In Microsoft Teams, your users can record their Teams meetings, webinars, and town halls to capture audio, video, and screen sharing activity. This type of recording is called convenience recording. The recording happens in Microsoft 365 and is saved to OneDrive or SharePoint, which must be enabled for the user. For details on OneDrive and SharePoint recording storage, see Use OneDrive and SharePoint for meeting recordings.
To learn about recording for live events, see Live event recording policies in Teams.
When a meeting is recorded:
Town halls and webinars follow the same process for recording. However, there are a few key differences:
There's an option for recordings to have automatic transcription, so users can play back meeting recordings with closed captions and review important discussion items in the transcript. For more information about transcription and captions, see Configure transcription and captions for Teams meetings.
As an admin, you can manage the following recording policies:
External participants can't record meetings except when it's a Teams third party compliance recording. If an external Teams user that's enabled for compliance recording joins a meeting or call hosted by your organization, the other organization records that meeting or call for compliance purposes, regardless of the Meeting recording setting in your organization. Organizers, co-organizers, and presenters in that meeting are notified and can remove the external participant from the meeting if they don't want the other org to capture recordings.
You can use the Microsoft Teams admin center or PowerShell to set a Teams meeting policy to control whether users' meetings can be recorded. Both the meeting organizer and the recording initiator need to have recording permissions to record the meeting. Meeting organizers with a Teams Premium license can use their meeting options to control who can record and transcribe.
Many users use meetings and calls interchangeably depending on their needs. We recommend that you check your call recording policy settings as well. If the settings are different for meetings and calls, it might cause confusion for your users.
To allow or prevent meeting recordings:
With PowerShell, you configure the -AllowCloudRecording parameter in Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy.
To allow or prevent call recordings:
With PowerShell, you configure the -AllowCloudRecordingForCalls parameter in Set-CsTeamsCallingPolicy.
You can use the Teams admin center or PowerShell to manage whether meetings created by organizers with this assigned policy can require participants to provide explicit consent to be recorded and transcribed.
When the explicit consent policy is enabled, once a user either starts the meeting recording, transcription, or both, all participants are muted, with their cameras and content-share off. When a participant decides to unmute, turn on their camera, or share content, they’re prompted to respond 'Yes' or 'No' to consent to be included in the meeting recording and transcription. If an attendee responds 'No' to the prompt, they have a view-only meeting experience. View-only attendees can't start recording or transcription for any meetings that require explicit consent.
The consent choice for each attendee is included in the attendance report. Attendees not in the attendance report—due to the admin policy or opting out— are required to provide consent. When the attendance report is disabled or attendees aren't in the attendance report, organizers and co-organizers don't see consent data, but as an admin, you can still see consent data in the audit logs.
You can use the Teams admin center or the -ExplicitRecordingConsent parameter in the CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet to manage explicit consent.
The following table shows the behaviors of the settings for explicit consent:
| Teams admin center value | PowerShell value | Behavior |
|---|---|---|
| On | Enabled | For organizers with this policy, all their meetings require participants to provide consent to be recorded and transcribed. |
| Off | Disabled | This setting is the default value. For organizers with this policy, participants aren't asked for consent to be recorded and transcribed. All participants are included in recordings and transcripts from these organizers' meetings. |
Follow these steps in the Teams admin center to turn explicit consent on or off for users or groups in your organization:
Through PowerShell, you can manage explicit consent for users or groups in your organization. The -ExplicitRecordingConsent parameter also controls recording consent for Audio Conferencing. To learn about explicit consent for Audio Conferencing, see Explicit recording consent for Audio Conferencing.
To require participants to give their explicit consent to be recorded or transcribed in any meeting that organizers with this policy create, use the following script:
Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity -ExplicitRecordingConsent Enabled There are two ways for you to view consent data. The first way is in the Teams meeting attendance and engagement report. The second is with the Added information about meeting participants filter in the Teams meeting audit logs in Purview. Consent data is in the audit logs regardless of your policy that manages the attendance and engagement report or your users' option for tracking attendance. To learn more about audit logs in Purview, see Audit log activities.
The following user types are auto consented for recording and transcription without any participant interaction. They get a consent notification, and their consent data is logged as 'not applicable' or 'auto consent':
Explicit consent is supported on the following endpoints:
In meetings requiring explicit consent, users joining from unsupported endpoints have the view-only experience. Explicit consent isn’t supported on the following endpoints, along with any endpoints not listed under supported endpoints:
In PowerShell, the -ChannelRecordingDownload parameter in Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy controls whether channel members can download meeting recordings. This is done by controlling which folder recordings are stored in.
The two values for this setting are:
This setting allows you to reduce the number of storage older recordings use. OneDrive and SharePoint monitor the expiration setting on all meeting recordings and automatically move recordings to the recycle bin on their expiration date.
You can turn off the Meetings automatically expire setting in the Teams admin center under Meetings > Meeting policies > Recording & transcription.
This setting controls whether meeting recordings automatically expire. After turning on Meetings automatically expire, you'll get the option to set the Default expiration time, measured in days. Meeting recordings have a default expiration time of 120 days.
Any changes to this setting only affect newly created meeting recordings, not existing recordings. Admins can't change the expiration time on existing meeting recordings.
The expiration value is an integer for days that can be set as follows:
The maximum default expiration time for A1 users is 30 days.
To set the expiration time using PowerShell, run the following command:
Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity -NewMeetingRecordingExpirationDays
You shouldn't rely on meeting expiration settings for legal protection since end users can modify the expiration date of any recordings they control.
File retention takes precedence over file deletion. A Teams meeting recording expiration policy can't delete a Teams meeting recording with a Purview retention policy until after the retention period is completed. For example, if you have a Purview retention policy that says a file will be kept for five years and a Teams meeting recording expiration policy set for 60 days, the Teams meeting recording expiration policy permanently deletes the recording after five years.
Once the recording reaches the expiration date, it gets deleted from the user’s OneDrive, and is copied to the tenant's Preservation Hold library. Your users can't see the recording in OneDrive anymore, but as an admin, only you can find the recording in the Preservation Hold library. To learn more about the Preservation Hold library, see Learn about retention for SharePoint and OneDrive.
If you have a Teams meeting recording expiration policy and Purview deletion policy with different deletion dates, the file is deleted at the earliest of the two dates. For example, if you have a Purview deletion policy that says a file will be deleted after one year and a Teams meeting recording expiration set for 120 days, the Teams meeting recording expiration policy will delete the file after 120 days.
Users can manually delete their recordings before the expiration date unless there's a Purview retention policy that prevents it. If a user manually deletes a recording that's still in the retention period, the recording is held in the Preservation Hold library. However, the recording shows as deleted to the end user. To find out more, see Learn about retention for SharePoint and OneDrive.
On the expiration date, the recording is moved into the recycle bin and the expiration date field is cleared. If a user recovers a recording from the recycle bin, the meeting expiration setting doesn't delete it again.
Usually, the recording is deleted within a day after the expiration date but in rare instances could take as long as five days. The file owner receives an email notification when the recording expires and is directed to the recycle bin if they want to recover the recording.
Migrated recordings from Stream (Classic) don't come with an expiration set on them. Instead, we encourage admins to only migrate recordings that they want to retain.
To update the Teams recording and transcription privacy policy URL with a custom link for users in and outside your org, you must use one of the following options:
If you don't enter a privacy and security URL in Teams meeting settings or PowerShell, we display Microsoft Entra ID's privacy policy. For more information on Microsoft Entra ID's privacy policy, see Add your organization's privacy info using Microsoft Entra ID. If there's no Microsoft Entra ID, we display the Microsoft Privacy policy.
Once you add your privacy policy URL, your URL replaces the default Teams meeting recording and transcription privacy statement.
Teams meeting recordings are stored in the organizer's OneDrive and SharePoint storage. The location and permissions depend on the type of meeting and the role of the user in the meeting. Users that have full edit rights on the video recording file can change the permissions and share it later with others as needed. To understand permissions and storage in OneDrive and SharePoint, see Use OneDrive and SharePoint for meeting recordings.
You can use the following diagnostic tool to validate that the user is properly configured to record a meeting in Teams:
You can use the following diagnostic tool to validate that the meeting recording completed successfully and it was uploaded to OneDrive or SharePoint:
