Data retention policy for meeting chats with external people

Question

We use Teams meetings to carry out focus groups/interviews with external folk and these sometimes use the chat facility within that. Is it possible to set up a data retention policy so that any data within that chat can be deleted and/or access to it is removed for the external participants? These focus group/interview participants are usually with different people each time. Our concern is that after the meeting finishes, the external participants still have access to this meeting chat and any content shared in it as well as other participant data.

Answer 1

Hi @Donna Dougal,

Thank you for the response. 

To ensure that retention policies are properly enforced for external participants such as those joining Teams meetings or collaborating via shared documents, it is essential that these users are added to your Microsoft Entra ID tenant as external guest users. 

This requirement exists because Microsoft 365 retention policies rely on identity attributes (such as email address, user ID, and group membership) to apply governance rules. Without being registered in Entra ID, external users lack the necessary identity metadata for policies to target their content. As a result, retention labels and policies cannot be applied to their chats, files, or other interactions. 

Once added as guests in Entra ID, these users become part of your directory and can be governed under your organization’s compliance framework, just like internal users. This ensures consistent enforcement of retention, deletion, and preservation rules across all participants. 

  

In case you have not added an external user to your Microsoft tenant, here's how to do it: 

1. Sign in to Microsoft Entra admin center
2. Select Users on the left pane  

3. Select New user drop-down > Invite external user 
4. Enter user's email address > edit user's properties, and role assignment if needed. 

5. Select Review + invite 
6. The user will receive an email saying that they're invited join your organization, ask them to accept the invitation. 

 

Note: If you are an end-user, please contact your organization's global admin to do it for you. 

 

If you have any further questions and difficulties while setting data retention policy or adding external user, please let me know. Looking forward to your response. 

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Answer 2

Thanks. Not sure i know what you mean by the below:

Note: you can only do this if the external participant is added in the Microsoft Entra ID as external guest in order to use the participant's properties, such as Email, user name, etc. 

We invite external people - usually different folk each time to the Teams meeting. How could we do this?

Answer 3

Hi @Donna Dougal,

Thank you for the response. Yes, you can create data retention policy for Teams meeting chats with external participants.  

 

Note: you can only do this if the external participant is added in the Microsoft Entra ID as external guest in order to use the participant's properties, such as Email, user name, etc. 

Please follow the following steps to create the data retention policy: 

1. Create an adaptive scope 

• Sign in to the Microsoft Purview portal > Settings > Roles and scopes > Adaptive scopes 
• Name your scope 

• Set admin unit 

• Set User as scope type 

 

• Use adaptive scope query: UserPrincipalName -like *@gmail.com. Replace with external guest's actual domain  

• Review and finish 

2. Create data retention policy 

• In Purview portal, select Solutions > Data Lifecycle Management > Policies > Retention policies. 
• Select New retention policy to start the Create retention policy configuration, and name your new retention policy. 
• For the Assign admin units page, keep the default of Full directory. Currently, admin units aren't supported for this policy. 
• Choose adaptive scope to create policy 

• Click Add scope, select the scope created, click Add. 

• Choose Teams chats to apply the policy, click Next 

• Select retention settings 

• Review then finish 

Note: If you are an end-user, please ask your organization's global admin to do this for you 

 

For more information, please refer to these articles from Microsoft: 

• Adaptive scopes | Microsoft Learn 
• Automatically retain or delete content by using retention policies | Microsoft Learn 

 

If you have any further questions and concerns, please don’t hesitate to ask. Looking forward to your response.

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Answer 4

Hi @Donna Dougal,

Good day to you! Welcome to Microsoft Q&A. 

Regarding to your question, Microsoft 365 does support retention policy for Microsoft Teams for Teams chats, channel message, and private channel messages. In order to create and manage retention policies for Microsoft Teams, if you are an end user, please ask your organization's IT admin to follow these steps: 

1. Sign in to the Microsoft Purview portal > Solutions > Data Lifecycle Management > Policies > Retention policies. 
2. Select New retention policy to start the Create retention policy configuration, and name your new retention policy. 
3. For the Assign admin units page, keep the default of Full directory. Currently, admin units aren't supported for this policy. 
4. For the Choose the type of retention policy to create page, select Adaptive or Static, depending on the choice you made from the Before you begin instructions. If you haven't already created adaptive scopes, you can select Adaptive but because there won't be any adaptive scopes to select, you won't be able to finish the configuration with this option. 
5. Depending on your selected scope: 

• If you chose Adaptive: On the Choose adaptive policy scopes and locations page, select Add scopes and select one or more adaptive scopes that have been created. Then, select one or more locations. The locations that you can select depend on the scope types added. For example, if you only added a scope type of User, you'll be able to select Teams chats but not Teams channel messages. 
• If you chose Static: On the Choose locations to apply the policy page, select one or more locations: 
  • Teams channel message: Messages from standard and shared channel chats, and standard and shared channel meetings, but not from private channels that have their own policy location. 
    • Teams chats: For Teams, messages from private 1:1 chats, group chats, meeting chats, and chat with yourself. 
      • Teams private channel messages: Messages from private channel chats and private channel meetings. If you select this option, you can't select the other Teams locations in the same retention policy. 

6. For Decide if you want to retain content, delete it, or both page, specify the configuration options for retaining and deleting content. 

You can create a retention policy that just retains content without deleting, retains and then deletes after a specified period of time, or just deletes content after a specified period of time. For more information, see Settings for retaining and deleting content. 

7. Complete the configuration and save your settings. 

 

For further information, please refer to this article: Automatically retain or delete content by using retention policies | Microsoft Learn 

 

If you have further questions and concerns, please don’t hesitate to ask, I'm here to help. Looking forward to your response.

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