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What Can My Employer See On Microsoft Teams? Know It All

5 Min. Read

If you are on the business plan of your organization, then anything you do on Microsoft Teams or any other MS Office apps will be visible to your employer. From the moment you log in, your employer can keep track of your calls, meetings, chats, etc.

They can also see the time you have spent online and the time you have spent away from work. This is how employers keep a report of the work you are doing in remote jobs.

Let us do a deep dive into what your employer can see on Microsoft Teams.

Things Your Employer Can See On Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams host excellent visual meetings involving the members of the team. It is easy to start a meeting. The meeting host doesn’t have to send the links individually. With a single click, all team members are immediately notified of a meeting.

Microsoft Teams has an admin center, from where the admin can access and extract information about your activities on the apps. Your employer will have to sign in to office.com to do that.

Microsoft Teams admin center
Microsoft Teams admin center

Only the administrator can access this data, and even higher privileges for admin roles are needed to access some reports.

Compliance

In the Microsoft 365 admin center, click on “… Show all” in the left-hand side menu. Among the options that appear, click on “Compliance”.

Microsoft 365 admin center | Compliance
Microsoft 365 admin center | Compliance

In the Microsoft Purview (formerly called Microsoft 365 compliance center), the admin can look through everything that Microsoft has to offer, including Teams, Skype, emails, etc. The content of any private channels you formed within teams and even the direct messages you sent are accessible by the admin.

In the “Content search” option under Solutions on the left side, the admin can search for anything across all Microsoft 365 apps. The search can be optimized by specific keywords or adding conditions such as message type, sender/author, subject/title, date, location, and much more.

Microsoft Purview Content Search
Microsoft Purview Content Search

Your employer can see when you send a message on a channel and the contents of those messages. The contents of a chat you deleted are also visible. So, be careful not to say anything malicious or unethical, because your employer will have a record of it.

Microsoft Teams Admin Center

To go to the Microsoft teams’ admin center, in the Microsoft 365 admin center, click on “Teams” in the left-hand side menu and go to “Analytics & reports”.

Your employer and admin can view several types of reports here and filter them by date range as well.

Each report can be exported to Excel for better analysis and can be filtered for specific teams or users.

Microsoft Teams admin center | Usage reports
Microsoft Teams admin center | Usage reports

Let’s take a look at some of these reports:

Apps Usage

In the Apps usage under usage reports, the admin and employer can see the different apps used by teams, whether they are Microsoft apps or other third-party apps.

The Teams app usage report in the Microsoft Teams admin center provides insights about which apps users are using in Teams. The employer and admin can gain insights into the app activity in your organization for different Microsoft like (Viva learning, Shifts, PowerPoint, Project, Power Automate, etc), third-party (Polly, Trello, etc.) & Line of Business (LOB) Teams apps.

Microsoft Teams apps usage report
Microsoft Teams apps usage report

The app usage report can be viewed for trends over the last 7, 30, 90, and 180 days.

The employer and admin must be either a global admin, global reader, or Teams service admin to view the reports in the Microsoft Teams admin center.

But please note that this report shows only the Apps which are available as part of Microsoft Teams (provided by your organization) and not the Apps installed on your device.

Microsoft Teams Apps
Microsoft Teams Apps

The Apps installed on your device can be tracked by Intune, for example.

Call Details

If you are on the company’s calling plan, then the admin can also view your calling history. They can see how many minutes you spent on calls and how much each of these calls costs the company.

Teams Device Usage

In the Teams device usage report, your company can see which type of device you used to log into teams, such as mac, iOS, Android, Windows, Web, etc.

They also have access to more technical details, such as the IP address of the device you are using and it’s brand and model number. The type of microphone and speaker you use during meetings is also visible.

Teams Usage

In the teams’ usage report, the admin can see the list of teams and a detailed account of all the messages posted in team channels. The employer can see the active users, active channels, replies, channel texts, urgent texts, meetings organized, mentions, reactions, and even memes!

Admin can click on a team to see what each member has been up to, from the meetings they attended to their call history. The call duration and participants of the call are also visible.

Teams User Activity

With teams’ user activity reports, the admin can analyze each user’s activity.

They can get an overview of the total channel messages, reply texts, posts, chat messages, total meetings, organized meetings, one-on-one calls, audio time, video time, screen sharing time, and the last date the user was active.

Users

Apart from Analytics and reports, some additional user-level information can also be viewed by selecting “Users” in the Microsoft Teams admin center menu.

Microsoft Teams admin center | Users
Microsoft Teams admin center | Users

This will display the names of all the employees at the company along with their personal information such as username, location, phone number, online/offline status, policies assigned to them, etc.

By clicking on each individual, the admin can see the number of meetings and calls someone has been on and the quality of those calls in the last 7 days. A detailed account of the employee’s call history and policies is also available to the admin.

Reports

Back at the Microsoft 365 admin center, there are some additional higher-level reports available.

Microsoft 365 admin center | Reports
Microsoft 365 admin center | Reports

Go to “Reports” in the left-side menu, the following report options will appear:

Productivity Score

This report scores the productivity of your organization based on how much use you are getting out of the tools offered by Microsoft 365. People’s experiences are based on how much they are communicating, the number of meetings they are having, and how much the teams are collaborating.

Usage

Microsoft 365 usage report shows how different users are engaging with the Microsoft apps and services. A graph will appear with the number of aggregate active users for a particular app or service.

Down below, there will be the usage report for each service and app. Even the number of emails sent and received is visible. Microsoft teams activity and OneDrive files are also available to review.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed all the different reports that your employer can see on Microsoft Teams.

The answer to what your boss can see on Microsoft teams is everything! Every time you click on something, a report of it is recorded and can be accessed by your employer because it is the company’s intellectual property.

But don’t be alarmed because your employer cannot get access to your activity without going through a long line of formalities.

First of all, they must have good reason to see someone’s messages or calls. Then, they would have to work with HR, Security, and the IT department to gain access to employee data. It is important to have a record of this data in case of a lawsuit or an investigation.

> Learn more on how to run Azure Cloud Shell in Microsoft Teams.

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Thank you for reading my blog.

If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment.

-Charbel Nemnom-

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About the Author
Charbel Nemnom
Charbel Nemnom is a Senior Cloud Architect, Swiss Certified ICT Security Expert, Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT). He has over 20 years of broad IT experience serving on and guiding technical teams to optimize the performance of mission-critical enterprise systems with extensive practical knowledge of complex systems build, network design, business continuity, and cloud security.

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16 thoughts on “What Can My Employer See On Microsoft Teams? Know It All”

Leave a comment...

  1. Hello,

    Thank you for sharing your expertise and helpful information.

    Can you please tell me if an employer can track the names typed in the Microsoft Teams Search box, even though the person searched is not communicated with?
    Merely typing the name and viewing the associated organizational chart?

    Thank you very much.

    Mary

  2. Hello Mary, thanks for your feedback and the comment!
    Great question :)
    Well based on my deep analysis, the employer cannot track the names typed in the Microsoft Teams Search box, even though the person searched is not communicated with.
    The content search in Microsoft Teams provides a way to query Microsoft Teams information spanning Exchange, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business only.
    And the “Teams user activity” under “Analytics & reports” in Microsoft Teams admin center, provides a way to see the total channel messages, reply texts, posts, chat messages, total meetings, organized meetings, one-on-one calls, audio time, video time, screen sharing time, and the last date the user was active. But nothing related to names that are typed in the Microsoft Teams Search box.
    I have simulated your exact scenario by typing the name and viewing the associated organizational chart of a person.
    And what I can say is that I cannot see or track the names typed in the Microsoft Teams Search box.
    Well again, I cannot confirm 100% because things might change in the future and Microsoft may include this logging activity.
    Hope it helps!

  3. Hello Isaiah, thanks for the comment!
    No, employers cannot track what buttons are pressed inside Microsoft Teams.
    Good question.

  4. Could you elaborate further on the “Apps used” section? It says the employer can see apps “used by teams, Microsoft or third-party”

    Can employers see what other programs I had running while using Teams?

  5. Hello Michael, thank you for the comment and the great question!
    Yes, your understanding is correct.
    The Teams app usage report in the Microsoft Teams admin center provides insights about which apps users are using in Teams.
    The employer and admin can gain insights into the app activity in your organization for different Microsoft like (Viva learning, Shifts, PowerPoint, Power Automate, etc), third-party (Polly, Trello, etc.) & Line of Business (LOB) Teams apps.
    But please note that this report shows only the Apps which are available as part of Microsoft Teams and not the Apps installed on your device.
    The Apps installed on your device can be tracked by Intune, for example.
    I have updated the article to clarify further about the “Apps usage” report.
    Hope it helps!

  6. Thank you Priti for your comment and the good question.
    I would stay by default, the employers cannot listen to calls on teams, nor record them to retain data on employees.
    However, the user (you) can record Teams calls, as well as VOIP and PSTN Calls, assuming that the Teams calling policy assigned to their accounts allows these features.
    To record calls and generate transcripts of calls to VOIP or PSTN numbers, the calling policy assigned to Teams user accounts must have the following settings enabled:
    AllowCloudRecordingForCalls: Controls if the user can record PSTN and VOIP calls. By default, the setting is True.
    AllowTranscriptionForCalling: Controls if the user can generate a transcript of a call. By default, the setting is False.
    The meeting recording is stored in the OneDrive for Business account of the user who records the call.
    Very important: There are third-party tools out there that allow recording for Microsoft Teams calls.
    So if your employer is using one of them, then potentially yes, he/she may record all the calls.
    They could capture audio, video, and screen-sharing for compliance and performance analysis.
    Hope it helps!

  7. Hello Charbel,

    Thank you for answering my question last month. My other related question is:

    Is a person notified when one types and searches the last name of a person in the search box of Teams even when no actual communication ensues?

    Thank you again for your expertise and time!

    Sincerely,

    Mary

  8. Thanks, Mary, I’m glad to be of service!
    No, the person is NOT notified when you type and search for the last name of a person in the search box of Teams even when no actual communication ensues.
    Hope it helps!

  9. Hi,
    Can they read deleted messages? In other words, if I delete a message, will they be able to see the original message?
    And if the user I communicated with is in another organization, will they be able to see his messages?

    Thanks!

  10. Hello JK, thanks for your comment and the great question!
    Yes, they can read deleted messages by using the compliance portal (Content search) feature.
    As for the second question, yes, they can search for the messages that you communicated with another person in a different organization.
    All Microsoft Teams 1:1 or group chats are journaled through to the respective users’ mailboxes.
    Check the following table that shows the content types that employers can search for, by using Microsoft eDiscovery tools.
    Hope it helps!

  11. Yes, I totally understand your point.
    But please note, Microsoft Teams is built on the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 hyper-scale, enterprise-grade cloud, delivering advanced security and compliance capabilities.
    And as a customer of Microsoft 365 or Office 365, you (or your employer) own and control the data. This is important in terms of security, compliance, and eDiscovery.

  12. Thank you very much for sharing your expertise.

    I have one more question, when one click on the names of those depicted in an organizational chart, are those people notified of this activity?

    Thank you very much for your kind assistance always.

    Mary

  13. Hello Mary, thanks for the comment and feedback!
    This is a great question :)
    The short answer is NO. People won’t get notified when you click on the organizational chart to see who they report to and who reports to them.
    Hope it helps!

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