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How Do Automatic Recordings Work For Microsoft Teams Meetings?

Written By Jack Bateman-Chuah (Super Administrator)

Updated at September 11th, 2023

What do meeting organisers need to know? 

Send. Set. Forget.

Meeting organisers set the meeting options after the meeting invite is sent. This is easy to forget. As soon as the meeting invite has been sent, edit the meeting invite and open the meeting options. Then turn on Record automatically.


Who owns the recording? 

For private Teams meetings, the first person to join the meeting will automatically start the recording if they are from the organisation hosting the meeting. They become the owner of the recording. It is stored in their OneDrive.

For channel Teams meetings, the first person to join still automatically starts the recording. But the recording file is stored in the channel under Files > Recordings. Team owners have full permission. Team members have edit permission  

Channel meeting auto recording.png

Sharing the meeting recording

The recording file is shared automatically with internal attendees. They are assigned ‘view’ permissions. This allows them to view the recording, but they cannot download or share the recording. 

The organiser is assigned edit permissions if the recording was auto-started by an attendee. This means the organiser can download the recording and share it even though the file is not in the organiser’s OneDrive. 

The recording is not shared with guests automatically. The owner of the recording or the meeting organiser needs to manually share the file with guests if required. 

Trim the recording

Automatic meeting recording will also impact when the actual meeting content will begin in the recording. When an organiser or organisational attendee has control of starting the recording, they can ensure it is shortly before the meeting introduction and content. Automatically recorded meetings will need to be trimmed to make them more consumable for large groups of people watching them later. 

What do meeting attendees need to know?

Attendees should be made aware that meetings may start recording as soon as they join. This will have an impact on friendly chat before the meeting starts. The usual banner will appear at the top of the meeting window when the recording starts automatically. This is the same warning people get when they join a meeting that has already started and it is being recorded too. 

Tip: Making sure the meeting organiser owns the meeting recording

If the organiser is certain they will attend the meeting, change the lobby behaviour. Change Who can bypass the lobby to ‘Only me’. All attendees will wait in a lobby till the organiser joins the meeting and admits everyone from the lobby. The meeting will start recording automatically from the time that the organiser joins. The meeting recording will then be saved into their OneDrive.