Anyone who follows my blog posts knows that I am a big advocate of creating and storing all relevant information in channels in Teams. Microsoft Teams meeting recordings are no exception. Microsoft Teams meeting recordings are typically stored in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint, depending on how the meeting was scheduled.

1. Channel Meetings
   Team channel meetings are the thing for those of you who like order and structure.
   
   If the meeting was scheduled in a Teams channel (As I believe it almost always should be), the recording is stored in the SharePoint site associated with that team.
   
   Location: Team > Channel > Files > Recordings (This links to the SharePoint folder.).
   
2. Non-Channel (Private or Group) Meetings
   Non-channel meetings (those created directly from the Outlook calendar or Teams calendar) are for those who don’t care where the information is stored or whether it is sufficiently secured.
   
   If the meeting was scheduled directly in the calendar (not tied to a channel), the recording is stored in the OneDrive of the person who started the recording.
   
   Location: OneDrive > Recordings folder of the meeting organizer or recorder.

Hijacked meeting recordings will soon be a thing of the past

When it comes to these scheduled Non-channel meetings, you’ve probably experienced at some point that someone other than the meeting organizer starts the recording.

The result of this maneuver is that the person who started the recording either needs to move the recording to a location where others can access the recording or he/she has to share it from his/her OneDrive for Business. Both of these options are just unnecessary extra work and besides (and once again) I believe that meeting recordings do not belong on anyone’s OneDrive for Business.

No matter how we twist and turn, inform and educate, there are still those who insist on not using Channel meetings and thus we will inevitably have to deal with the fact that some meeting recordings end up on someone’s OneDrive for Business.

Until now, the meeting recording, as mentioned above, has been on the OneDrive for Business that belongs to the person who started the meeting recording. So if I am a meeting organizer and have sent invitations to the meeting participants, any of the meeting participants can “hijack” the meeting recording itself. Now, however, that will no longer be the case because Microsoft Teams will retire the recording initiator policy by June 30, 2025. Recordings will after that default to the meeting organizer’s OneDrive. Read more here: MC1085569 – Microsoft Teams: Upgrade to Meeting Recording Organizer Policy by 30 June 2025 | Microsoft 365 Message Center Archive

Summary

To conclude this post, I would like to conclude by saying that unless you have a specific reason not to use scheduled channel meetings, you should use scheduled channel meetings for the simple reason that it puts all the information in the context it belongs in. BUT, if you are scheduling a meeting that is not particularly important, or if the meeting does not contain any relevant information that needs to be captured and secured in a logical context, then you can schedule these meetings directly from your Outlook or Teams calendar.