When a Teams Retention Policy Goes Bad and Data Disappears

A change made to an Office 365 retention policy for Teams personal chats in the KPMG tenant removed data for 145,000 users. That’s unfortunate, and it underlines the need for admins to understand how retention policies work. Maybe the people involve did and it was a simple slip that could happen to anyone, but perhaps it will cause tenant admins to reflect on how they make changes to organization configurations.

How to Disable Chat in Microsoft Teams

You can disable Chat for Teams users, but is this a good idea? Chat is an integral part of Teams and disabling it seems like a bad idea for many reasons, not least being compliance as all you’ll do is drive users to find another way to communicate – like WhatsApp.

Teams Recordings of 1:1 Calls Now Available

In a surprise development, Microsoft announced that recording of Teams 1:1 calls is now available. Some limitations are present and the feature seems rushed, but perhaps this is because people working at home on confidential transactions need the feature, In any case, record away!

Read Receipts Available for Teams Personal and Group Chats

Teams users can now see read receipts for messages in private and group chats. The read receipt is a visual indication that someone has read a message rather than a positive signal back to the user, but it works well. Controls over read receipts are available at a user and tenant level (through messaging policies).