What Your Boss Can Track About You with Microsoft Teams

0:00 have you ever wondered if your digital workspace is watching you if you use Microsoft teams the answer is probably so if you're wondering what specifically your boss can see about your Microsoft teams activity let's talk about it the first thing that Microsoft teams tracks is communication activity with your messages your managers can see how many messages you send and how many you receive while they can't necessarily see the exact content of what is in the messages they can see the activity that's happening on the messaging site we're going to talk about later something called ecovery that allows managers to see specifically what you're writing but for general purposes Microsoft teams does not allow your boss to see specific messages just what was sent and what was received in meeting participation your boss can see what meetings you've attended how long you

0:45 were there and how engaged you were things like was your camera on was your microphone on were you actually participating in the meeting things like that are all visible to your manager through Microsoft teams and your reactions and your replies can also be tracked as a measure of how engaged you are whether you're replying to messages whether you're liking or Harding or disliking messages however you engage with posts that will show up on your engagement report as part of the Microsoft teams report that your manager will see the second bucket is overall user metrics things like daily and weekly activity metrics and that shows your manager how and when you're using Microsoft teams if you're only using it for the first 4 hours of the day and not at all the last 4 hours of the day things like that show up and channel and team specific engagement ment shows up

1:30 too if you're engaging in group chats if you're engaging in individual channels it'll show up as part of your engagement Report with how often you're using Microsoft the third bid bucket is device and app usage this tracks the devices you're using whether you're using your work laptop your personal phone wherever you're logged into Microsoft teams it will track that information and it'll show which apps that you're using within Microsoft teams so if you're using internal Integrations if you're using part of the Microsoft Suite it'll all show up if you're using it within Microsoft teams the the activity that's tracked within those apps is not necessarily what you're doing in every specific app so it's not tracking what words you're typing out or things like that but it's more how often are they using this tool how what is the frequency what platform are they on when they're using this tool are they on

2:16 their phone are they on their computer things like that the fourth big bucket is file and document activity Microsoft teams will track anything that you're doing when it comes to file sharing or file editing with a collaborative document so that will show any changes edits or any sharing of files that you're doing within Microsoft teams and on the same token it actually tracks version history as well which is actually in my opinion kind of a benefit because if you are working on the latest document but something happens and it gets corrupted you can go back to an earlier version with no issue but Microsoft teams does track version history if you're sharing the same document more than once or if you're sharing it across multiple teams channels it'll keep track of the version history and who's editing and where it's shared the fifth big bucket is call and video metrics now this one isn't as

3:02 scary it's more just checking the quality of a call so if you've noticed that you are in a meeting with somebody and they have bad internet service or you can't hear them because they're kind of breaking out Microsoft teams actually has something built in on the back end called the call Quality dashboard that can actually determine if a call is good or not based on internet connectivity audio settings things like that the sixth big thing that Microsoft teams tracks is Advanced analytic tools and that is specific for things like Microsoft 365 which Microsoft teams can actually track the adoption rates of employees so how often are you using Microsoft 365 tools what are your overall Trends are you using PowerPoint more than Excel if you're using Excel how much data are you doing and it'll track your productivity levels so let's say you have Microsoft Word open are you

3:49 just kind of there leaving it open are you actually working in the document are you collaborating or what are you doing in Microsoft Word or Excel or PowerPoint whatever 365 covers it'll track your productivity level inside of those apps as well and the last thing is ecovery which I talked about at the beginning your boss cannot see your individual messages that you send in a private chat or in a group chat if your boss is not part of those group chats it they cannot see specifically what you're writing unless it's part of an e-discovery process which is if the company ever gets sued or if there's some sort of legal something that happens if lawyers come in in subpoena and they say as part of the discovery process we need to look at these messages and see did something happen you know was it if it's a corruption case that is an example was this something that was talked about

4:35 among employees or something like that so if it becomes a legal entity or becomes like a legal situation your supervisor or the entities that be can look at the specific messages and see what was sent and by who what date things like that um very rarely does that happen but just keep in mind if you are messaging something to someone always keep in the back of your mind is would this look bad if if a lawyer were to sit and look at this as part of a legal case if you're if you're sending stuff that maybe would not look good in a courtroom maybe think about resending something different or not sending anything at all so let's talk about how can you protect yourself as an employee often times people think about Big Brothers watching as a really bad thing that say oh you might look at my productivity levels and you might say

5:20 wow I'm not working very hard but maybe I'm not working on Microsoft teams maybe I'm working on my personal phone I know that that has happened to me where I'm maybe not working at my computer but I'm still working or I'm going to FedEx to ship something or whatever just know that this is not something that is going to make or break a lot of people's employment status your company doesn't really have time in most cases to sit and look at your Microsoft teams report every single week every single quarter but it's always important to keep in mind a couple things first you want to understand what is your company's policy regarding analytics and employee tracking this information should be available somewhere and if it's not you should be able to request what is what is being tracked by my corporate my you know my boss or my boss's boss what is being tracked and what do I need to be aware of the second thing is you always

6:06 want to keep your work in your personal devices separate I know I have a lot of friends and a lot of co-workers who have used Microsoft teams on their personal phone because it saves them time but just know that in the event that something happens where your device gets subpoena that includes your personal device even though it's not paid for by the company but because you were using it for corporate reasons it technically could still be subpoena so just keep that in mind when it comes to keeping your personal device and your work device separate um keep the tracking separate and it just makes it easier overall be very prudent in your conversations anything that you type can and potentially might be looked at in a court of law or something if if Microsoft teams turns over if Microsoft turns over your chats is that something that you want other people to see if the answer is no then maybe think about

6:52 sending or not sending anything at all and the last thing is just to be professional when you're using Microsoft teams you kind of have to remind yourself sometimes it might be a little bit comfortable um to not be your best version of yourself at work especially if you work remotely like I worked remotely sometimes you show up in sweatpants and but you have to remember that Microsoft teams is a professional tool and technically the company is able to look at what you're doing on Microsoft teams so just make sure that you are aware of what your what professionalism looks like and make sure that anything that you put on your company device is something that you would be able to justify in the future if you're also wondering if your company is tracking your device in other ways check out this video that I made about is your company monitoring you and the software is to look out for and with that I will see you on the next one