Microsoft Teams has become the go-to platform for meetings, classes, and collaboration for many businesses and schools. With its plethora of features for video calling, screen sharing, messaging, and document collaboration, it’s easy to see why Teams is so popular.
But once your Teams meeting ends, all that valuable discussion can seem to disappear into the ether. To capture everything covered for future reference, you need to record your Microsoft Teams meetings.
Recording your Teams meetings provides a few key benefits:
- Revisit the meeting discussion details later when prepping documents and deliverables
- Share meeting recordings with colleagues who couldn’t attend
- Create transcripts of the meeting for easy searching and sharing
In this post, we’ll cover everything you need to know about recording in Teams, from enabling options to capturing audio, video, and chat. Let’s dive in!
Enabling Recording in Microsoft Teams
The first step is making sure you have recording enabled in Microsoft Teams.
Recording capability is available on several versions of Teams, including the desktop app, web app, and mobile apps for iOS and Android. However, the specific recording options can vary.
Here’s a quick look at how to enable recording in the desktop and web versions of Teams:
Microsoft Teams Desktop App
Recording is enabled by default in the Teams desktop app. To confirm:
- Click on your profile picture, then “Settings”
- Select “Permissions”
- Verify that “Allow recording” is toggled ON
If needed, toggle the switch to on to enable recording.
Microsoft Teams Web App
In the Teams web app, recording is enabled at the organization level by your Teams administrator.
To check if you have access to recording:
- Click on your profile picture, then “Settings”
- Choose “Permissions”
- Look for “Allow recording” option
If you don’t see the “Allow recording” option, recording is not enabled by your admin. Reach out to them to request access.
Starting a Recording in a Teams Meeting
Once recording is enabled, there are a couple ways to start capturing your Teams meetings:
Option 1: Start recording during meeting
- After joining a Teams meeting, click on the “More options” menu (the 3 dots next to your profile picture)
- Select “Start recording”
- The recording will begin immediately and is visible by the red icon in the meeting toolbar
Option 2: Schedule meeting to record automatically
- In the Calendar tab, create a new Teams Meeting
- Expand the meeting options
- Toggle “Record meeting automatically” to on
- The meeting recording will start automatically when the meeting begins
The meeting organizer can start and stop recordings anytime during the session.
Recordings automatically end when the meeting is over.
Capturing Teams Meeting Audio, Video, and Chat
By default, Microsoft Teams will record audio, video, and screen-sharing activities during a meeting. This captures the full discussion for future reference. You can customize what gets recorded in the meeting options:
Audio and Video: Capture audio and video from meeting participants by leaving these options enabled.
Screen Sharing: Record any content presented in the meeting, like slides and shared screens.
Chat: Preserve in-meeting chat conversations by toggling the “Include chat” option when starting a recording.
Transcript: You can choose to include machine-generated voice transcriptions during recording start.
Select the components you want to keep for the best record of your Teams meetings.
Storing and Accessing Teams Recordings
Teams meeting recordings are automatically saved to Microsoft Stream, Microsoft’s secure video service.
Recordings are organized in Stream channels based on your Teams organization.
To find your meeting recordings:
- Go to Microsoft Stream
- Select “Channels” in the left menu
- Open your Team or organization channel
- Select “Videos” to see all recordings
From here, you can:
- Play recordings to review meeting discussions
- Download recordings to store locally
- Share access by inviting others to view the recording
- Manage permissions to control viewing access
- Get a transcript of the voice portions of the recording
3rd Party Recording Options for Teams
The native recording options in Microsoft Teams provide an easy way to capture your meetings.
However, Teams recordings have a few limitations:
- Time limit: Native Teams recordings have a time limit. Longer meetings are automatically stopped.
- Editing tools: There is no way to easily edit the recordings once completed.
- Automatic capture: You must manually start recording for each meeting.
- Mobile support: Mobile app recording only captures shared screens, not participant video.
For advanced recording needs, 3rd party solutions like Supernormal provide enhanced recording, transcribing, tracking, and analytics for Microsoft Teams meetings.
Key features include:
- Unlimited recording time: Capture meetings longer than 4 hours without interruption.
- Automatic capture: All meetings are recorded without needing to enable each time.
- Mobile video: Video from iOS and Android participants is captured along with screen shares.
- Smart transcripts: Get time-stamped, speaker-labeled transcripts of meetings using AI.
- Easy sharing: Share meeting highlights, transcripts, notes, and clips in a click.
- Seamless integration: Supernormal notes can be automatically shared into hundreds of other tools.
For teams that run critical meetings in Teams, third-party recording can provide professional-grade capture, transcripts, insights and sharing capabilities.
Recording Teams with Supernormal
In addition to the native Teams recording options, you can use Supernormal to automatically capture transcripts and video recordings of your Microsoft Teams meetings, and provide you with details you can’t get with those native options like summaries formatted by type of meeting and action items.
Key features include:
Automatically transcribe all meetings: To automatically capture transcriptions of all your meetings, enable "Take notes for Zoom and Teams meetings" in your Supernormal Account Settings. Supernormal will join and transcribe any Teams meetings on your synced calendar.
Automatically record video of all meetings: To also record video, enable "Record audio & video" in Account Settings. Supernormal will record video, audio, and generate transcripts.
Selectively record meetings: You can also choose to only transcribe or record certain meetings. Turn off auto-recording settings, and then invite norm@supernormal.com from your linked email to individual meetings.
Get smart transcripts: Supernormal uses AI to provide time-coded, speaker-labeled transcripts of your Teams meetings.
Share highlights easily: Supernormal makes it easy to share key moments, transcripts, notes and meeting clips after your session.
For advanced Teams meeting capture and management, Supernormal is a powerful option.
Key Takeaways for Recording Teams Meetings
Here are some top tips to remember about recording your Microsoft Teams meetings:
- Enable recording in your Teams settings to activate meeting capture.
- Start recording at the beginning or schedule meetings to record automatically.
- Capture audio, video, and chat for a complete record. Customize as needed per meeting.
- Access recordings in Microsoft Stream using your organization’s channel.
- Consider 3rd party apps like Supernormal for advanced recording, transcription, and analytics.
- Share notes, clips, and insights easily after the meeting.
Recording your Microsoft Teams meetings unlocks huge benefits, like increased productivity, easier collaboration, and powerful analytics. Follow these best practices to get the most value from capturing your Teams sessions. Soon you’ll wonder how your team ever worked without meeting recordings!