How to record a Microsoft Teams meeting

Knowing how to record a Microsoft Teams meeting can save you so much time that you often spend asking others to repeat instructions or reminding you of what was said. Businesses may also want to record troubleshooting meetings for later analysis, compliance needs, or to recall key decisions made. Microsoft Teams understands this and has made the recording process easy to use – when set up correctly.

Let’s discuss what you need to record a meeting in Teams, how to find recordings when the meeting is over, and everything else you should know about the process.

How to record a meeting in Microsoft Teams

Step 1: Make sure you have the correct permissions. A number of permissions are required to start and stop a recording in a meeting. First, the user needs a subscription such as Office 365 Enterprise, Business Premium, or Business Essentials.

If you work as part of an organization, your IT admin may need to enable recording for the organization. Some organizations turn off recordings by default, except in certain situations. If you’re working independently, it should be on by default.

Only certain users can record meetings when they join. This includes meeting organizers as well as those who have part of the organizer’s organization in Microsoft Teams. Those who are part of different organizations and guests cannot accommodate.

Step 2: Sign in to Microsoft Teams and join a meeting. Let one person start and stop the recording as needed – you cannot record multiple meetings at the same time.

Step 3: In the meeting, look at the menu at the top of the window and select More promotions Option (the three-dot ellipse icon).

Step 4: Choose Start recording in the drop down menu. Some organizations have a recording policy that you must now accept before recording can begin, although this is not common. Everyone who joined the meeting will receive a notification that the meeting is now being recorded.

Step 5: Enabling recording will also enable transcriptions unless transcription has been specifically blocked by an administrator. Transcriptions can be viewed in real time and are saved with the video when the recording ends. Transcriptions are important when recording for compliance or legal reasons, among others. Live transcriptions can be stopped at any time More promotions Menu.

Step 6: When it’s time to stop recording, go to More promotions Menu again and select stop recording. The recording is now being processed, which may take some time, so it may not be possible to view it immediately.

Play back a recorded meeting

When Microsoft Teams records a meeting, it is saved in SharePoint. If it wasn’t a channel meeting, it’s saved to OneDrive. Visit these locations to find the meeting file. A link to the recording also appears in the channel or chat where the meeting took place and is also available on the channel’s Files tab.

You can either share the file directly with someone else in Teams, or copy and paste it to a variety of other platforms, whichever is easiest.

Important NOTENote: Microsoft Teams recordings often have a built-in expiration date, after which the meeting becomes unavailable (plus a grace period for the record owner). This can be disabled by IT. The expiration date appears in Teams along with the meeting link, as well as in the details section of View Actions in the recording file. Those recording the meeting can usually adjust the expiration date. It is important to ensure that the video is shared or used before the expiration date. If recording was for compliance purposes, expiration dates should be disabled or the files should be otherwise persisted.

Record extras for meetings

There are a few additional considerations when recording a meeting in Teams:

• Recordings stop automatically when everyone has left the meeting. However, the recording doesn’t stop when the person who started it leaves – meaning someone else might have to manually stop it at the right time.

• Sometimes regional rules can affect recording settings. For example, local regulations may require that everyone give their consent to the recording before it begins.

• Guests and external participants can’t view the recording unless someone shares it directly with them.

• The meeting video can only display up to four video streams at a time. You cannot switch to other streams while watching a recording.

• Compliance requirements may override some of the settings discussed above.

If you want to arrange a meeting with some colleagues, you should form a new team first.

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