Microsoft Teams Backup: Options & Key Features

In addition to messaging and videoconferencing, Microsoft Teams provide file sharing, scheduling, email, wiki pages and online collaboration services.

Each MS Teams instance ("team") is essentially a set of users ("team members") that share access to collaboration resources which are segmented into Teams channels.

Your can think of Teams channels as virtual directories that help to structure team collaboration by topic. Channels can be public (access granted to all team members) or private (limited to team owners and selected users).

Every team includes:

1. Team posts (aka group chats or channel conversations) are shown in Posts tab created by default for every team channel. In addition to text messaging it enables users to post attachments, such as Files and Forms. Chat messages are stored in the Teams messenger application, while attachments are stored on senders' OneDrives (for private channels) or team SharePoint (for public channels).
2. Files (team document library) is a SharePoint document library folder created for every channel and shown as a Files tab. Its data is stored in a "Documents" document library linked to the team (see the next section for details).
3. Wiki is a webpage created for every team channel. It helps to publish static information relate to channels (FAQs, rules, etc). The webpage file is stored in a Document library of the “dedicated” team SharePoint site (in a folder called "Teams Wiki Data").
4. A OneNote notebook is created for every team channel and is stored in a Document library of the team SharePoint site (the library is called "Site Assets"). The notebook can be shown as a team channel tab if a team owner adds it.
5. A shared mailbox is created for every team (and it cannot be disabled). The mailbox cannot be added to Teams channels as a tab, and it only appears in the “Group Conversations” section in each team member's Outlook.
6. A shared calendar is created by default for all new channels. It is visible in the team members' Outlook Groups Calendar section. The calendar cannot be added as a channel tab and can only be viewed in Outlook.
7. A Planner plan can be added to a team channel as a tab.
8. A form is an online survey tool that can be added to team channels as a tab.

In addition to the eight data types above Teams include Microsoft Groups as well as SharePoint sites. Groups help to stitch together apps available to Teams users, while SharePoint sites store most of the Teams data.

Microsoft Groups

Resources like Shared Calendar, Notebook and Tasks do not actually belong to teams directly. They are instead linked to a Microsoft Group that is created with every new team, with all the team members included in the MS Group.

Microsoft Groups is essentially an entry in Azure Active Directory that describes what Office 365 resources the Groups members (users) can access.

Groups themselves does not have any data that can be backed up - the data instead is kept in the resources to which users are granted access.

For the most part, the fact that Teams are based on MS Groups has no implications for Teams backup and administration. However, in some cases the presence of Groups is relevant and complicates things.

For example, adding members to a team channel does not always add them as members of the group linked to the team. Therefore some of the users’ data would not be considered to be part of team for the purposes of backup or retention policies.

SharePoint Sites

The contents of Wiki tab, Files and Teams OneNote notebook are kept in SharePoint Site(s) that belong to the team.

Normally, one SharePoint site is shared by all public team channels (the data is kept in folders using the same names as channel). A dedicated SharePoint site is created for every private channel in order to limit access only to private channel members.

Teams purpose is to facilitate collaboration, with team members constantly creating new information, modifying existing and deleting (!) it.

In our experience IT administrators should expect a higher volume of data recovery-related requests from active Teams users, compared to non-Teams Office 365 users.

Most frequent reasons behind Teams data loss are related to accidental data deletions and overwrites. The data can also be affected by cloud ransomware that can spread quickly due to faster data sharing velocity by Office 365 Teams users.

Standard Office 365 recovery options don’t provide Teams chats backup, however they can be used to backup and restore other Teams data stored in SharePoint sites and Exchange mailboxes.

In this section we’ll discuss the standard “short-term” Office 365 retention policies available in all plans.

Exchange Standard Retention

Items deleted from Exchange online are moved to the Deleted Items folder where they stay indefinetely until a user/admin empties it. When data is erased from the Deleted Items, it is moved to Recoverable Items system folder where it is kept for 14 days (the period can be extended to 30 days via power shell).

SharePoint & OneDrive Standard Retention

All items deleted from SharePoint sites and OneDrives go into Recycle Bin, where it stays 93 days before they're permanently deleted. If admin/user deletes the data from Recycle Bin before 93 days pass, then the data goes to Second Stage Recycle Bin (where stays for the remainder of the 93 days period).

After 93 days period the items are deleted permanently. The default retention period cannot be changed.

Standard Retention Storage Quota

The data retained using the built-in retention is counted towards you Office 365 storage quota, and you will need to purchase additional storage if you exceed the limit.

The price of additional storage capacity is 25 cents per GB monthly – see the next section for a more detailed discussion of Office 365 storage limits.

Limitations of Native Data Retention

The built-in recovery helps to recover the portion of Teams data stored on SharePoint (Teams Wiki, Files and OneNote) as well as the data stored in Exchange (emails sent to Teams mailbox and Teams calendar).

At the same time, the data retention period is limited to 93 days. Significant share of Teams data is not protected, including team group and individual chats, tasks, forms and all contents of private channels.

You can also implement Microsoft Teams backup using Office 365 compliance retention policies available only in E3-E5 plans.

The Microsoft compliance center available in these plans helps configure infinite data retention for selected applications and users, capturing all deleted and modified files/items.

To backup Teams using compliance retention policies you will need to configure using two Retention Policies (a single retention policy cannot retain Teams and other data at the same time).

Here is the overview of the configuration steps:

1. Go to compliance.microsoft.com
2. Create one policy for Teams chats and channels. This policy will retain messages (only) from:

• one-to-one team chats messages
• public team channel messages
• private team channel messages

1. Create a second policy to retain:

• OneDrive data (attachments from private channels are stored there)
• Exchange mailboxes (contains emails sent to the Teams email address and the Teams calendar)
• SharePoint sites included in the Groups linked to selected teams

The “premium” retention policies are available in E3-E5 Office 365 plans. If you are on a cheaper plan, you will only have access to the “short-term” retention policies that do not cover Teams conversations and messages.

Compliance Retention & O365 Storage

The retained data consumes your Office 365 storage quota and it can be a significant constraint. Because Office keeps the full versions of all deleted and modified data (no “incremental” backups or deduplication is provided), Office 365 storage limits can be reached fast. Users report than within 2-3 months after the retention policies are enabled for SharePoint sites / OneDrives, the retained data takes up more than 80% of the total drive’s storage.

Sharepoint storage quota. Regardless of your Office 365 pricing plan, each SharePoint site includes 1TB storage quota in addition to 10GB per user. Therefore, your domain-wide total SharePoint quota equals to the number of SharePoint sites x 1TB, plus the number of users x 10GB.

OneDrive for Business storage quota. Each OneDrive includes 1TB storage quota in Business/E1 plans, and 5TB in E3/E5 plans.

Exchange Online storage quota. Each Exchange online mailbox includes 100GB storage quota regardless of the pricing plan.

Limitations of Compliance Retention

In addition to their heavy impact on storage consumption, “premium” Microsoft Retention Policies are limited in their ability to capture Teams data.

The policies do not backup Teams Planner (Tasks), OneNote or Forms data. Teams Wiki are backed up (retained) as a web page file, but cannot be opened offline or uploaded back to Office 365.

There are 7 Office 365 backup vendors that, in our opinion, provide usable support of Microsoft Teams backup.

The three most complete tools - AvePoint, Veeam, Druva and SkyKick - provide backup of Team channel messages and attachments, as well as partial 1-1 Team chats and their attachments backup.

To backup 1-1 team chats with all the 4 solutions (except Druva) administrators have to manually assign protection to each Team member, and therefore we consider their support of 1-1 chats and attachments backup to be partial. Druva is the only solution (aside from Afi) that enables to select all members of a Team and protect them automatically (without the need to do it one by one).

	AvePoint	Veeam	Druva	Datto	Spanning	Skykick	Synology
Teams Messaging
Channel messages
Channel attachments
Private channel messages
Private channel attachments
1-1 chats
1-1 chat attachments
Files & Pages
Public channel Files
Private channel Files
Wiki pages
Other
Shared mailboxes
Shared calendars
Tasks (Planner)

Full support Partial support Not supported

One common drawbacks of the backup tools is the inability to backup private Team channels data (chats, attachments and Files). AvePoint is the only vendor (aside from Afi) which enables the backup of private channel messages, but it does not backup the attachemnts and private channel Files (the backup can be scheduled, but no data is retained).

Other frequent drawbacks of the third-party Teams backup tools include partial or absent support of 1-1 attachments and messages, as well as unsupported data types (shared calendars, OneNote notebooks) and incomplete support of Wiki pages (most solutions can back them up as binary files, but the data cannot be restored back to Office 365 correctly).

Afi Teams Backup

Afi provides the most complete MS Teams backup (including private channels contents and Teams data stored on team members OneDrives). Afi is also the only cloud Office 365 backup service that enables the management of user backup policies based on their Group and Team membership.

It only takes 1-2 minutes to configure Teams backup in Afi:

1. Select a teams in the Groups/Teams resource view, and assign a backup SLA policy to it.

1. Select a Teams channel in the Active Directory view to assign a backup SLA policy to all users that have access to the Teams channel.

Using Afi you can backup and recover Teams messages, Files and other Teams resources. Afi provides flexible point-in-time recovery options including online data preview, full-text search for Exchange items and 10s other unique features. Learn more about Afi Office 365 backup or feel free to start a free trial.

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