This month we have a couple notifications that may require Administrators to take action. The first is regarding Teams Meeting Recordings Auto-Expiration that will take effect in January 2022. The second is a reminder that the IE11 (Internet Explorer) desktop application will be retired on June 15, 2022. For those with legacy-dependent sites and apps with IE dependencies, additional actions will need to be taken. Other updates include changes to the Service Health Dashboard, a new look coming to the OneDrive and SharePoint Move/Copy user experience, as well as new functionality for Power Apps.

Teams Meeting Recordings Auto-Expiration in OneDrive and SharePoint

New action is required if you do not want your meeting recordings to auto-expire in January 2022.

Microsoft is introducing a new auto-expiration feature for Teams meeting recordings, which will automatically delete Teams recording files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint after a preset period of time. New recordings will automatically expire 60 days after they are recorded if no action is taken, except for A1 users who will receive a max 30-day default setting. Admins can disable this feature if desired or change the number of days before auto-deletion. Users can also modify the expiration date for any recordings on which they have edit/delete permissions, using the files details pane in OneDrive or SharePoint.

Note: The policy attribute to control the expiration is NewMeetingRecordingExpirationDays.

Additional clarifications:

• The expiration setting is not a retention setting. For example, setting a 30-day expiration on a file will trigger an auto-deletion 30 days after the file was created, but it will not prevent a different system or user from deleting that file ahead of that schedule.
• Any retention/deletion/legal hold policies you have designated in the Compliance center will override this feature.
• When a recording is deleted due to the expiration setting, the end user will be notified via email. The SharePoint tenant or site admin, or the end user with edit/delete permissions will be able to retrieve the file from the recycle bin for up to 90 days.
• The admin does not have the ability to override end-user modification capabilities.
• This will not impact any existing meeting recordings created before the feature is deployed. Also, any changes to the default date in the admin console will only apply to newly created meeting recordings after the change is made.
• The minimum number of days that can be set on NewMeetingRecordingExpirationDays is 1 and the maximum is 99,999 (e.g. 273 years) or it can be set to never auto-expire.
• This feature does not impact meeting recordings stored in Microsoft Stream (classic Stream) but will affect recordings stored in the new Stream (built on OneDrive and SharePoint).
• This feature is only available for Teams meeting recordings created by the Teams service in OneDrive and SharePoint. It is not available for other file types in OneDrive and SharePoint.

What you need to do to prepare

To change the default auto-expiration setting for your tenant, go to admin.teams.microsoft.com. Then, navigate to Meetings > Meeting Policies > Add in the left navigation panel. Then modify the setting under the Recording & transcription section. You can turn “Meetings automatically expire” to off if you do not want meeting recordings to expire at all, or you can set a specific number of default days between 1 and 99999.

You can also modify the setting in PowerShell by setting the attribute NewMeetingRecordingExpirationDays. If you use PowerShell, set the attribute to “-1” to never auto-expire TMRs, or set it to a specific number of days (min: 1 day, max: 99,999 days). PowerShell documentation here: Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy (SkypeForBusiness) | Microsoft Docs

Learn more about the feature: Meeting policies and meeting expiration in Microsoft Teams.

Reminder: IE11 desktop application retires in 7 months on June 15, 2022 – Set up IE mode today (non-LTSC, non-Server)

The IE11 desktop application will be retired on June 15, 2022. This means that the IE11 desktop application will no longer be supported and afterwards will redirect to Microsoft Edge. If your organization has legacy sites and apps with IE dependencies, you will need to set up IE mode so that users can access them through Microsoft Edge.

With 7 months left before retirement, we highly recommend you start preparing for this multi-month transition today. The essential first step—Site Discovery—typically takes 3-4 weeks. Because this step requires active users on your network, we recommend kicking this off before the holiday downtime. Site Discovery identifies legacy-dependent sites in your organization based on user traffic. Don’t delay and get started on your transition today.

Note: IE is not available on Windows 11. To continue using legacy IE-based sites and apps on Windows 11, IE mode in Microsoft Edge must be configured before deploying Windows 11.

Internet Explorer 11 desktop application:

• Action:
  • To continue using a supported browser, transition to the Microsoft Edge.
  • To continue using legacy IE-based sites and apps in Windows 10 and Windows 11, you will need to configure those sites and apps to open in Microsoft Edge using Internet Explorer mode.
    • Start setting up IE mode by performing Site Discovery (3-4 week process depending on the size of your organization). This is also available as part of the Configure IE mode guided experience in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

Use the Getting Started guide to learn how to set up Microsoft Edge in your organization, configure Internet Explorer mode (if needed), and move your end users.

• Start setting up IE mode by performing Site Discovery (typically 3-4 weeks). This is also available as part of the Configure IE mode guided experience in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

Visit the Internet Explorer mode website

New Section in Service Health Dashboard

By the end of the year, Admins will see a new section in the Service Health Dashboard that will be marked “Issues in your environment that require action.” Issues in this section will require admins to take an action to resolve them, but they are not issues with Microsoft services. However, the issues could affect Microsoft services if the issue is not resolved.

Examples:

• Usage quotas close to being exceeded
• Service throttling due to customer side issue
• Customer certificate expiration

OneDrive and SharePoint: Improved Move/Copy User Experience

The user experience for move/copy functionality in both OneDrive and SharePoint will have a new look by the end of January. The new look includes a dialog-based experience to choose the destination for their content. There will be no change to the underlying Move or Copy capabilities.

Power Apps Can Now Display Images from Microsoft Lists

Power Apps image controls will soon (by end of December) be able to display images that are stored in image columns in Microsoft Lists. Images can be displayed in four sizes: small, medium, large, or full. Once this is released, existing apps can also be updated to show images.

Learn more: Image control in Power Apps

As always, there are a lot of things happening in Microsoft 365, so be sure to check out the Tech Community Blogs and the Microsoft 365 Roadmap for more of what’s new!