Microsoft has introduced a new meeting recording auto-expiration feature, which will automatically delete Microsoft Teams recording files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint after a preset period of time. 

For any tenant that does not have a custom policy in place already, Microsoft is updating the default expiration days from 60 to 120 days. This new feature came about in part due to the new Stream evolution (Stream built on SharePoint), the overwhelming numbers of customer requests and Microsoft’s own discovery that only 1% of recordings were being watched after 120 days vs 5% after 60 days.

Newly created Teams meeting recordings stored in OneDrive and SharePoint will be automatically deleted based on a default Teams policy setting. Teams Admins will be able to modify the default meeting recording expiration time via a setting in the Teams Admin Portal or by modifying the policy attribute NewMeetingRecordingExpirationDays using PowerShell.

To change the default auto-expiration setting for your tenant using the Teams Admin Center, go to admin.teams.microsoft.com, navigate to Meetings > Meeting Policies > Add in the left navigation panel. Then modify the setting under the Recording & transcription section. You can turn off "Meetings automatically expire" if you do not want meeting recordings to expire at all, or you can set a specific number of default days between 1 and 99999 (273 years). To use PowerShell, use the Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -NewMeetingRecordingExpirationDays cmdlet and set the attribute to “-1” to never auto-expire recordings, or set it to a specific number of days (example: Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global -NewMeetingRecordingExpirationDays 30).

Meeting owners will be notified about expired recordings and may extend the expiration date in OneDrive/SharePoint. Users can also modify the expiration date for any recordings on which they have edit/delete permissions, using the files details pane in OneDrive or SharePoint. The SharePoint tenant or site admin, or the end user with edit/delete permissions will also be able to retrieve the file from the recycle bin for up to 90 days.

Below are some of the additional highlights/clarifications of this new feature:

• The expiration setting is not a retention setting. For example, setting a 30-day expiration on a file will trigger an auto-deletion 30 days after the file was created, but it will not prevent a different system or user from deleting that file ahead of that schedule.
• Any retention/deletion/legal hold policies you have designated in the Compliance center will override this feature. In other words, if there is a conflict between your designated Compliance policy setting and the expiration setting, the compliance policy timeline always wins.
• When a recording is deleted due to the expiration setting, the end user will be notified via email. The admin does not have the ability to override end-user modification capabilities.
• This will not impact any existing meeting recordings created before the feature is deployed. Also, any changes to the default date in the admin console will only apply to newly created meeting recordings after the change is made.
• This feature does not impact meeting recordings stored in Microsoft Stream (classic Stream) but will affect recordings stored in the new Stream (built on OneDrive and SharePoint).
• This feature is only available for Teams meeting recordings created by the Teams service in OneDrive and SharePoint. It is not available for other file types in OneDrive and SharePoint.

To learn more about the administrative controls with this feature, view Changes to meeting expiration. To learn more about user-controls, check here: Manage the expiration of a meeting recording.

The links above will give you more information on this particular change, but you may also want to check out the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. Here you can get the latest information on updates in productivity apps and various Microsoft cloud services.

If cloud technologies and/or being a Microsoft 365 administrator are new adventures for you, the following course may also interest you:

MS--900T01 - Microsoft 365 Fundamentals

If you are looking specifically for more information on particular service administration, you may want to check out the following courses:

MS-100T00 - MS-100: Microsoft 365 Identity and Services

MS-101T00 - MS-101: Microsoft 365 Mobility and Security

MS-203T00 - Microsoft 365 Messaging

MS-500T00 – Microsoft 365 Security Administration

MS-700T00 - Managing Microsoft Teams

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Penny Morgan, LRS Education Services
MCT, MCSA, MCITP, MCTS, MCSE, MCP
Microsoft 365 Certified: Fundamentals
Microsoft 365 Certified: Enterprise Administrator Expert
Microsoft 365 Certified: Security Administrator Associate
Microsoft 365 Certified: Messaging Administrator Associate
Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate
Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate