Thanks to Microsoft Teams on-board tools, the collaboration environment can be used to exchange documents. In many cases, the documents in teams and channels will need to be archived in a legally secure and audit-proof manner, at least temporarily. It might also be necessary to reuse documents in a deleted team later or protect them against editing while hiding the team from active view.

Before you start archiving data in Teams, you need to think about the differences between backing up and archiving. In general, a backup is not an archive, because the data is continuously overwritten, and virtually nobody keeps a backup permanently. A backup is mostly used in the short and medium term and has the task of restoring deleted or destroyed files.

Archiving means long-term storage. Archiving is intended to prevent any changes to data. In this sense, an archive is a collection of data that companies need to store in a tamper-proof manner for legal reasons. Third-party products for backing up Microsoft Teams provide legally compliant storage, but integrated archiving can at least be used in parallel.

In this article, I look at the archiving possibilities that Teams offers out of the box. One massive advantage of using the integrated functions is that they do not delete any data; instead, the team is preserved in its entirety, although no longer listed as one of the active teams in the Teams client. This operation improves the overview while giving you audit-proof data storage. An added bonus is write protection for chats and all documents in the team.

Integration with SharePoint Online

Teams, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint are a useful combination of tools in Microsoft 365. SharePoint forms the underpinnings for Teams and OneDrive, with the documents in Teams being stored in SharePoint databases (Figure 1). To do this, Microsoft 365 creates a team website, including a document library in SharePoint Online. In turn, channels in teams get a folder within a team's document library, which plays an essential role in archiving channels and the documents they contain.

Figure 1: Documents that users save to teams and channels eventually end up in the team's document library in SharePoint Online.

Of course, deleting a team deletes the associated data from SharePoint Online – but this does not apply to channels. After deletion, the information still remains as a folder in the respective SharePoint library. OneDrive enables data synchronization with terminal devices on the clients. Teams and SharePoint are complementary, not competing, technologies in Microsoft 365. Technologies from SharePoint and Microsoft Office are used. Teams extends enterprise group collaboration with technology from SharePoint, which is why collaboration on documents is possible in Teams.

Typically, the documents you save to the Files tab of a channel are stored in the team's document library in SharePoint Online. However, there is no requirement to store data in Teams with Microsoft. You can also connect external data storage in the cloud, which facilitates archiving because the data in this case is available to multiple teams as long as the appropriate cloud storage is connected. In the Files menu, you can see the connected storage in Teams, such as storage in SharePoint Online. You can select Add cloud storage to connect external providers (e.g., Google Drive, Dropbox, Box).

Teams vs. Channels

Generally, you should make sure no objects remain in teams that are no longer necessary to reduce administrative effort, increase security, improve the overview, and streamline backups. Nevertheless, users might need access to certain documents later. Archiving is the proper way to secure the data of groups that are no longer needed against loss, because the data still exists even though the parent team no longer appears in the list of active groups.

One problem with storing documents securely in Teams is that some organizations don't back up all of their data to Microsoft 365 and often don't back up any data at all to Teams. Additionally, team owners are not necessarily administrators but are users with traditional rights. When a team is deleted by the owner, the data backup is then missing – and often the archiving. This unfortunate combination of circumstances can quickly cause the loss of important data.

The cloud platform's recycle bin is not suitable as an archive replacement. Channels moved there will be permanently deleted after 90 days, and deleted teams will be removed by the system after 30 days. In general, you need to distinguish between teams and channels when archiving. In the Teams admin center and with external applications, it is possible to archive groups relatively easily. However, this is not possible with individual channels. Here you need to archive the entire team, including all other channels.

Teams Admin Center

Generally, the Teams admin center is the hub for settings that apply to all teams in the environment. Here, you also control archiving centrally. The Teams admin center is available in the web browser at the address admin.teams.microsoft.com . To archive complete teams, select Teams | Manage teams and click on the corresponding team. Start the process with the Archive button. Before execution, you will receive a warning that members will no longer be able to work in the group and all activities will be frozen.

However, it is still possible to add or remove members from the team or update roles, because it should still be possible to control who can read the individual files in the archived team. Archiving only ensures that no changes are made in the chats and documents. In parallel, you can specify that the team's SharePoint page is set as read-only by activating the corresponding option. After you have made the changes, the team and its SharePoint page will be given the status Archived .

In the Teams client, archived groups are visible under Hidden teams , which allows users to continue to access the team's data, but not modify it. It is possible to hide teams even without archiving. These then appear together with the archived groups under Hidden teams . Just hiding a team has nothing to do with archiving and does not prevent the team from being edited. You control hiding and displaying teams with the team properties from the menu with the three dots in the upper right corner, which is the same way you hide channels in teams.

When archiving, all team data remains in the original location and is only marked as read-only. This state enables a very fast reactivation and at the same time ensures that the data is preserved within the framework of legal regulations. Proceed analogously the other way around: Select the team and choose Restore .