Group Chats - What happens if the Group originator leaves the organisation?

[Philip Collins]

Good day All, What happens to the chat history in a Group Chat if the Group creator leaves the organisation?

We are using the Group Chat feature extensively. My understanding of the chat features is that the chats are stored in the personal mailboxes. So what will happen if the person who started Group chats leaves the organisations. Will the groups stop to exist and will the chat history be deleted with his mailbox? If all the chat history is linked to his mail box then surely the history will also be deleted, with his mailbox, 30 days after his account gets deleted (post the removal of his his/her account from the AD syncing process). How does it work?

Your input/comments/questions will greatly appreciated.

[#2]

No it stays with the history intact! It saves a copy in all of the participants mailboxes. But the messages truly also live in azure

[#3]

@adam deltinger Thanks so much. Was spending 11/2 my day trying to figure it out. If you have any ref material please add it. Thanks again.

[#4]

@Philip Collins 

We found that external participants (federated users) are automatically removed from the teams group chat created by ex-employee and Microsoft support confirmed it is expected behavior.

"it is a by-design behavior that if the user who created the group/meeting chat has left your organization, all external users will be auto removed from the group/meeting chat as soon as the group creator's AAD account is deleted. This is to ensure that customer's Teams chat resource without being monitored by a group creator will not be misused by external users."