Microsoft Teams is an enterprise messaging app, a workspace for real-time collaboration and communication, meetings, file, and app sharing.
There are four ways to chat with people in Teams:
- In a channel on the Posts tab (with everyone on the team who follows that channel)
- In a group chat (with a few people at once, but outside of a channel)
- In a one-on-one chat (with one other person)
- In a meeting chat (the conversation attached to a scheduled or ad-hoc meeting)
The Microsoft Teams Chat connector captures the second, third, and fourth of these: personal (1:1) chats, group chats, and the chat conversations attached to meetings. Channel conversations are not captured by this connector; they are captured by the separate Microsoft Teams Channels connector.
The connector receives chat messages in near real time using Microsoft Graph change notifications. As messages are created, edited, or deleted in a chat, the connector is notified and updates the corresponding record in RecordPoint.
How chats become records
The connector submits one record per chat, per day. All of the messages sent in a chat during a single day are grouped together into a single record, along with any file attachments and inline images shared that day.
- The day boundary is determined by the Day Boundary Time Zone configured on the connector (see Configuration below). For example, with a Day Boundary Time Zone of UTC+10, a message sent at 11 pm UTC on 1 March is grouped into the 2 March record.
- The record title has the format
{Chat Title} (yyyy-MM-dd), for exampleProject Kickoff (2026-03-02). - The chat title is the chat's topic where one has been set. Chats without a topic (such as 1:1 chats) are titled using the participants' display names.
- Each record belongs to an aggregation representing the chat as a whole, so all daily records for a chat are kept together.
- If messages in a day are later edited or deleted, or new messages arrive for that day, the record for that day is resubmitted with the updated content.
System event messages, such as members being added or the chat being renamed, are not captured. Call events (call started, call ended, call recording available, and call transcript available) are captured as part of the day's conversation.
Prerequisites
The connector uses a Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) app registration to access your Microsoft 365 tenant through the Microsoft Graph API. During setup, a Global Administrator must grant admin consent to the connector application for the permissions below.
All permissions are application permissions. The connector does not use delegated permissions, and it does not act on behalf of any individual user.
| Permission | Type | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Chat.Read.All | Application | Discovering chats, reading chat details and members, reading chat messages, and subscribing to chat message change notifications |
| User.Read.All | Application | Listing the users in your tenant so that their chats can be discovered |
| Files.ReadWrite.All | Application | Downloading file attachments shared in chats, and deleting file attachments at the source when a record is disposed |
| Sites.ReadWrite.All | Application | Accessing and deleting chat files stored in SharePoint |
| Chat.ManageDeletion.All | Application | Deleting an entire chat at the source on disposal. Only required if the "delete whole chat when the first record is disposed" option is enabled |
Add Connector
- Click on the Settings icon in the top right hand corner of RecordPoint.
- Click on Add Connector and select the Microsoft Teams Chat Connector in the Gallery.
- Click Add.
After creating the Microsoft Teams Chat connector instance you will be redirected to the Connector Details page.
Authorizing the Connector
Now that the connector instance has been created, the connector needs to be authorized to access your Microsoft 365 tenancy.
Once you are in the Microsoft Teams Chat Connector Details page, select Link Account to connect RecordPoint to your Microsoft 365 tenancy.
You will be directed to a page where Microsoft will prompt you to log in. Here, enter your Global Administrator credentials, and then click Accept to grant the requested permissions.
To perform this action, the Global Administrator does not require the ability to log into the RecordPoint tenant.
From here, the remaining configuration can be completed and the connector can be enabled. Some decisions about how records submitted by the connector should be managed in RecordPoint are required, and this should be performed in consultation with the Records Management function of your organization.
Configuration
The following options are available on the Connector Details page.
Ingestion Mode and Manage Chats
The Ingestion Mode controls which chats the connector captures:
| Option | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Ingest only specified Chats | Only the chats added to the inclusion list under Manage Chats are captured |
| Ingest all Chats except those specified | All chats in the tenant are captured, except those added to the exclusion list under Manage Chats |
Chats are added to the inclusion or exclusion list under Manage Chats by providing the chat title and the chat link.
Messages To Submit
Controls how much chat history is captured when a chat first comes under management:
| Option | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Only New Messages | Only messages sent after the chat comes under management are captured |
| Last Month | Messages from the last month are also captured |
| Last Six Months | Messages from the last six months are also captured |
| All Messages | The full available history of the chat is captured |
Day Boundary Time Zone
Because the connector creates one record per chat per day, the Day Boundary Time Zone determines where one day ends and the next begins. Select the UTC offset that matches your organization's primary time zone, from UTC-12 to UTC+14. The default is UTC.
This setting cannot be changed after the connector is enabled.
Binary Ingestion
When Binary Ingestion is enabled (the default), file attachments and inline images shared in a chat are captured as binaries on the day's record, and attachment metadata is included on the record. When disabled, only the conversation transcript is captured and attachment counts are reported as zero.
Delete whole chat on first record disposal
This option is disabled by default.
When enabled, disposing the first record of a chat (the record covering the day of the chat's very first message) also deletes the entire chat conversation in Microsoft Teams for all participants. See How disposal works below for details.
Record content and metadata
Binaries
Each record contains:
| Binary | When present |
|---|---|
| Chat Thread.html | Always. An HTML transcript of the day's conversation, including message text, senders, timestamps, and reactions |
| File attachments | When Binary Ingestion is enabled, each file shared in the chat that day is captured as a separate binary |
| Inline images | When Binary Ingestion is enabled, images pasted directly into messages that day are captured as separate binaries |
Metadata
The following metadata is submitted with every record:
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Chat Name | String | The chat title (topic, or participant names for chats without a topic) |
| ChatId | String | The unique Microsoft Teams identifier for the chat |
| Date | String | The day the record covers, in yyyy-MM-dd format (in the configured Day Boundary Time Zone) |
| Participants - Name | String | Comma-separated display names of the chat members |
| Participants - Email | String | Comma-separated email addresses of the chat members |
| Message Count | Double | The number of messages sent in the chat that day |
| Reply Count | Double | Always 0. Personal, group, and meeting chats do not support threaded replies |
| Deleted Message Count | Double | The number of the day's messages that have been deleted in Teams |
| Attachments Count | Double | The number of file attachments shared that day. Reported as 0 when Binary Ingestion is disabled |
| Mentions Count | Double | The number of @mentions in the day's messages |
| Created Date Time | DateTime | When the first message of the day was sent (UTC) |
| Last Modified Date Time | DateTime | When the day's messages were last modified (UTC) |
| Chat Created Date | DateTime | The timestamp of the chat's first message. This value is the same on every record of the chat |
| Chat Type | String | The kind of chat: Personal (1:1), Group, or Meeting
|
| Is First Record | Boolean | True only on the record covering the day of the chat's first message. False on all other records of the chat |
The following metadata is included only when applicable:
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Attachments | String | Comma-separated file names of the day's attachments. Present when the day has attachments and Binary Ingestion is enabled |
| Has Attachments | Boolean | True. Present when the day has attachments and Binary Ingestion is enabled |
| Mentions | String | Comma-separated @mention text. Present when the day's messages contain mentions |
| Has Mentions | Boolean | True. Present when the day's messages contain mentions |
| Last Edited Date Time | DateTime | When a message was last edited (UTC). Present when at least one of the day's messages has been edited |
How disposal works
When a record is disposed in RecordPoint, the connector deletes the record's content at the source:
- The file attachments belonging to the record's day are deleted from their source location (the files are moved to the recycle bin of the OneDrive or SharePoint site where Teams stored them).
- The conversation transcript and record metadata are destroyed in RecordPoint as part of the normal disposal process.
When the Delete whole chat on first record disposal option is enabled, disposing the first record of a chat (identified by the Is First Record metadata field) additionally deletes the entire chat at the source. The chat thread is removed from Microsoft Teams for all participants. Microsoft performs this as a soft delete: tenant administrators have seven days to restore a deleted chat, after which it cannot be recovered.
This option is disabled by default. Enable it only if your retention policy requires chat conversations to be destroyed at the source when their records are disposed, and note that disposing the first record removes the whole conversation, including days covered by records that have not yet reached the end of their retention period. It is recommended that all records of a chat are managed under the same retention schedule when this option is used.
Attachments in Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint
When a file is attached to a Teams chat, Teams uploads the file to the sender's OneDrive (or to a SharePoint location for some chat types), and the chat message links to it. The connector ingests the file as part of the chat record. Note the following:
- If a OneDrive or SharePoint connector is also monitoring the same location, a duplicate record of the file may be created by that connector.
- If the file is later modified or deleted directly in OneDrive or SharePoint, the Teams Chat connector does not detect the change unless the chat itself is updated.
- On disposal, the connector deletes the source file from OneDrive or SharePoint. If the file was already moved or deleted, the disposal of the remaining content still completes.
Known limitations
- Channel conversations are not captured by this connector. Use the Microsoft Teams Channels connector to manage channel content.
- System event messages (for example, members added or removed, chat renamed) are not captured.
- Reactions to messages are captured in the HTML transcript, not as separate metadata fields.
- Inline images and other hosted content are not deleted at the source on disposal; only file attachments are. When the whole chat is deleted (with the option above enabled), all of its content is removed with it.
- The Microsoft Graph API rate limits requests. During large ingestions (for example, when Messages To Submit is set to All Messages), the connector automatically backs off and retries, which can extend how long the initial ingestion takes.