Introduction to Microsoft Teams third party compliance recording

APPLIES TO: ✔️Meetings ✔️Webinars ✔️Town halls ✔️ Calls ✔️ Live events

Overview

Third-party compliance recording allows orgs using Microsoft Teams for calls, meetings, and events to implement an admin policy for automatic recording. For your users to make calls, they must have an assigned Teams Phone license. As an admin, you can also choose when to capture calls, meetings, and events for subsequent processing and retention, in accordance with relevant corporate or regulatory policies.

Teams is enhanced to support the integration of partner recording solutions. These enhancements provide a complete solution for configuring, managing, recording, storing, and analyzing Teams communications. The enhancements include communications platform APIs and events for recording, which provide:

  • Seamless, high-quality media capture across devices. Compliance recording captures the same screenshare activity as convenience recording. To learn which screenshare activities are captured, see Record a meeting in Microsoft Teams.

  • Support for interaction capture between Teams users and supported calling, meeting, and endpoints (Teams, Teams Mobile, Skype for Business, PSTN).

Compliance recording can be enabled on Microsoft 365 A3/A5/E3/E5/Business Premium, Office 365 A3/A5/E3/E5 users, Teams Rooms license, or Microsoft Teams Shared Devices license.

Note

Compliance recording isn't currently supported for E911 emergency calling services.

The compliance recording solution integration capabilities were also reviewed at Ignite 2019 in the Compliance Recording and Microsoft Teams session.

Compliance vs convenience recording

In Microsoft Teams, there are two types of recordings:

  • Convenience recording- an ad-hoc recording of a call or meeting that a user starts. To learn more about convenience recording, see Teams meeting recording.
  • Compliance recording- using an admin policy to automatically record calls and meetings.

The following table details differences between convenience and compliance recording.

Type Convenience Recording Compliance Recording
Initiator User Admin (system)
Target Per-call / meeting / event Per-user
Storage owner Organizer Admin or compliance officer
Participant notification required? Yes Yes
Retention Policy Organizer's SharePoint Online policy enforced Yes

Users with an assigned compliance recording policy know that their digital interactions with Teams are being recorded. They also know that they can't disable the recording and don't have access to the recording once the interaction is complete. The recording becomes part of the organizational archive. This archive is available to compliance and legal personnel for eDiscovery, legal hold, and other corporate retention uses.

Solution architecture overview

Compliance recording solutions are integrated with Teams as shown in the following diagram:

Diagram of the flow for when a Teams meeting or call is sent and received.

Note

This solution is designed specifically to enable policy-based compliance recording with Teams. Any other use of this solution isn't supported.

Example user needs

Persona Needs
Recorded users
  • Be notified when recording is in progress.

  • Be informed when policy and/or recorder error is causing changes in calling behavior.

Communications admin
  • Understand why and how to apply / enforce recording policies to Teams users / endpoints.

  • Configure and maintain Teams recording policies for the organization.

  • Monitor and troubleshoot recording-related issues with Teams calls and meetings.

  • Support internal compliance officer with operational analytics on usage, quality, and reliability.

Compliance officer
  • Collect all Teams communications in the manner required to meet compliance obligations in appropriate regional boundaries.

  • Search for interactions based on communication-related metadata or interaction content. Common examples include:

    • Metadata - Participants, time, direction, dialed number, origin number, Custom business data.

    • Content – Transcription, sentiment, phonetics, related interactions.

  • Analyze and interact with collected communications, including the ability to monitor interactions as they're being collected.

  • Ensure security of collected communications and prevent tampering at all stages.

Recorders

The core component of the compliance recording solution is the recorder. Recorders are built as scalable Azure-based services (bots) that use Microsoft's communications platform and register as applications with Microsoft Graph. The recorder provides the direct interaction with the Teams calls and meetings communications platform APIs and provides the endpoint for media ingestion.

A sample compliance recorder application is available that shows how to configure the bot, create the app instance and assign the compliance policies. The sample also has examples on API usage for recording specific interactions such as handling incoming call routing, changing recording states, and removing the user who is being recorded. Graph documentation on the specific APIs can be found here for updateRecordingStatus and incomingContext.

The exact implementation of the recorder service varies by partner, but must be designed to support multiple recorders. This requirement ensures high availability and geographical distribution, reducing latency between Teams and the recorder. Recorders should be designed with resiliency and redundancy in mind.

Partners must confirm the minimum required release version of the Microsoft Graph communications APIs and SDKs with Microsoft before submitting their solution for certification. This requirement ensures that all requirements of compliance recording integration are supported.

Requirements that are fundamental for compliance recording scenario:

  • Recorder bot must be deployed in Azure.

  • Recorder bot must run on a Windows VM in Azure.

  • Recorder bot outbound firewall destination IP address must be open to the Azure public IP range.

  • Recorder bot inbound firewall source IP address must be open to the Teams IP range.

The Azure and Windows VM requirements only apply to the Teams Bot component, which means that a partner might implement the rest of the platform of their choice provided they can meet the relevant performance and functional requirements for compliance recording.

Create and manage your compliance recording policy

Through creating and assigning compliance recording policies, as an admin, you can determine which users are to be recorded and which recorder is used for each user. Recorders are automatically invited to participate in conversations based on the configuration of these policies when a communication interaction takes place. Compliance recording policies are managed using Microsoft PowerShell and can be applied at the tenant, per-user, and security group level for each organization. You can find more information on Microsoft Learn for Meeting policies, calling policies and group policies.

  1. Create an application instance in your tenant.

    PS C:\> New-CsOnlineApplicationInstance -UserPrincipalName cr.instance@contoso.onmicrosoft.com -DisplayName ComplianceRecordingBotInstance -ApplicationId fcc88ff5-a42d-49cf-b3d8-f2e1f609d511
    
    RunspaceId        : 4c13efa6-77bc-42db-b5bf-bdd62cdfc5df
    ObjectId          : 5069aae5-c451-4983-9e57-9455ced220b7
    TenantId          : 5b943d7c-5e14-474b-8237-5022eb8e0dc9
    UserPrincipalName : cr.instance@contoso.onmicrosoft.com
    ApplicationId     : fcc88ff5-a42d-49cf-b3d8-f2e1f609d511
    DisplayName       : ComplianceRecordingBotInstance
    PhoneNumber       :
    
    PS C:\> Sync-CsOnlineApplicationInstance -ObjectId 5069aae5-c451-4983-9e57-9455ced220b7
    
  2. Create a Compliance Recording policy.

    PS C:\> New-CsTeamsComplianceRecordingPolicy -Identity TestComplianceRecordingPolicy -Enabled $true -Description "Test policy created by tenant admin"
    
    Identity                        : Global
    ComplianceRecordingApplications : {}
    Enabled                         : True
    WarnUserOnRemoval               : True
    Description                     : Test policy created by tenant admin
    
    PS C:\> Set-CsTeamsComplianceRecordingPolicy -Identity TestComplianceRecordingPolicy `
    -ComplianceRecordingApplications @(New-CsTeamsComplianceRecordingApplication -Id 5069aae5-c451-4983-9e57-9455ced220b7 -Parent TestComplianceRecordingPolicy)
    

    See Set-CsTeamsComplianceRecordingPolicy.

  3. Assign the Compliance Recording policy to a user.

    PS C:\> Grant-CsTeamsComplianceRecordingPolicy -Identity testuser@contoso.onmicrosoft.com -PolicyName TestComplianceRecordingPolicy
    

    See Grant-CsTeamsComplianceRecordingPolicy.

    PS C:\> Get-CsOnlineUser testuser@contoso.onmicrosoft.com | select SipAddress, TenantId, TeamsComplianceRecordingPolicy | fl
    
    UserPrincipalName              : testuser@contoso.onmicrosoft.com
    TenantId                       : 5b943d7c-5e14-474b-8237-5022eb8e0dc9
    TeamsComplianceRecordingPolicy : TestComplianceRecordingPolicy
    

User experiences

PSTN calls

Inbound call queue (CQ) calls are recorded for users who have an assigned compliance recording (CR) policy. Some routing methods might involve usability concerns with multiple announcements. We recommend appropriately configuring your call queues to align with your organization's intended user experience.

Compliance recording doesn't work if users have an Internet outage, and make or receive PSTN calls using an SBA.

Notifications

Support for notifications is enabled using the Teams client experiences. The experiences can be either visual or audio.

Teams clients - visual notice

  • Desktop/web
  • Mobile (iOS/Android)
  • Teams Phones
  • Teams rooms

Other endpoints - audio notice

  • SIP phones
  • Skype for Business
  • Audio conferencing (audio notice in dial-in number's default or user-selected language)
  • PSTN callers (audio notice in Teams user's default language)

Compliance recording for Teams certification programs

In addition to publishing publicly available APIs allowing partners to develop and integrate CCaaS solutions with Teams, we developed the compliance recording for Microsoft Teams certification program. This program provides customers with the assurance that each participating partner's solution is tested and verified. Customers can be assured that partners provide the quality, compatibility, and reliability they expect from Microsoft solutions.

The following partners certify their solution for Microsoft Teams.

Partner Solution website
ASC Technologies https://www.asctechnologies.com/english/ASC_Recording_Insights_Compliance_Recording_for_Microsoft_Teams.html
AudioCodes https://online.audiocodes.com/smarttap-360-live-for-microsoft-teams
CallCabinet https://www.callcabinet.com/compliance-microsoft-teams-call-recording
Dubber https://www.dubber.net/call-recording/
Touch Call Recording (GuardRec Compliance 2022.10.3) https://touchcallrecording.com/teams-policy-based-recording-for-callings-and-meetings
Insightful Technology https://insightfultechnology.com/teams/
Luware https://luware.com/en/solution/microsoft-teams-recording/
Mida Solutions https://www.midasolutions.com/recorder-for-teams/
NICE Engage https://www.nice.com/products/workforce-engagement/call-recording/air-and-engage
NICE NTR-X https://www.niceactimize.com/compliance/ms-teams-recording.html
Numonix https://numonix.cloud
Oak Innovation https://www.oakinnovate.com/clarify
Red Box https://www.redboxvoice.com/compliance-recording-for-microsoft-teams
Theta Lake https://thetalake.com/integrations/microsoft/
Verint https://www.verba.com/solutions/microsoft-teams-recording

The following partners are in the process of certifying their solution for Microsoft Teams.

Partner Solution website
Cloud World Wide Services https://recordia.net/microsoft-teams-call-recording/
CreaLog https://www.crealog.com/en/products-solutions/recording/
Landis Technologies https://landistechnologies.com/
Redwood Technologies https://www.contentguru.com/en-us/solutions/needs/compliance-recording-ms-teams/

This list gets updated as more partners join and meet the certification criteria.

Support boundaries

Microsoft only supports compliance recording solutions from the listed certified partners. If there are issues, you must contact your compliance recording partner first. If needed, the partner can bring the issue to Microsoft through internal channels. Microsoft might reject support cases where a non-certified Compliance Recording solution is used, or if investigation shows the issue is one that the partner can address.

Next steps

If you're a vendor seeking to join the certification program, fill out the calling platform intake as the next step.