An Overlooked Feature to Block Downloads for Channel Meeting Recordings

Given the size of Microsoft 365 and the fact that you might not use some app features very often, a good likelihood exists that you’ve never heard of some features. Or you might have forgotten that a feature exists. I experienced this feeling during the review of the Managing Videos chapter for the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook (2025 edition) when Vasil Michev, our technical editor, pointed out that the chapter didn’t mention the ChannelRecordingDownload setting for the Teams meeting policy.

This oversight on our part is inexcusable. The setting has existed for quite a while. It’s mentioned in message center notification MC222640, updated August 2, 2021, and our sole excuse is that this update occurred with a bunch of other changes intended to facilitate the migration of Stream classic to Stream on SharePoint. We’ll address the deficit here.

Updating Meeting Policies to Block Download Access for Channel Meeting Recordings

By default, the value of the ChannelRecordingDownload setting in Teams meeting policies is “Allow.” This means that the SharePoint app (app@sharepoint) saves recordings of channel meetings in the Recordings folder for the channel. For instance, recordings for meetings hosted in the General channel end up in General\Recordings while recordings for meeting in a shared channel end up in the Recordings folder. Private channels don’t have a mailbox and don’t support channel meetings. All channel members have access to the MP4 files created for recordings, including the ability to download the files.

Updating the ChannelRecordingDownload setting to block access to channel meeting recordings is not supported by the Teams admin center Instead, use the Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet from the Teams PowerShell module to update Teams meeting policies. For example:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity "Allow Meeting Recording" –ChannelRecordingDownload Block

You might also need to run the Grant-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet to assign the updated policy to the set of accounts that you want to block from downloading.

Grant-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -PolicyName "Allow Meeting Recording" -Identity Ken.Bowers@office365itpros.com

Where Channel Meeting Recordings Go

After updating the meeting policy, SharePoint applies different rules to the storage of and access to channel meeting recordings. Remember that a channel meeting doesn’t really have an owner or organizer. The person who creates a channel meeting acts as the organizer in that they manage invitations and other meeting settings. However, they do not own the recording in the same way as they would for a personal meeting.

When saving channel meeting recording in SharePoint Online, the SharePoint app checks the meeting policy assigned to the organizer and finds that the policy blocks downloads for channel meeting recordings. Instead of saving the MP4 file in the Recordings folder, it saves the file in the Recordings\ViewOnly folder and alters permissions on the file so that only channel owners can download the recording. Everyone else, including the meeting organizer (unless they are also a channel owner) are limited to online view-only access (Figure 1).

The Microsoft documentation offers sparse information on this point and a quick internet search didn’t turn up much else. I guess everyone else missed this change.

The Can View Only Permission

In other related news, an associated change described in message center notification MC699712 (19 December 2023) might also have escaped your attention. This is the update for the share link settings for Stream videos stored in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online.

The change introduced the “Can view, but not download” option to the permission drop down (Figure 2) to make it easier for people to share videos that they didn’t want downloaded. It was possible to block downloads for video files beforehand, but it required additional steps to block downloads.

channel member creates a sharing link for a video file in the \ViewOnly folder, they’re restricted to sending a sharing request to the channel owners to request access. This occurs even when sharing with other channel members, even though those channel members already have access.

The Joy of Finding an Overlooked Setting

I’m not particularly worried about the downloading of my videos that other users have access to through Stream. However, I can understand that this might be a concern for others, and it’s good that Microsoft 365 includes controls to limit access in a reasonably painless manner, even if I have totally overlooked the settings for years.

Learn about using Stream on SharePoint and the rest of Office 365 by subscribing to the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook. Use our experience to understand what’s important and how best to protect your tenant.