Teams Changes Location for Meeting Transcripts

Teams Meeting Transcripts Exclusively Stored in OneDrive for Business

Microsoft is making a bunch of changes to the handling of Teams meeting transcripts. The most important change is the standardization on OneDrive for Business as the storage location for transcript information, described in message center notification MC726122 (last updated 1 May 2024, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 365720). Targeted release tenants will see the change in early June 2024 and Microsoft hopes to achieve worldwide general availability by late August 2024.

In 2021, Teams was the first application to move workload to the Stream on SharePoint platform. Stream was in the middle of a transition from the old Azure-based application to Stream on SharePoint, and customers still had the option to use either platform. During the transition, Stream stopped creating transcripts automatically for newly uploaded videos. Seeking stability and to support indexing of transcripts, Teams stored the transcript information in the meeting organizer’s Exchange Online mailbox.

Now, Stream on SharePoint is the only option for video storage and automatic transcript generation is performed, so meeting recordings end up with transcripts stored in Exchange Online and Stream. Microsoft is rationalizing the situation by eliminating the copy stored in Exchange Online. This step makes perfect sense because it is consistent with the way that Stream handles transcripts for other videos.

How Teams Meeting Transcripts are Generated

Microsoft is beginning by implementing the change for Teams meeting recordings that only have a transcript (no audio or video content is captured). This happens when a meeting organizer enables a transcript without recording. In the past, Teams wrote the transcript into Exchange Online. When the change is effective, Teams creates an MP4 file in the Recording folder of the meeting organizer’s OneDrive for Business account. To create the file, the normal bot that joins meetings to listen to the audio feed from participants to create the transcript, generates the transcript as normal and then removes the audio track, leaving the MP4 file with just the VTT-formatted captions that compose the transcript.

Figure 1 shows a OneDrive for Business account with two meeting recordings. The first contains only a transcript. The second is a regular recording. Note the “meeting transcript” suffix used for the first and “meeting recording” for the second.

Teams will still write a copy of the transcript for transcript-only recordings into Exchange Online. The situation is different for Teams meeting recordings with audio. The transcript for these recordings is stored in the MP4 file. A copy is also stored in Exchange Online. In other cases, Microsoft emphasizes that Teams will only use the transcript stored in OneDrive for Business.

Phase Out of Exchange Storage for Teams Meeting Transcripts

Eventually, Teams will cease writing a copy into Exchange Online so that the only transcript data is that stored in OneDrive for Business. Microsoft says, “At the same time, meeting transcripts will stop saving in Exchange Online altogether and all transcript storage will be standardized on OneDrive only.” I’m unsure what is meant by “at the same time.”

As you’d expect, standardization on a single location makes it easier to delete transcripts either by the meeting organizer or by retention policies (both the recording and transcript can be removed at the same time).

More Help Coming to Manage Consent and Access

Meeting transcripts are more important now than ever before. Apart from providing captions during playback of meeting recordings, the Teams Premium intelligent recap facility uses transcripts to generate meeting notes and action items. They’re also used by Copilot for Microsoft 365 to allow users to ask questions about meeting proceedings.

To protect the privacy of people and make sure that transcripts are only generated for meetings where everyone consents to recordings, Microsoft has several changes in the pipeline to better manage consent and access, including:

• MC781595: Policy to control the download of Teams meeting recordings. Requires SharePoint-Syntex advanced management licenses.
• MC791598: Consent given by users for recording is captured in the audit logs (requirement for consent must be enabled in the Teams meeting policy)
• MC794819: Explicit consent for all forms of recording.
• MC764456: Explicit consent to transcribe a meeting.
• MC795083: Policy to manage access to meeting transcripts, recordings, AI-generated recap, and Copilot features.

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