Overview

Microsoft Teams recording features

• Voice, video, screen/application window share, instant messages, and attachment recording and archiving.
• Integration with the official Teams Compliance Recording API and Graph API
• Support for load balancing and failover 
• Support for Azure cloud and hybrid on-prem deployments
• Supports all types of Teams endpoints and devices

Voice, video, and screen/application window share recording

• Bot based integration, where the Teams platform is able to automatically invite the recorder bot into P2P calls or meetings for the configured users
• Fail-close configuration option (in case of recorder failure, the recorded user cannot join the call)
• Supports always-on, selective, and on-demand recording
• Supports all call scenarios where the recorded user is a participant
• Built-in announcement and notification (provided by the Teams platform)

Instant message, attachment capture, and archiving

• Event/webhook, DLP API based integration, where the Teams platform sends all updates once the recorder subscribes
• Support for on-prem, cloud, and hybrid deployments
• Supports always-on recording mode only
• Supports all instant message scenarios, teams, channels, P2P, and meeting chats
• Supports all formatting options, emojis, giphys, stickers, and other apps
• Limitation: no selective capturing/archiving support, only tenant-wide capturing
• Limitation: chat sessions initiated from external domains won't be captured
• Limitation: labeling and case rules are not supported

Version support

If you are on a different version, contact your Microsoft representative for more information.

Deploying Microsoft Teams recording

The following section contains all the necessary steps for setting up a Microsoft Teams recording infrastructure.

Server sizing

Recording Server on Azure virtual machine for voice, video, and screen/application share recording

According to the Microsoft requirements, the Microsoft Teams Bot service must run on an Azure Virtual Machine. Requirements for the Recording Server role, which will host the Verba Microsoft Teams Bot service and the Unified Call Recorder service are:

• Azure Compute Unit (ACU) should be 200 or higher and 1:1 ratio for vCPU: Core 
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/acu

• We recommend using the Dv2 series virtual machines, Standard_D3_v2 or above
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/dv2-dsv2-series#dv2-series

• ILPIP (Instance Level Public IP Address) for the Recording Servers
  Private IP addresses are not recommended by Microsoft, due to potential performance limitation caused by the Azure NAT, although will work

• For resilient and/or high volume configurations, multiple virtual machines (running the Recording Server role) have to be deployed. In order to distribute the load across multiple Verba Microsoft Teams Bot services, an Azure Application Gateway has to be deployed in front of the VMs.
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/application-gateway/overview

Due to performance limitations in the Microsoft Local Media SDK, the Recording Server sizing for Microsoft Teams recording is different from other integrations. The following table summarizes the server sizing for Microsoft Teams recording:

The values indicate the number of maximum simultaneous calls for the specified modalities per vCPU.

Testing was done with mixed audio on Azure D3v2 (4 cores), D4v2 (8 cores), and D5v2 (16 cores) virtual machines.

Recording Server for instant message and attachment recording

The IM recording architecture includes two server roles: Recording Director and Media Recorder. These roles have different sizing numbers and different factors have to be taken into account.

Recording Director

The Recording Director component has to be sized based on the real-time incoming load. The minimum CPU requirement is 4 CPU cores. It can process 1500 messages every second with a single CPU core, and 6000 messages every second with 4 cores.

In the case of higher incoming loads, the network bandwidth also has to be considered. 1000 messages per second incoming load generate 48 Mbps traffic (or 6 MB/s) between the Teams side and the Recording Director, and 42 Mbps traffic (or 5.2 MB/s) between the Recording Director and the file queue storage.

Media Recorder and SQL Server

The Media Recorder component does not have to be sized for real-time processing, since the recorded data is stored already in the file queue storage. Instead, the Media Recorder can be sized based on the overall message count a day. If there are more incoming messages than the real-time processing capacity of the Media Recorder(s), then the messages will be inserted into the database later, so they will be also available for search and replay through the web interface later. However, sufficient processing capacity should be provided so it can process the daily message load at least within 16 hours.

The minimum CPU requirement is 4 CPU cores. It can process 22 messages every second with a single CPU core. In the case of multiple Media Recorder servers, all servers have to have the same number of cores.

The Recorder Director and the Media Recorder components can be co-located on the same server. In this case, the resources will be shared between them.

The SQL Server has to be sized based on the fully utilized CPU cores of the Media Recorder server(s). The SQL Server needs to have one and a half times more CPU cores than the Media Recorder server(s). On the SQL Server physical disk, every fully utilized Media Recorder CPU cores generate 100 IOPS.

The following table shows the expected incoming message rates at different user numbers:

*Based on Slack usage statistics

**Based on Cisco IM/P sizing

Based on the statistics above, if the daily IM message rate has to be processed within 8 hours, then a single recorder core can handle 13K users.
If it is enough to process the messages within 16 hours, then a single recorder core can handle 26K users.
For more real-time processing during peak hours, extra CPU cores can be added:

• In the case of the real-time processing of the low message rate, a single CPU core can handle 8K users.
• In the case of a medium message rate, a single CPU core can handle 5K users.
• In the case of a high message rate, a single CPU core can handle 3K users.

For requirements for other components and server roles, see Server sizing and requirements

Load-balancing and Failover

Large deployments may require multiple VMs and other Azure components.

Voice, video, and screen/application share recording

For the failover and load-balancing options for voice, video, and screen/application window share recording, see: 

Microsoft Teams Recording Failover and Load-balancing Design

Instant message and attachment recording

In the case of IM and attachment recording, multiple Media Recorders can be deployed behind the Recording Director(s). If multiple Recording Directors are required, then a load-balancer has to be placed in front of them.

Preparation

The Microsoft Teams integration requires additional prerequisites and configuration on Azure and O365, see Configuring Microsoft Teams Recording for more information.

Make sure that all the required prerequisites are installed on each server prior to the installation.

• Prerequisites
• Installing the required prerequisites

For guidance on configuring the necessary firewall port, visit Firewall configuration for Microsoft Teams recording deployments

Installation

The following articles contain all the steps for installing the various server roles:

• Installing a Verba Single Server solution
• Installing a Verba Media Repository
• Installing a Verba Recording Server

Configuration

For the configuration guide for voice / video / screen share recording, see Configuring Microsoft Teams Recording.

For chat and attachment recording, see Microsoft Teams Chat Recording.

Microsoft Teams metadata for voice, video and screen & application share recordings

The system captures the following metadata specific to Microsoft Teams voice/video/screen recordings.