• Responsibilities of the owner of a Microsoft team
• Teams Chat Message Retention
• Microsoft team deletion
• UW Students cannot create or own a Microsoft team

Responsibilities of the owner of a Microsoft team

The owner of a Microsoft Team is responsible for:

• Managing access to the Team
• Securing content in the Team
• Managing content in the team according to UW records guidelines (or UW Medicine records guidelines, for UW Medicine employees)
• Submitting requests for changes to the Team to UW-IT
• Responding to requests from UW-IT regarding the Team
• Designating a new Team owner when they depart UW
• Deleting the Team when it is no longer needed

Teams Chat Message Retention

In Teams, "chat" messages are managed and retained a little differently than "channel" messages. "Chats" are things like direct/private messages between two users, the messages sent during a meeting, or the ad-hoc 2-or-more user messaging groups you can create as needed using the "Chat" page in Teams. These messages are treated as something called "transitory records": generally unimportant, short-term data that is informal in nature.

Because Teams chats are assumed to be transitory, UW only keeps those messages around as long as absolutely necessary: 30 days^[1], at which time they're automatically deleted. This is both in line with best practice and with regulations / greater UW data policy.

Some UW users may read that and think of messages in their recent chats that they don't want to have deleted because they're important or have useful information. That's a good sign that the data in your chat may not be transitory in nature; if that sounds like you, copy that important data into an email, SharePoint document, or some other long-term form of storage!

If you'd like more info on transitory data at UW, please click here.

^[1] In practice, this ends up being a range of time because the timer restarts when edits are made to a message.

Microsoft team deletion

A Microsoft Team may be deleted by UW-IT when the last UW employee or Shared UW NetID is removed as Team owner. The owner of a Microsoft Team can delete the Team by following these directions.

UW Student use guidance for Microsoft Teams

UW Students may use Microsoft Teams to join and interact in a Microsoft team(s). However, UW Students are prohibited from creating and/or owning a Microsoft team as students cannot be responsible for maintaining state or educational records. For students who need a Microsoft team, a recommended course of action is to contact a department staff or faculty member and have them request a Microsoft team on the student's behalf. Even if a department staff or faculty members is not participating in the Microsoft team, we recommend they use a Shared UW NetID provisioned for UW Office 365 as one of the owners of the Microsoft team so content can be removed when it is no longer needed or appropriate to hold.