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Data collection summary for Teams

Published: April 2024

Important

Microsoft Teams is the hub for team collaboration in Microsoft 365 that integrates the people, content, and tools your team needs to be more engaged and effective. This summary applies to the Teams for Work, Home and Education.

Overview of Required and Optional data

Microsoft is dedicated to being more transparent with our customers and giving them more control over their data. As part of this work, we are moving our major products and services to a model where personal data we collect from customers as they use their devices will be classified as either Required or Optional. This will make it easier for our customers to find information about the data we collect and how we use it, and to make informed choices about their privacy.

This article provides an overview of the types of data that are Required and Optional, the specific categories of personal data that are collected by Microsoft Teams, and how our customers can change their privacy settings to customize the data they share with Microsoft.

We do not use personal data to track our users or for any other marketing purposes. The data provided and/ or collected by Microsoft Teams is used to run the product and keep it safe and secure (Required diagnostic data) and/ or improving the product experience (Optional diagnostic data). Additionally, Required and Optional data can only be collected after the user authentication.

Required Data

Data in the Required category is necessary to keep our products up to date, secure, and working as expected. Required data includes things like the type and version of a customer’s device so we can provide connectivity to our cloud services and security patches to keep our experiences safe and secure, and diagnostic data that helps us detect significant feature failures.

In some cases, a customer can control whether Required data is collected by deciding whether to use the product features or functions that depend on that data. For example,

  • Whether a chat message was sent successfully, or a calendar was successfully created. Details of errors that might hamper a meeting, or cause a call to get dropped.
  • Error details when a Teams application fails to load.
  • Error details when a user switches from a work account to a home account.

Required Diagnostic Data

Required diagnostic data is the minimum data necessary to help keep Microsoft Teams software secure, up to date, and performing as expected on the device it is installed on. Examples include information about the version of Microsoft Teams installed on the device or information that indicates that applications are crashing when trying to open.

Required diagnostic data helps us detect, diagnose, and fix problems more quickly so the impact to users or organizations is reduced. For more information, see Required diagnostic data for Mobile and Desktop clients.

Required diagnostic data in Microsoft Teams is organized into the following data categories:

Data Category Description Examples
Device connectivity and configuration This type of Required diagnostic data includes details about the device, its configuration, and connectivity capabilities.
  • Details on a user's app version that has caused recent crashes of the Teams application, so that Teams may rollback this version until the fatal error is fixed.
  • Diagnostic information about the user's country code (US, IN, etc.) to understand how that may impact connectivity to Chat services.
Product and service performance This type of Required diagnostic data includes details about device or service health and performance.
  • The event that captures graceful and ungraceful incoming call acceptances for further investigation.
  • The event that indicates a failure to switch on video during a call, collecting why video failed to turn on in the case it is related to the Calling service or device-level permissions.
  • Collection of latency times for sending a file in a chat to ensure performance times are within acceptable thresholds, and to diagnose service speed issues if not.
Product and service usage This type of Required diagnostic data includes details about the usage of the device, operating system, applications, and services.
  • The event used for capturing authentication token generation failures during app startup.
  • Events generated to determine if a file was successfully opened.
Software setup and inventory This type of Required diagnostic data includes software installation and update information on the device.
  • An event used to ensure new users can successfully launch and run Teams to ensure critical regression detection.
  • Information about the syncing of a user’s chat list to track execution attempts, successful completions, infrastructure errors, and user code errors.

Required Service Data

Teams consists of client software applications and connected experiences designed to enable you to create, communicate, and collaborate more effectively. Working with others on a document stored on OneDrive, scheduling a calendar event in outlook.com, chatting with a group of friends, or having a video call are examples of connected experiences. For more information, see Connected experiences in Office.

As you use a connected experience, data is sent to and processed by Microsoft to provide you that connected experience. This data is crucial because this information enables us to deliver these cloud-based connected experiences. We refer to this data as required service data. For more information, see Required service data for Office.

Required service data can include information related to the operation of the connected experience that is needed to keep the underlying service secure, up to date, and performing as expected. If you choose to use a connected experience that analyzes your content, for example creating a calendar event start date and time, end date and time and whether it’s an all day event is sent and processed to provide you the connected experience. Required service data can also include information needed by a connected experience to perform its task, such as configuration information about the Teams app.

We give you the ability to choose which types of connected experiences you want to use in Teams, which then determines what required service data is sent to us. We are developing additional privacy settings that will give our customers more control over the collection of data that is required for connected experiences.

Required service data is also collected and sent to Microsoft for optional connected experiences and for essential services.

  • Optional connected experiences. For users with a work or school account, their organization's admin may have provided them with the ability to use one or more cloud-backed services while using Office applications, such as Word or Excel. These cloud-backed services are optional, and users can decide whether to use them. They are provided to users under the terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and privacy statement. In some cases, other terms may also apply. For more information, see Overview of optional connected experiences in Teams.
  • Essential services. There are a set of services that are essential to how M365 apps for enterprise functions and therefore cannot be disabled, such as the licensing service that confirms that you are properly licensed to use Office. This data for essential services is sent regardless of any other privacy-related settings that you have configured. For more information, see Essential services for Office.

Optional data

Data in the Optional category is not essential or strictly necessary to keeping the Microsoft Teams client software secure, up to date or performing as expected. Optional data includes things like how users decide to sort their task lists (alphabetical/chronological/etc.) and how often they change this sorting order. Or how often users tap the + button in a chat to use emojis.

Because Optional data is not necessary to providing Teams functionality, customers can decide whether to allow us to collect this type of data. Home users can make this decision during the initial setup of Microsoft Teams or, after setup, by using the privacy settings available in the Microsoft Teams applications. In work or school environments, there are tools available to administrators to make this decision for their organization.

Although sharing Optional data is not required, this data helps us develop new and better experiences for our customers. We would like our customers to share this data with us, but Microsoft Teams will keep working as expected no matter what they decide. This is our customers’ data, and we are committed to respecting the decisions they make about their privacy.

Optional diagnostic data

Optional diagnostic data is additional data that helps us make product improvements and provides enhanced information to help us detect, diagnose, and fix issues. If you choose to send us optional diagnostic data from your device that is running Microsoft Teams, required diagnostic data is also included. Optional diagnostic data is only applicable to Microsoft Teams mobile app. No optional diagnostic data is collected for Teams desktop and web client app.

Optional diagnostic data in Microsoft Teams is organized into the following data categories.

Data Category Description Examples
Device connectivity and configuration This type of Optional diagnostic data includes details about the device, its configuration, and connectivity capabilities.
  • Information about the user’s network strength and speed.
  • Information about the user’s network provider (Verizon, T-Mobile, etc.).
Product and service performance This type of Optional diagnostic data includes details about device or service health and performance.
  • The performance speed of changing a task list’s sort from alphabetical to chronological.
  • When a user clears their Teams app preferences (color theme, mention priorities, etc.), sending app name, version, and error code if the event failed.
Product and service usage This type of Optional diagnostic data includes details about the usage of the device, operating system, applications, and services
  • An indication that a user has manually marked a message as the last unread message.
  • An event that a user has bolded text in a chat message.
Software setup and inventory This type of Optional diagnostic data includes software installation and update information on the device.
  • Information about the Tasks app module pre-initialization process, including error code if the event failed.

Privacy information and settings

Microsoft provides the Diagnostic Data Viewer to enable you to see what diagnostic data is being collected while you use M365 apps for enterprise functions, for both required and optional diagnostic data.

The privacy settings available to customers depend on whether the customer is signed in with a Microsoft account (for example, a personal outlook.com email address) or with a work or school account. Learn more about the various settings for controlling your personal data:

In organizations, administrators control whether required or optional diagnostic data is sent to Microsoft. They can also control what connected experiences are available to their users. Learn more about the various options available to administrators to manage privacy settings in their organizations:

To Learn more about privacy controls in Microsoft Teams, see below:

Learn more about how we generally collect and use data: