Scott Quilter

Scott Quilter

Principal Consultant

Whether your already using Microsoft Teams or looking to get started, I’ve captured the most common governance questions I’m asked when working with Teams.

Where is my Microsoft Teams data stored?

Put simple. Content is in SharePoint, messaging is in Exchange Mailboxes. It is a little more spread out than that as we include Stream, Planner and other services. You can see where that data is stored in the Organisation settings in Office 365 administration. Learn more about where your Microsoft 365 data is stored.

What happens if we delete chat messages? Can we get them back as we have a policy to keep all data for 7 years?

You can set a retention policy in the Compliance centre to retain Teams channel messages and Teams chats for 7 years even if a user deletes a message. These can then be recovered in the eDiscovery tools.

What’s the difference between External Users and Guest Users?

External allows access for 1 to 1 chat and meeting participants, Guest allows access for Teams that live in Microsoft Teams.

What if we allow guests in Teams but not in SharePoint?

Guests will be allowed access to channel chat messages but not file content that lives in SharePoint.

What are Information Barriers?

Information barriers supports two-way restrictions preventing people or groups communicating when there is no business need for them to do so, or a regulatory reason to block them from doing so.

What is eDiscovery in relation to Teams?

This allows us to extract information and includes chat, messaging and files, and meeting and call summaries. For Teams meetings and calls, a summary of the events that happened in the meeting and call are created and made available in eDiscovery.

Can we track what is happening in Teams?

Yes, there is full Auditing and Reporting in the Compliance Centre.

Is there a Microsoft Teams Admin Centre?

Yes there is! (https://admin.teams.microsoft.com) If you’re assigned the correct permissions (Global Administrator / Teams Service Administrator) you can access the Admin Centre. More on admin roles here.

Microsoft Teams Admin Centre

We need to know all meeting participants in Teams are identifiable, can we do that?

Yes, we can disable anonymous people from joining which means that a meeting link can’t be shared and accessed by anyone, but instead can only be accessed to those invited.

Originally published October 21 2020, Updated October 22, 2020

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