What is Microsoft 365 Teams?

"Microsoft Teams is the hub for teamwork in Microsoft 365. The Teams service enables instant messaging, audio and video calling, rich online meetings, mobile experiences, and extensive web conferencing capabilities." [Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/teams-service-description#:~:text=Microsoft%20Teams%20is%20the%20hub,and%20extensive%20web%20conferencing%20capabilities. ]

Overview: Why backup and export Microsoft Teams post data  to x360Cloud?

Using x360Cloud, you are now able to back up Microsoft Teams post data for your clients. This will ensure that all backed up messages are available for exporting as of a specified point in time. 

Note: Restoration of Team posts back to Microsoft Teams is not yet available, but will be coming in a future version.

How to turn on backup for Microsoft Teams

STEP 1. To start backing up Microsoft Teams posts data from within your existing x360Cloud organization, navigate to the organization’s Settings page.

Under Service settings, set the Teams toggle to ON:

If you are enabling Teams protection for the first time, you will be asked to grant a set of additional permissions:

STEP 2. Navigate to Microsoft Teams under the Account menu.

Under Protection Status, set the toggle to on for Teams whose posts you want to start backing up:

 Toggling on protection for these Teams will enable backup of posts and replies posted in them.

Note: As files shared in Teams (and listed in the Files tab of Teams interface as on the image below) are stored in Microsoft SharePoint, when enabling protection for a Team, please make sure related SharePoint Site is also protected in x360Cloud.  

How to make new Teams created in Microsoft 365 automatically back up in x360Cloud

To automatically select all Teams that will be created in Microsoft 365 for backup within x360Cloud:

1. Under the organization's Settings tab, click the Services sub-menu.

2. In the New Users section, set the Automatically back up new Microsoft Teams toggle to ON. 

The setting takes an immediate effect. When enabled, new Teams created and configured in Microsoft 365 will be automatically selected for protection when synchronized to x360Cloud.

Note: x360Cloud might take up to 24 hours to synchronize a new Teams to the system. 

How to view backup status for protected Teams

Important: At this stage, Teams selected for protection will not impact SLA status of an organization. This means that the absence of a successful backup for a Team within 24 hours will not impact organization-level backup status and will not trigger a "Some organizations require your attention” email alert.

The latest backup status for protected Teams is available on the Accounts – Microsoft Teams page.

How to locate a Team and export its posts

To find a backed up Team, navigate to Microsoft Teams under the Accounts menu.

Open Filters for Teams by clicking the icon on the upper right corner:

You can perform a keyword search by one of the supported fields:

• Group\Team name
• URL of the associated SharePoint site
• Group email address

After you enter your search terms, click the Search button.

Note: If you need to protect multiple Teams based on one of the above fields, you can filter and use “Select all” and “Enable protection” buttons to enable protection for all the found Teams in one go.

Formats used to export Teams posts

Microsoft Teams posts can be exported into one of the two possible formats:

• JSON: the raw original format messages are returned by Microsoft APIs, containing all available metadata and message properties.
• HTML: user-friendly format that includes only the most important message fields (like timestamp, author, message content, reactions and attachments) and styled for better readability.

[Formats used to export Teams posts]

Steps needed to export Teams posts:

1. On the Accounts – Microsoft Teams page, select the desired Team.

2. Then, in the side bar on the right, click the Export Teams posts button:

3. In the “Export Team Data” dialog:

• Check the Team’s channels to be exported
• Pick the desired format – JSON or HTML.
• Optionally, you can also pick Backup Date & Time – this will allow you to see the conversations as they took place and were backed up before the specified date and/or to see the original messages before they were modified in Microsoft Teams. x360Cloud will pick messages from the backup that is closest to the selected date and time.

How to monitor Team export status

To check the export status, navigate to the organization’s Dashboard and open the Exports tab in the Recent Activity Report section.

NOTE: The list of activities also contains exports to PST, so pay attention to the “Service” column: it must display the Microsoft Teams icon.

 Status will indicate the current state of the export:

• In Progress: The export is ongoing.
• Complete: The export procedure has finished, and the resulting file is ready for download. The "Export Progress" column shows completion rates.
• Partial: The export could not be completed for any part of the data. But the other part is available for download.
• Failed: The export failed, and the PST file is unavailable. In this case, please contact the Support team.

Other details in this report include:

• Initiated: Date and time the export started.
• Service: Indicates which Microsoft 365 service data was exported – Microsoft 365 Mail or Teams.
• Initiated by: Email address of the user who initiated the export.
• Export ID: Contains the name of the Team whose data is exported.
• Progress: Displays the number of objects successfully exported, e.g., “80% of 100 objects” indicates 80 messages were exported successfully.

Important: Currently, there is no option to retry an export that has failed or only completed partially in one click. If problematic objects cannot be exported, consider initiating a new export or contacting our Support team.

How to download exported Teams data

To download the exported data, click the Download icon in the Actions column of the Export table.

• Additional export details, including archive file size and export completion time, can be found in the Export Detail dialog. To access this, click the link in the Status column.
• For quicker downloads, the resulting files are archived (zipped). You will need to unpack the zipped archive to get a set of files each holding messages of a corresponding Team Channel.

For example: Here is a Team named “Coffee” with four Channels:

• The Team data is exported on 9th of April 20225. 
• Resulting ZIP file name is “Coffee_2025-04-09_09-37-38.zip”.
• The ZIP file contains channel-specific files with all messages of the respective channel each:

Retention policy for exported data

For each Mail or Teams data export in x360Cloud, a retention policy is applied.

An expiration date and time is shown in the new Expiration column of the Exports list: 

Important notes:

• Exported data is kept in the system and is available for download for 14 days from the date the export is initiated.
• Three days before the retention period is about to expire, the expiration timestamp is highlighted with red:

 After the retention period is over, the Download icon\link is no longer available, and the system shows a Download expired label.

How can I see when someone is exporting data?

As a reseller, you can view a list of historical user and system activities by reviewing the respective tabs under the reseller-level or organization-level Audit Log page.

The following export-related events are tracked:

In User Activity:

• A user initiated an export
• A user downloaded exported data

In System Activity:

• An export was initiated
• An export completed

For each of these export-related events, the name of the Team whose data was exported is referenced in the “Container” field (found under the reseller-level or organization-level Audit Log > User Activity page):

How to read posts exported to HTML

Posts in HTML (and JSON) files are sorted from the newest (on the top) to the oldest (in the bottom). Each post begins with a line break and followed by a set of replies, sorted chronologically from oldest to newest.

When a message is backed up after it was edited by its author, it displays this:

“*** This message was edited by <Author Name> at <timestamp> ***”

as shown below:

Teams - Backup and export Teams posts.pdf 

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