12 - Private Chat Backup

Teams Private Chats are not backed up by default for users. This must first be enabled at the partner account level and then for the individual organization. Our support team can assist with enabling it at the partner level. 

Once that is done, you can enable it for an individual organization by going to the “Features” tab on the organization details page within the partner portal. After that is done, you can proceed with the below steps.

Note: Microsoft announced in July-22 they would be charging for the Teams Export API. This would be charged and metered based on customer consumptions. Now, private chat backup is only available on the Archiver plan. 

Additionally, the API usage will result in an extra cost for the backup of private chats. You must ensure that your tenant is set up with proper Azure billing to have the API access available for this type of backup. (see step 5 of the Private Chat Backup section for more informatoin)

Private Chat Backup

1. Log in to the end-user portal and click on the private chat tab from the dashboard.
2. Click the “Reauthenticate Now” Button
   1. This will redirect to the Credentials Tab under the Account Settings page.
3. Click the “Reauthenticate” button shown below to authorize the backup admin account to reauthenticate
4. Once reauthentication is complete all the M365 accounts that are currently backed up will display under the Private Chat tab with an INACTIVE status
5. You will see a blue banner asking you to setup the Customer Tenant App.  Click on "Go to Credentials Setting"
   1. Expand the "See How to Connect" section near the bottom of the screen
   2. Click on "Download Here" to see the steps necessary for setting up the tenant applicatoin.  There is also a link within these steps to the Microsoft article outlining how to link this app to Azure billing for your tenant
   3. Once these steps are complete, click on "Test & Save Connection" to complete the setup
6. There are TWO ways to activate Private Chats in the portal 
   
   1. Activate in bulk on all accounts.
      1. Click the "Activate" button under the Private Chat tab
      2. Check all accounts, then click the "Activate" button
   2. You can activate per each user
      1. Select the private chat account, then click "Activate"  
7. Click the “Yes, Continue” button on the popup confirmation
8. You can find the last backup status on this page once the backup has been completed

Note: In Teams Chat, there are various system notifications such as Call Ended, Deleted Message, User Joined or Left Chat, and other system notifications. Since these notifications are treated as messages by the MS Graph API, we also back them up. In our system.  However, when the End-User Portal UI detects a message type of "System Event Message" it will display a message stating "System Event Message can't be previewed" instead of the message itself.

Private Chat Download

1. Log in to the End user portal, and under the Dashboard page, click on the "Private Chat" tab
2. Hover over your mouse on the email; on the right side, you will see the download option
   1. Once you click "Download", you can select three file formats: EML, PDF, and CSV
3. Select the required file format where you can choose to download Text only or Text with attachments
4. Once you select the required download option (text only, text & attachments), you will get a prompt to generate the download
   1. You can select the date range and then click "Generate Download"
5. After clicking generate download, you will get a prompt where you need to click the “Yes, continue” button to proceed
6. You can check on the status of the download by navigating to the “System Status > Downloads” page
   1. Once ready, the link will allow you to download the data

Note: When a download is complete, it will display as a .zip file no larger than 1GB. If a download is larger than 1GB, it will be separated into multiple .zip files. Chats selected outside a specific date range will only show the last 90 days of chat history. If you select more than 90 days, it will be split into multiple files. Any attachments in the downloaded chat will appear in an “Attachment’s folder” in the .zip file.