Microsoft has rolled out a new feature for Teams that can automatically delete Microsoft Teams recording files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint after a pre-set period of time.  

Microsoft flagged the new feature in its December updates for the Teams collaboration platform, which included end-to-end encryption for calls and fixes for an issue between Teams and Android that caused some devices to freeze after making an emergency call. 

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Admins can disable the auto-expiration feature now it's going to be on by default. Once rolled out, all new recordings automatically expire 60 days after they are recorded if no action is taken. Microsoft expedited the feature's roll out "due to overwhelming customer requests", it says in a blogpost.      

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"All newly created Teams meeting recordings (TMRs) will have a default expiration of 60 days. This is on by default for all tenants. This means that by default, all TMRs createdafter this feature was turned onwill be deleted 60 days after their creation date," Microsoft explains in a support document. 

Admins can also set meetings to never auto-expire in the Teams admin center or by using PowerShell commands. Microsoft describes the feature as a "lightweight housekeeping mechanism to reduce storage clutter" created by old recordings, which on average consume about 400 MB of cloud storage per hour of recording. Microsoft has found that across all customers, 99% of recordings aren't watched after 60 days. 

"We believe nearly all customers will benefit from the reduced storage load on their tenant by removing recordings that likely won't be watched again after 60 days," Microsoft notes. "It's our goal to provide as clean an experience as possible for all customers by default."

End users can also use the files details pane in OneDrive or SharePoint to modify the expiration date for recordings that they have edit/delete permissions.

Microsoft notes the expiration setting is not a retention setting since it will not prevent a different system or user from deleting a file ahead of the scheduled expiration. Retention policies in the Compliance center will override the feature to ensure the compliance policy timeline always wins in the event of a conflict with the expiration setting. 

The feature doesn't impact meeting recordings stored in Microsoft Stream -the classic Stream -but it will affect recordings stored in the new Stream, which is built on OneDrive and SharePoint.

Also, the feature is only available for Teams meeting recordings created by the Teams service in OneDrive and SharePoint. It isn't available for others file types in these platforms. 

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