transcripts tab in Teams until a meeting organizer deletes the transcript. Normally people add the transcript to the recording in OneDrive For Business, meaning the copy. That can be deleted but the original is still in EXO and isn't easily deleted for an end-user if going for that hidden folder but should be deleted by the organizer the "normal way" obviously.
Basically a compliance issue as of today as you cannot use retention deletion for the transcript and have to depend on organizers deletion (or account deletion). As far as I know this prevents some orgs. from using the feature and instead only use Live Captions in meetings as no data is being stored anywhere.
ChristianJBergstrom Understood. Good point that the meeting organizer is the only one that can delete the transcript, but unfortunately there is no way to prevent it being downloaded by another participant (before it's deleted).
Even after deletion, it's stil retained in their Exchange mailbox and is therefore available in eDiscovery searches. I've been told that we only back up the journal, which is only sent and received emails, so we're trying to find out if meeting transcriptions are journaled or not. Even if they aren't, they'd still live in the user's mailbox, potentially for years.
We were looking for a way to lock down the ability to transcribe and record to only certain individuals and then have those recordings and transcriptions auto-delete after a week or two. In effect, they would just be available to aid in the taking of official meeting notes or for someone to re-watch a portion of the meeting.
As you've said, it seems like we'd need to rely on a fair amount of manual effort and training to achieve this. It's unfortunate the Microsoft hasn't built more controls into the policies for these features 😞.