Office 365 - Teams Features, Storage Locations, and Retention
This article provides a summary of Teams features and their corresponding storage location within the Office 365 environment as well as the retention schedule for each.
Teams Feature | Storage Location | Retention Schedule | Record May be Deleted by Individual User | Additional Information |
Chats (1:1 and group) Conversations | Stored in users' Outlook mailbox | Retained until the user leaves UWM and their account is deleted | No | External (non-UWM) chat participants also have the conversation saved in their mailbox |
Channel Conversations | Stored in Azure (O365 back-end) environment | Retained until the Team owners delete the Team or until the owners allow the Team to expire after 1 year of inactivity | Yes, by Team owners |
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Chats (1:1 and group) File Storage | Stored in the sharing user's OneDrive space: "Microsoft Teams Chat Files" folder | Retained until the sharing user's account is deleted and the files are deleted with the account | Yes, by the sharing user | All members of the chat have access to the file that was shared If a participant in a chat is an external user and shares files, they are stored in the external user's (non-UWM) OneDrive space. Once the external user leaves the chat, files they shared will leave with them |
Channel File Storage | Stored in the document library for the channel in the Team site Private channels each have their own Team site and document libraries for storage | Retained until they are deleted by members or owners, until the owners delete the team, or until the owners allow the Team to expire after 1 year of inactivity | Yes |
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Voicemail Messages | Stored in users' Outlook mailbox | Retained until the user deletes them or until the user leaves UWM and their account is deleted | Yes |
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Meeting Recordings and Transcriptions (1:1 and Group) | Stored in the OneDrive account of the user who started the recording in a folder named Recordings
| Retained in faculty, staff, and students' OneDrive spaces and then auto-expire after 60 days. | Yes, by the individual who started the recording | Anyone except external guests can start or stop a meeting recording and meeting participants are notified when recording is started All meeting invitees, except for external users, will automatically get a personally shared link. External users will need to be explicitly added to the shared list by the meeting organizer or the person who started the meeting recording. |
| Meeting Recordings and Transcriptions (Channel Meetings) | The recording is stored in the Teams site document library in a folder named Recordings | Recordings that were started by faculty, staff, and students auto-expire after 60 days Recordings that were started by emeriti, annuitants, and sponsored users auto-expire after 30 days The expiration date for the meeting recording can be manually changed or set to never expire Meeting recordings set to never expire are retained until the group owners delete them or until the owner allows the group to expire after 1 year of inactivity | Anyone except external guests can start or stop a meeting recording and meeting participants are notified when recording is started The user who started the Teams meeting recording needs to enable transcriptions for the meeting recording | |
Live Events & Captions | Live events produced directly in Teams are stored in Azure | Recordings are retained in Azure until the event producer deletes them | Yes, by the event producer | Live event producers can enable captions when setting up the event Attendees can turn on live captions if the event producer enables them for the event |