Key Points
- Microsoft Teams does not provide a single native backup and restore solution for all Teams data, so organizations may need additional backup capabilities to protect the Teams data they need.
- Microsoft Teams stores chat histories, channel messages, and shared files across multiple services, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business, instead of in one central location.
- Organizations bear responsibility for backing up their own Microsoft Teams data under Microsoft’s shared responsibility model.
- IT teams build a centralized Microsoft Teams backup strategy by identifying critical data, choosing a backup tool, automating backups, testing recovery, and monitoring backup health.
- Encrypting backup data and enforcing role-based access control help organizations support compliance with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA when backing up Microsoft Teams data.
Microsoft Teams is central to the daily operations of countless businesses, allowing for communication and collaboration among team members wherever they are. This makes the data used and shared through Microsoft Teams, including chat histories, shared files, and data from third-party apps integrated with Teams, highly valuable. Despite this, Microsoft Teams does not offer a single native solution for backing up all Teams-related data.
This presents a challenge to IT departments: Microsoft Teams data is spread across multiple locations, and much of the business-critical information shared on Teams is linked to external services (for example, links to other productivity platforms or files hosted on other cloud services). In some cases, backing up this data isn’t just crucial for business continuity, but also necessary for legal compliance. This guide will explain the benefits of centralizing Microsoft Teams Backups across locations and formats and how you can safely secure your information.
For a visual breakdown of this topic, watch Centralizing Microsoft Teams Backups Across Locations and Formats.
What you need to back up Microsoft Teams data (including chat history and shared files)
How you back up your Microsoft Teams data depends on which features you use and how you use them. For some businesses, Teams is a simple enterprise chat app for coordinating between team members, and in this case, only the chat histories need to be backed up. For other organizations, Teams is the linchpin of complex collaboration involving multiple tools that exist both inside and outside the broader Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
The following requirements are common to backing up most Microsoft Teams deployments:
- Administrative access to Microsoft Teams with the appropriate permissions.
- Access and privileges to other relevant Microsoft 365 environments where your users store data (e.g., SharePoint, OneDrive)
- Access (ideally via an API) and privileges for third-party tools where data may be stored
- Access to backup tools and platforms that can access and store the data required
You will also need to decide on:
- How frequently you need to back up Microsoft Teams data
- How long this data will be kept (data retention)
- Where these backups will be stored
Once you have this information, you can build your Microsoft Teams backup policy and choose and configure the components to enact it.
Where is Microsoft Teams data stored?
Data created by Microsoft Teams is stored in the following locations:
| Teams Component | Backed by Service | Stored In |
| One-to-one and group chats | Teams chat service | Azure-based chat storage |
| Channel messages | Teams chat service | Azure-based chat storage |
| Shared files (channel) | SharePoint Online | Team’s associated SharePoint site |
| Shared files (chat) | OneDrive for Business | Sender’s OneDrive folder |
| Calendar | Exchange Online | User or group calendar |
| Apps, tabs, wikis | Varies by third-party integration | Often stored externally or in M365 |
Due to the distributed nature of this data, no single native backup interface can cover all Teams content types at once. This is compounded as you add external tools that your users share data from via Teams.
Microsoft’s native backup limitations
Microsoft, like other cloud providers, uses a shared responsibility model, where responsibility for the data they host on your behalf is split between you and the cloud service provider. In this arrangement, Microsoft is responsible for the availability of its service and the protection of its infrastructure, but you are responsible for protecting and recovering your own data.
Microsoft Teams does not provide native snapshots covering all Teams files, conversation histories, and configurations in a single backup. Depending on the applicable retention policies, Teams data may be permanently deleted once their retention period expires. Additionally, restoring a deleted channel may not fully restore its message threads.
Microsoft does not provide a single backup and restore mechanism that covers all Teams-related data across services and platforms, so organizations may need additional backup capabilities depending on their requirements.
Centralized backup strategy: How to backup Microsoft Teams files
You can follow this framework when deciding on the policies and tools you’ll use to back up Microsoft Teams chat history, files, and other data:
- Identify what data needs to be backed up: Identify where key data is generated across your Microsoft Teams toolchain and workflows, including conversation histories, shared files, integrations, and links to third-party tools.
- Choose your backup tool: Choose a backup solution that can connect to and programmatically back up this data. This may include data from SharePoint, OneDrive, or Exchange, or stored in third-party SaaS platforms.
- Automate backups: Automate your backups based on your backup schedule, and implement data retention.
- Plan for recovery: You must regularly test and validate your backups to make sure they are accessible and readable, and that the data you require is being properly captured in a recoverable format for either local use or restoration to a new tenant (if supported). Include Teams backups as part of your broader business continuity plan.
- Implement monitoring and reporting: Integrate your Microsoft Teams backup solution with your monitoring and reporting tools so that you are made aware of failed backups or other issues, and so that records are kept for auditing purposes.
NinjaOne SaaS Backup provides automated, cloud-based backup for Microsoft 365, including Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. For Teams, it can back up team structures, channel messages, and associated files.
What to watch for
A backup strategy can look complete and still leave gaps if it relies on Microsoft’s native tools or covers only the most visible parts of Teams.
| Mistake | Why it happens | How to avoid it |
| Treating a Microsoft Purview retention policy as a backup | Retention policies keep a compliance copy for eDiscovery, so teams assume that the copy can also be used to restore lost data. | Use a dedicated backup tool for backup and recovery; use retention policies for their intended compliance and data lifecycle purposes. |
| Missing Teams private chats | Backup plans often scope to team channels only, since that’s where most visible collaboration happens. | Confirm your backup tool separately covers 1:1 and small-group chats, not just channel content. |
| Assuming third-party links shared in Teams are backed up | Teams only stores a link to files hosted outside Microsoft 365, not the file itself. | Identify third-party tools linked from Teams during the “what needs to be backed up” step, and back them up independently. |
Microsoft Teams backup best practices and security and compliance considerations
Data backup is critical when something goes wrong, and you lose access to cloud data and need to fall back to local backups. There are also legal considerations: Privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA require organizations to protect personal data, including ensuring the security of backup copies, when they contain such data. The subjects of personally identifiable information (PII) may also have rights to request the deletion or correction of their data, which organizations should account for when managing data in active systems and backups.
Backup data must also be encrypted at rest and in transit, and role-based access control (RBAC) should be implemented to ensure that only authorized users and services can interact with sensitive information.
NinjaOne SaaS Backup helps you manage your cloud and SaaS backup tasks. SaaS backups can be monitored and managed directly from the NinjaOne platform, allowing IT teams to view backup status, manage organizations and accounts, and access backup information from a central location.
