Microsoft released a new feature for meeting recordings – recording expiration. Every recording has a default expiration date and will be automatically deleted after that date. The date can be managed by your Teams Administrator, but you can override it anytime. In this article I will how you can access settings and work with them.
We love to store information for feature use. Meeting recordings are a good example of that behavior. We often record meetings and cheat ourselves that we will watch it later. Reality shows something different – 99% of recordings are not watched after 60 days (based on Microsoft Research). All recordings are stored on SharePoint Online or OneDrive and consume our space. If we do not watch them, it is simply a waste of storage.
That’s why Microsoft introduced auto-expiration of meeting recordings. This feature lets you and your Teams Administrator control when a recording is deleted. By default, it’s set to 60 days but the Administrator can change that default setting from 1 day to 99999 (almost 274 years).
When a recording is saved you can always override the setting and set your expiration date. The Administrator cannot change your settings – you are the master here.
How to access expiration dates
You can access the expiration setting from 2 places – the recording page or OneDrive/SharePoint.
Recording page
Navigate to a specific recording and select the I icon located in the top right section of the page.
Select a date from the date picker or remove the expiration date completely (the recording won’t be deleted).
Recrodings list
Go to your recording folder (OneDrive or SharePoint) and select a recording file. Open a details pane and select the expiration date in the same way as from the recording page.
Expiration
When your recording expires the file will be deleted from OneDrive or SharePoint. You will get a notification (email message) when the file is deleted. Deleted files are moved to the Recycle Bin and you can restore them within 90 days.
