Teams Chat retention

Data retention policy details 

Messages from private 1:1 chats, group chats, meeting chats, and chat messages with yourself will be deleted 90 days after the message is sent or received and will not be recoverable. For example, all chat messages sent or received on or before date to be confirmed, will be deleted and will be unrecoverable. All chats will be deleted on a rolling one-year basis thereafter. An automatically generated message stating "We've deleted older messages due to your organization's retention policy" will appear at the top of chat windows as older chats are deleted.  

Guidelines on chat and work in Microsoft Teams and other applications

Waterloo’s Information and Privacy office has developed guidelines with respect to the use of Teams (and other applications) for chat and work-related tasks. Please contact the Privacy Officer or the University Records Manager for additional information on these guidelines.

High-level best practices

• Teams chats are not intended to be retained. Ensure required business-related decisions recorded in a chat are moved to an alternate, appropriate, platform or format (e.g., email, document, OneDrive).

• If you would like to keep team or channel-specific chat records, ensure that your chats take place under the Posts tab of the applicable team/channel as they are not impacted by this retention policy.

• Files, meeting recordings, and documents shared in chats are not subject to the Teams chats retention protocol. You must delete any files/documents in OneDrive.

  • In Teams, meeting recordings and documents shared over chat are automatically stored in OneDrive. While your Teams chats are subject to deletion after a default 1-year period, recordings and documents that have been shared over chat will still be stored in OneDrive. When you delete a file within a Teams chat the file still exists in your OneDrive.

  • To permanently delete chat-based files, access your OneDrive account and open the folder titled Microsoft Teams Chat Files. Click on the Show actions menu and then Delete. This action will remove the file from your OneDrive. Note that only the owner of the file/document can delete the item from OneDrive.

  • To delete a meeting recording, the meeting recorder should locate the recording in their OneDrive folder titled Recordings. Click on the Show actions menu and then Delete. This action will remove the file from your OneDrive. 

• When an individual team or channel is deleted the chat records will also be deleted.