Teams compliance recording

Some regulated industries — most notably financial services subject to SEC, FINRA, FCA, MiFID II — must record and retain voice and video communications for compliance. Microsoft Teams supports this via compliance recording, a specific recording category distinct from regular meeting recording.

Compliance recording vs meeting recording

Two different things:

• Meeting recording — a meeting organiser or participant clicks record; the recording is saved to OneDrive / SharePoint for participants to review. Discretionary, user-driven.
• Compliance recording — automatic capture of voice and video for specific users (typically traders, brokers, advisors) regardless of meeting type, including 1:1 calls, ad-hoc calls, group calls, and meetings. Mandatory, policy-driven, recorded by a certified third-party platform.

Compliance recording is what regulators require; meeting recording is for convenience.

How compliance recording works

Teams provides Recording Bot APIs that let certified third-party platforms attach to user sessions:

1. A user with the CR policy assigned starts a Teams call.
2. Teams notifies the configured compliance recording platform (Verint, NICE, Theta Lake, ASC, Red Box, AudioCodes SmartTAP, others).
3. The platform's bot joins the call invisibly and captures audio, video, and screen-shares.
4. Recordings are encrypted, stored on the platform's infrastructure (often with WORM controls), retained according to regulatory schedules.
5. Compliance officers can search and replay recordings via the platform's portal.

The recording is transparent to the user — they see a small recording indicator in some clients, but the call proceeds normally.

What's covered

A typical compliance-recording deployment captures:

• All 1:1 and group calls between recorded users.
• All meetings the recorded user participates in.
• All screen sharing.
• All chat messages to and from the recorded user.
• Voicemail received by the recorded user.

External participants are notified of recording per local jurisdiction requirements (legally required disclosure in many countries).

Configuration

Compliance recording requires:

1. A certified compliance recording platform — pick a vendor.
2. Microsoft 365 E5 or Teams Phone + appropriate add-on for the recorded users.
3. Compliance Recording Policies in the Teams admin center — assigned to specific users (traders, advisors), referencing the recording bot.
4. The recording platform's bot registered as an Azure app with the right Graph permissions.
5. Failover behaviour configured — if the recording bot is unavailable, does the call proceed (less safe) or fail (less productive)?

Operational considerations

• Recording must be reliable — regulators care about completeness; a missed conversation is a compliance violation.
• Retention is typically 5–7 years for SEC / FINRA scenarios; the recording platform handles it.
• eDiscovery integration — recordings should be searchable as part of broader investigations.
• Cross-tenant calls — recording works for guests and external Teams users joining recorded users' calls.

For organisations under MiFID II or US financial regulation, compliance recording isn't optional. The good news: the ecosystem is mature and partner platforms are well-integrated with Microsoft 365 governance.