Teams Video Messages Can Use Blurring or Images as a Background Effect for Clips Recorded on iOS client

Teams introduced the ability to send one-minute-long video messages in chat in September 2022. The process uses Stream components to record the clip (and trim to the required length) before posting. Everything works, but the increasing use of mobile devices means that people want to be able to communicate on the go using any device, which brings us to message center notification MC718553 (last updated 27 March 2024, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 380852).

MC718553 announces the ability to record video clips on Apple iOS devices with limited background effects. Unlike Teams background effects used by the desktop and browser clients, the iOS client uses images stored in the device’s photo library. Before they record a video clip, users can choose to paint their background with an image or two types (light and heavy) blur. The one-minute limit for clip length remains in force.

Microsoft expects to complete roll-out of the new feature by May 2024 to commercial, GCC, GCC High, and DoD tenants.

Requirements for Teams Video Messages

I’m no video expert and I seldom use videos in chat. It seems easier to write down what I need to say and move on. However, I recognize that the world is changing, and many find it easier and more productive to express themselves in a quick video. The world’s big enough to accommodate all sorts, which brings us back to how to make a video clip.

You can only send a video message if the AllowVideoMessages setting in the Teams messaging policy governing your account is true. If not, you’re limited to sending photos from mobile devices. Administrators can check in the Teams Admin Center (Figure 1) or by running the Get-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy cmdlet:

Get-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy | Format-Table identity, allowvideomessages

Identity       AllowVideoMessages
--------       ------------------
Global                       True
Tag:Default                  True
Tag:EduFaculty               True
Tag:EduStudent               True

You can post Teams video messages to chats and channel conversations. At this point, I think this is the only way to post a video message to a channel conversation.

Making One-Minute Clips

The magic begins when a user selects the Teams camera next to the message compose box when replying to a chat or channel conversation. The right-hand icon exposes options to select an image or one of the two types of blurs. You can change the image during filming if you’re quick and dexterous enough to do this kind of thing without making a complete mess of the video.

Eventually, the right background image is combined with the right position for the message sender (Figure 2), and everything is ready to record the video clip. Click on the canvas (where the background image and your face are combined) to reveal the video controls and click the record button to start. Keep talking until the minute’s up or you run out of words to say. If the length of the clip exceeds a minute, you’ll need to trim it to get under the maximum length. Send the message and Teams adds it to the target chat or conversation.

Figure 3 shows the result of a video clip sent from an iPhone playing in a channel conversation. I was able to post to standard, private, and shared channels. Unlike chats, where Teams stores the video files in its own store, clips sent to channels end up as MP4 files in the SharePoint folder for the channel. Clips posted to channel conversations use the Stream player for playback.

Like the previous iteration of video messages, the […] menu allows chat participants and channel members to download either the transcript or the video.

Compliance Still an Issue for Teams Video Messages

When Microsoft introduced video messages, I pointed out that the compliance records captured for these messages didn’t include any metadata that might be useful to eDiscovery investigators. It is entirely possible to send video clips that convey threatening or abusive content, plan illegal operations, or reveal sensitive or confidential information, all of which is ignored by communications compliance policies and data loss prevention policies, and invisible to eDiscovery searches.

I pointed this issue out to Microsoft in 2022 and suggested that some form of transcription might help. That suggestion appears to have fallen on deaf ears. I’m used to being ignored.

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Send a Teams Video Chat One-Minute Clip to Make Your Point

Announced in Microsoft 365 message center notification MC427757 (8 September, 2022) and now available in the preview version of Teams clients, users can send short (up to one minute) video clips in messages posted to one-to-one, group, and meeting chats. Microsoft expects this feature to be generally available in late September with deployment complete worldwide in October. Schedules have been known to slip!

Video messages are only available when chats involve participants from the same tenant (member and guest accounts). They’re not available in federated chats with external users in other Teams tenants or chats with Teams consumer users, nor are video messages supported in Teams channel conversations.

I was able to record, send, and playback video messages using the Teams desktop and browser clients. MC427757 and Microsoft 365 roadmap item 97158 refer to support for the mobile clients, but options to record and send are missing and playback doesn’t work in current builds.

Adding video messages to Teams chat isn’t surprising. Teams mobile clients have had the ability to record and send audio messages, so moving on to video is a natural next step. It’s also aligned with the general approach Microsoft is taking to add video as a full-fledged communications type across Microsoft 365. This is a central theme of the evolution of Stream for SharePoint, where the video player part of the Stream 2.0 client is the default app for video replay across all Microsoft 365 apps.

Sending a Teams Video Chat Message

When Teams video messages are available in a tenant (as we’ll see below, you can control their availability by policy), a video message icon appears in Teams chat (Figure 1) alongside the send message icon used for normal text messages.

Selecting the video option launches a screen similar to that used by Stream for SharePoint  to record videos using the PC camera or screen output. Teams offers simpler options. The length of videos is kept to 1 minute rather than 15 and there’s no effects available like background blur or custom images. The record button is the sole screen element. Clicking it starts recording immediately (Figure 2). This is another difference from Stream, which uses a 3-second countdown before it starts recording.

Like Stream, after you finish recording, you can review the video to make sure that it captures your true brilliance. You don’t get the chance to edit the video or make any other changes. If the recording isn’t right, you must record it again. When everything’s ready, click send and the message goes. Scheduled or delayed send is not supported for video messages.

Recipients see the video messages in their chat thread (Figure 3). As you can see, playing video messages is simple because there’s just one button to press.

Administrative Control

By default, Microsoft enables video messages in chat. If administrators don’t want people to use video messages, they can disable the feature using Teams messaging policies. For now, you must update the setting with PowerShell after downloading the latest version of the Teams PowerShell module (4.7 or later). These commands list the Teams messaging policies in the tenant and disable video messages for users assigned the default (global) policy:

Connect-MicrosoftTeams
Get-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy | Format-Table Identity, AllowVideoMessages

Identity                                    AllowVideoMessages
--------                                    ------------------
Global                                                    True
Tag:Advanced                                              True
Tag:Advanced Users                                        True
Tag:Restricted - No Chat                                  True

Set-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy -Identity Global -AllowVideoMessages:$False

Simple – Maybe Too Simple

Microsoft has done a very nice job of making it easy to send video messages in Teams chat. There’s really nothing that will trip people up, unless they decide to send a video message that’s not quite right.

My concerns are in the area of compliance. The Microsoft 365 substrate captures compliance records for video messages to make them available for eDiscovery. The compliance records point to the MP4 files which hold the messages (Figure 4).

However, because Teams captures minimal metadata in the compliance records (for instance, video messages don’t have a title or other keywords), they’re difficult for searches to find. Broad eDiscovery searches such as finding all chats sent by a user over a specific period do include video messages in search results and exports, which means that investigators do have access to this content. However, investigators must examine the individual MP4 files for video messages in search exports to determine if the content is of interest to whatever they’re looking for, so the discovery process is very manual.

The concern is that people who want to hide what they’re doing from the gaze of corporate compliance can do so by sending each other video messages. The same problem occurs for audio messages. Microsoft could do a better job of making the video and audio content accessible for eDiscovery purposes.

Nice for Users

I’m sure users will welcome video messages. They’ll love the ability to record a quick video clip and send it to one-to-one and group chats. Microsoft has made the process very simple and that’s laudable. It would be even nicer if eDiscovery could find video message more easily.

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