Concerns about Chat History

Brass Contributor

Hello Everyone,

 

There is a thread over on Uservoice which concerns the retention of private chat conversations.

 

Currently in Skype for Business, we can disable the capture of chat messages completely.  This is useful in organizations which have strict policies regarding transitory communications.  Unfortunately, Teams lacks this capability.

 

The most recent official response by the moderator is wildly off-base and tone-deaf.  As you can imagine, users are rightly confused and highly concerned about the current state of the product, especially now that Teams has a firm time frame for replacing Skype for Business.

 

Can more clarity be provided about what is happening with the retention of private chat messages?

 

Thank you.

 

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/33535006-delete-private-chat-t...

7 Replies

@Daniel Smith If you don't have any active retention policies private chat messages will be kept in the user mailbox until the user deletes it. You can setup retention policies that deletes private chat messages after 30 days (fewer days will be supported in the future).

Yes, we understand that the best we can do is to delete history after 30 days.  The ability to delete after 24 hours is coming, but not ready for prime time.

 

Unfortunately, in our industry, if data is captured (at all) then it must go under a long-term retention standard.  Under Skype for Business, we had the option to not capture any data, period.  The current architecture of Teams has introduced a mess of legal consequences due to this change.

Many of the proposals suggest providing an option to have the storage of  all chat history cached on the user's local device rather than automatic storage in the cloud.  Policies can then be applied to determine how long each cache is retained (if at all).  

 

Microsoft really needs to address this issue with Teams.

@Daniel Smith Actually it will not be after 24 hours, it will take a few days before the data is completely removed.

 

You have the option to turn off private chats or as you say you can implement long-term retention.

 

If Microsoft see this as a big issue for on-boarding customers to Teams they will address this. I'm not sure that the uservoice you posted is addressing the issue you have.

 

Storing the data in the cloud is the only way for companies with strict compliance restriction to have control over the data, if it was stored locally on client computers only that would not be possible. It would also be hard to solve synchronisation between different clients so that users always can reach their data.

@Daniel Smith 

 

@Tony Redmond may have some input here but to my knowledge nothing has been addressed here, but I would expect some of these scenario's to be in the product before they cut off Skype for Business assuming this wasn't an on-prem only option? 

 

Anyway, I would pay close attention to Teams security/compliance/governance sessions at ignite here in two weeks to see if they announce or show anything on the roadmap that might mention this. 

 

And if by chance you are going, stop by the Teams booths and strike some conversations with the product teams. 

@Chris Webb AFAIK, the only public announcement on the topic is the reduction in the retention time window to a minimum of 24 hours. As has been pointed out, this doesn't mean that compliance items magically disappear once they reach a day old. It takes time for the mechanism to remove items from EXO, synchronize with Teams, and eventually disappear.

 

If this is a real big issue, then the customer should raise it with their Microsoft account manager and work it through the system. Microsoft responds much better when it has hard evidence that something is causing a real problem. Right now, the stance as I understand it is that it's good to capture compliance records because so many customers want this to happen.

Agree Tony, thanks!

Daniel, If long term compliance is a requirement since no retention might not be an option yet, long term compliance is really easy when it comes to Teams chats assuming you have Exchange Online mailboxes that is.

@Chris Webb Thanks to everyone for the replies, this is very helpful.

 

Our agency has a policy that IM may only be used for transitory communications.  No decision-making, etc. shall be done via this medium.  Regular email communications are retained as you'd expect.  What we've found is that having IMs kept private has created a "relief valve" of sorts for the employees where more informal communications are accepted.  It would be a terrible shame to lose this capability which currently exists with Skype for Business.