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M365 Changelog: Teams Meeting Recordings Auto-Expiration in OneDrive and SharePoint

MC274188 – Updated September 23, 2021: Microsoft has updated the rollout timeline below. Additionally, Microsoft has updated this post to correct the setting modification capability limitations and will provide an additional update when those limitations are corrected.

As part of the evolution of the new Stream (built on SharePoint), Microsoft is introducing the meeting recording auto-expiration feature, which will automatically delete Teams recording files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint after a preset period of time.

Note: The cmd to preemptively change the MeetingExpirationDays setting in Teams is not available yet. Microsoft will update this message center post when modification of the setting is available, before the expiration feature is enabled.

Key points

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID: 84580.
Timing: early November (previously late September) through mid-November
Roll-out: tenant level
Control type: user control and admin control
FAQs: https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/cloud-recording#auto-expiration
Action: review, assess and decide what you want the default expiration period to be for your organization

How this will affect your organization:

New recordings will automatically expire 60 days after they are recorded if no action is taken. The 60-day default was chosen as, on average across all tenants, most meeting recordings are never watched again after 60 days. However this setting can be modified if a different expiration timeline is desired.

Modification of the default value is not yet possible, but Microsoft will update this message center post when you are able to modify it. Microsoft will provide instructions on how to modify the setting in PowerShell or the Teams Admin Center at that time. You will be able to modify the setting before the feature goes live.

Users (except for users with A1 licenses) can also modify the expiration date for any recordings on which they have edit/delete permissions, using the files details pane in OneDrive or SharePoint. A1 users will receive a 30-day expiration default that can be reduced but not increased. To retain recordings for longer than 30 days A1 users will need to download the file to a non-synced folder.

At either the tenant or user level (excluding A1 users as noted above), the expiration timeline can range from one day to several years, or even set to never auto-expire.

Additional clarifications:

The expiration setting is not a retention setting. For example, setting a 30-day expiration on a file will trigger an auto-deletion 30 days after the file was created, but it will not prevent a different system or user from deleting that file ahead of that schedule.
When a recording is deleted due to the expiration setting, the end user will be notified via email. The SharePoint tenant or site admin, or the end user with edit/delete permissions will be able to retrieve the file from the recycle bin for up to 90 days.
Any retention/deletion/legal hold policies you have designated in the Compliance center will override this feature. In other words, if there is a conflict between your designated Compliance policy setting and the expiration setting, the compliance policy timeline always wins.
The admin does not have the ability to override end-user modification capabilities.
This will not impact any existing meeting recordings created before the feature is deployed. Also, any changes to the default date in the admin console will only apply to newly created meeting recordings after the change is made.
The min number of days that can be set on MeetingRecordingExpirationDays is 1 and the maximum is 99,999 (e.g. 273 years).
This feature does not impact meeting recordings stored in Microsoft Stream (classic Stream) but will affect recordings stored in the new Stream (built on OneDrive and SharePoint).
This feature is only available for Teams meeting recordings created by the Teams service in OneDrive and SharePoint. It is not available for other file types in OneDrive and SharePoint.

What you need to do to prepare:

Once Microsoft enables the setting modification, please change the default if you do not want to inherit the 60-day default they are setting for you. An updated message center post will be published when modification is possible.

If you are going to specify a tenant level expiration standard, inform your user base about the change before Microsoft deploys it so that they are aware they will need to take action to retain their new recording files past the specified time period once the feature is enabled.

Learn more about the feature in these FAQs.