What happens to Teams chat data in Azure Communication Services when user account is deleted?

Question

My school account has recently been deleted. I know that Teams chat data is stored in ACS and my exchange mailbox. Additionally, my organization has not set a retention policy for teams chat data. I’m aware that my exchange mailbox will be deleted after 30 days from my account deletion.

Question is, will my chat data that is stored in ACS also be deleted? provided that all accounts involved in the chat are deleted by the organization?

One page told me that ACS retains data indefinitely until deleted. I don’t know if deleting a user account would also command a deletion of ACS chat data in this case.

I couldn’t find explicit information relating to ACS on Microsoft documentation, except for this page that vaguely states ‘customer data’ will be deleted from Microsoft data centers within 30 days after an admin deletes a user account https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/compliance/assurance/assurance-data-retention-deletion-and-destruction-overview

Clarification would be appreciated

Answer 1

Hi @Ahmed N

Welcome to our forum!

If you don't set a retention policy before deletion, it will only be retained for 30 days.

But if a hold is applied to the mailbox prior to deleting the Microsoft 365 account, the mailbox will be converted into an inactive mailbox. At that point, the contents of the inactive mailbox are retained for the duration of the retention period specified before the user account was deleted. You can still recover the corresponding user account for a 30-day period, however after 30 days, the mailbox is retained in Microsoft 365 as an inactive mailbox until the retention policy or retention labels are removed.

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