Microsoft Stream is an odd service. It’s fantastic in its own right but limitations built within it and it’s positioning as a Microsoft 365 outsider has always been problematic. For Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Stream as the location for meeting records brought its own set of challenges. With change approaching, let’s explore how this is moving to use OneDirve and SharePoint for Microsoft Teams meeting recordings.
Microsoft Stream sure has a time and place. We think, for example, that it’s a fantastic platform for sharing videos internally such as corporate messaging, training, and more. But that is also it’s Achilles Heel. It is limited to internal use only and you cannot share recordings [directly] from Microsoft Stream with external users.
When you participate in a meeting with people from multiple organisations and the meeting is recorded, that goes to Microsoft Stream for the organisation of the meeting organiser. If you’re outside that organisation, the only way you can access that is if someone downloads the recording video file and shares it with you by manually copying the file to their OneDrive or SharePoint or worse, emails you the file.
What is changing
Microsoft has recognised the importance of the role that Microsoft Stream has been playing in meeting recording and that users need to not only collaborate and communicate during meetings but also after them with the recording.
To address this need, Microsoft Stream is changing such that going forwards, we will use OneDrive and SharePoint for Microsoft Teams meeting recordings.
Recordings that go to OneDrive will be presented in a new folder in the users’ OneDrive for Business called Recordings. Recordings that go to SharePoint Online will go to a folder called Recordings inside the Channel Documents folder structure.
Why is the change happening
Firstly, to better facilitate users sharing meeting recordings externally to the organisation but there is more to it than that.
One aspect is to better integrate the video experience into the product portfolio of Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Another is that larger organisations with compliance requirements mean that we can better govern and police the recordings.
- Manually or automatically apply Retention Labels to recordings to maintain copies of recordings for compliance purposes
- Apply Sensitivity Labels to recordings to maintain confidentially and restrict access to recordings
- Storage in multiple regions for geographically distributed businesses
- Double-key encryption for customers that require it
Although for many organisations, the change to recordings may not be an issue, for others it may be a cause for concern. If you’ve taken time to educate users on how to use meeting recordings or how to access them then documentation or processes may need to change.
If you do nothing, your meeting recordings will automatically start using OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online sometime after 11th January 2021 which isn’t that far out.
You can postpone this change if you act to explicitly set it to continue with the current behaviour. You can also pull it forwards if you are really to adopt the changes right away.
How to postpone the changes and continue to use OneDrive and SharePoint for Microsoft Teams meeting recordings
UPDATE: Since this post was published, Microsoft has pushed back the date for these changes to give enterprise customers more time to get familiar with the changes. Enterprise customers now have the same deadline as Education customers in July 2021.
If you need more time to adopt the changes you will need to explicitly set your meeting recording behaviour to Microsoft Stream mode.
Enterprise customers can do this between now and March 2021 at which point all recordings will always go to OneDrive and SharePoint. Education customers can do the same but they have until July 2021.
To do this, you use the Skype for Business PowerShell module with the Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy command. Most of the settings in these policies can be achieved using the user interface, however, this new setting has been kept back in PowerShell [for now at least].
To keep your recording location to Microsoft Stream you explicitly set the value of the RecordingStorageMode property to Stream.
Microsoft carefully notes in the documentation for this that looking at the policy and seeing it says Stream isn’t enough: you have to actually act to explicitly set it this way.
How to make the change to OneDrive and SharePoint for Microsoft Teams meeting recordings now
If you want to bring the change forward and start working with this now either because you can accept the change early or because you want to take advantage of the functionality, you can do the opposite of the example above.
Using the same Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy command, we can set the RecordingStorageMode property to OneDriveForBusiness.
You should pay special attention to Per-user and Global Meeting Policies when setting this up. If users are all assigned the Global policy, you need to just change this in one place. If you have users assigned Per-user policies, you’ll need to assign this in the Per-user policy configuration too.
This is useful if you want to trial or pilot the change to OneDrive and SharePoint recording by assigning the pilot users a per-user policy with the new setting.
What determines whether the recording goes to OneDrive or to SharePoint
Great question and the answer is based on who set-up the meeting and the recording. There’s a really useful matrix at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/tmr-meeting-recording-change#permissions-or-role-based-access which you can refer to.
Broadly put, if the meeting is owned by an individual then the recording will go to a OneDrive for Business location. If the meeting is owned by a Channel then the recording will go to a SharePoint Online location within the Channel and the Team.
In cases where the recording is destined for OneDrive for Business, the destination of that will depend on who actually clicked record.
- In a one-to-one meeting, the recording will go to the OneDrive for Business of the person who clicked record
- In many-to-many group calls where the attendees are all internal to your organisation, the recording will go to the OneDrive for Business of the person who clicked record
- In many-to-many group calls where there are attendees from multiple organisations, the recording will go to the OneDrive for Business of the meeting organizer and not the person who clicked record.
How do people access the recording file?
Once saved to OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online, depending on who you are depends on how you will get access to the recording.
For internal users where the recording is held in a OneDrive or SharePoint location within your organisation, you’ll automatically get access to the file by Microsoft Teams.
For external users who attended the meeting, you will not automatically get access and the person whose OneDrive for Business account which has received the recording [the organiser of the meeting] will need to share it.
If Sharing Policies in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online have been defined, this could impact whether or not the recording can be shared. For example, if a Sharing Policy denying external sharing from OneDrive for Business is set, the recording would need to be moved to a SharePoint Online location to facilitate that.
What happens to existing recordings in Microsoft Stream
any existing recordings in Microsoft Stream will continue to be accessible for now. Microsoft wants to have a process to enable the migration of recordings over to OneDrive for business and SharePoint Online, however, this isn’t in place at the moment.
More information on this migration can be found in the Microsoft Stream roadmap at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/stream/streamnew/new-stream#roadmap.
Get help with Microsoft Teams
Whether you’re new to Microsoft Teams or looking to expand your usage of it, Arcible are here for you. As you can see from our blog posts, we cover Microsoft Teams extensively and work with customers using it from simple instant messaging through to enterprise voice deployment.
Get in touch with Arcible to find out how we can help you with your Microsoft Teams journey.