How to View Employee's Team Messages
Are you an employer focused on viewing your employee’s team messages? Checking your team’s messages is a great way to monitor and keep your workers on track.
To view your employee’s team messages, you will need to:
- Verify your Microsoft 365 License
- Implement communication compliance
- Choose whom you monitor
- Administer a monitoring policy
Viewing your employee’s team messages will help your company’s productivity.
If you are going to monitor your team’s messages, you want to do it legally and ethically and let your employees know you are monitoring them. In this article, you will learn more about how to view your employee’s team messages.
What is Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams is a cooperative work platform that allows users to conduct workplace conversations, video chats, and document sharing. The goal is to provide a professional space to increase worker productivity. It can be a great alternative to email. It also connects workers and their apps and is an excellent tool for remote workers.
Teams consist of different groups of employees within a company. A Microsoft 365 group is designed when a team first forms. It connects users and apps across the company. Teams tend to revolve around a work project, and everyone involved plays their role. Workers can send direct messages to other employees in private. The program connects to several Microsoft 365 tools.
Can Employers Monitor Microsoft Teams?
Employers can access employee activities with a Microsoft 365 license. Anything on Microsoft Teams is fair game. Some examples of what you can keep an eye on:
- Deleted team chats
- Content created and shared
- Files created using Microsoft
- Information in team meetings
- Information in Microsoft programs
- Recorded content from a team meeting
- Team chats and one on one group chats
- Names of applications used in Microsoft teams
One advantage is being able to go into devices, such as iPhones or laptops, to log into Microsoft Teams. You can also find IP addresses and operating systems used to log into Microsoft Teams.
How to View Employee's Team Messages
Platforms like Microsoft Teams have become more prevalent in working situations. Teams is a company-managed communication tool. Many employers want to monitor their employee’s conversations, and there is a way that you can do this:
Verify Your Microsoft 365 License
If you have an IT administrator, the first thing that you should know is that not all Microsoft 365 licenses have a communication compliance feature. Your department must upgrade to either the E3 or E5 license plans to be able to monitor messages. You Need to find out what type of license you have:
- In admin, go to billing
- You can see your subscription on the Products tab. Here you will find information concerning licenses, subscription status, and billing.
- To change the columns that come up in the list, click on the columns
- Change the selection of columns, and hit save
- If you want more information about a subscription, click on that subscription.
Some IT departments only have basic, standard, or premium licenses, but a Business Standard 365 subscription exists. The above are the steps you need to take so that you can figure out what type of Microsoft 365 license you have. You can assign Microsoft 365 licenses to various workers for each subscription.
What Takes Place After You Assign a License?
The following describes what occurs once you assign a license to a user. Each subscription has a different service:
- Exchange Online A mailbox is made for the user
- SharePoint Online Permission to go to the SharePoint team site is assigned to the user
- Microsoft Teams The user has access to features that correspond with the license
- Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise and Business, the user can download Microsoft 365 apps on as many as five Macs or PCs, five tablets, and five smartphones.
There are several ways to work with various types of licenses. The role they play determines whether it is allowed. Different roles can have certain privileges.
Implement Communication Compliance
You can only monitor your employees if you have a communication compliance administrator to authorize the feature globally. The IT administrator can then access the necessary features that set it up for monitoring messages. Some examples of the jobs the administrator may need to take on:
- Communication Compliance Analysts can check on policies and see metadata, but no messages
- Communications Compliance Investigator allows you to see messages and metadata. They make sure the business is following all policies and regulations.
- Communication Compliance Admin can implement communication compliance and perform the functions required to manage message monitoring.
Communications compliance can also mark flagged communication and investigate email, Microsoft Teams, and third-party messages. Communication compliance seeks to reinforce the separation between policies and the review of messages.
You Choose Whom You Monitor
As a communication compliance administrator, you can monitor chats and other teams. You can also view emails with the proper Microsoft license. Administrators also put users into groups. You can choose specific team members to monitor and help you view team messages. What you need to check:
- Teams chat messages
- Deleted messages
- Private chats
- Chat histories
You can record the time of the email, the recipient, and the content. You can even see pictures or attachments. You can view each employee’s messages and all the information exchanged throughout the company. You can also see how many messages are exchanged between team members.
Administer a Monitoring Policy
Each communication compliance group should be monitored. Users will be placed into groups, and you can choose what communications in Microsoft 365 to monitor. You will need to determine who is allowed to see the team’s messages.
Once everything has been set up, each user and group will monitor employee messages and report compliance violations. The goal is to uncover “secrets” within the company and use the information to find out who (and who is not) working productively.
A Brief Overview
You need to monitor employee team messages. Here is a brief overview of the steps you need to take to monitor:
- Compliance, Open Microsoft 365 admin center. Bring up the left side and select show all.
- Under Admins Centers, Select compliance
- Content search Bring up the left side of the Admin center. Go to the Solutions section and click on search.
- Click on the New Search tab on the right. You can search according to the date, location, sender, or other.
- Check Teams messages and others.
- Teams Admin Center Select Teams on the left has a section called analytics and reports. Click on usage reports.
- View the section on the right. You can see various reports and even sort them out by date.
- Check other data Calls, Teams user activity, and other
- Users Select Microsoft Teams admins. Click users on the left.
- Manage users. You can see all the names of your employees and the activity from the past week.
- Reports Click Microsoft Teams Admin Center. See the Reports section on the left and click.
- See overall productivity. This is an evaluation of the company as a whole
- Usage Shows how various workers are responding to Microsoft apps
Remember, you will be unable to see the chats or any messages not directly located in Teams.
Microsoft Must Protect Teams Privacy
Meeting organizers in Teams can control who comes into a meeting. If anyone who is not a member wants to come, they must be formally invited. When they join, they are first sent to a virtual lobby before entering the meeting. Everyone in the meeting has access to all the information that is shared. Meetings can be recorded, and transcripts are taken.
The meeting organizers can take any necessary records of the meeting. A Teams app can also do it, as long as the company and network administrators are aware of it. Third parties cannot attend Team meetings without your or the meeting organizer’s consent. Employers can also record phone calls for future training purposes. It can also be helpful to the business to keep such records.
Who Can View Microsoft Teams Chats?
You can implement e-discovery on Teams and monitor keystrokes during chats. You can record a log of all Teams conversations, and Teams messages are visible. Your Teams administrator holds the key. They can help you get into accounts and find out which employees are the most productive. However, it may be a lot of work for little payoff.
Should Employees Know They Are Being Watched?
In a word, yes. It is not only a fair thing to do; it is illegal to monitor your workers without their consent. Spying on them can make them feel untrusting, inadvertently lower productivity, and make your employees feel uncomfortable with you and the company they work for in general. You can avoid this situation by explaining why you want to monitor your employees.
Telling them why you are doing this can help limit any negative consequences for you or your company. It may make your employees feel they can trust you and will respect you if you tell them the truth. Telling them also safeguards you against any legal repercussions should they feel that monitoring them is unjust. Viewing your employee’s team messages can be seen as invasive, but legally you can.
Sharing the news that you will be monitoring your employees can also help motivate them and stop them from wasting time on the internet or posting on social media during work hours. They will also be more conscious of what they type in Team Messages and not disclose any company “secrets” while on the platform. It can help everyone be more careful in case of a breach.
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 safeguards wire, oral, and computerized communications while they are in progress, are in transit, or are being filed on computers. It protects against the invasion of privacy and prohibits employers from intercepting their workers’ electronic communications. However, a company can monitor the personal communications of its employees with their consent.
How to Tell Your Employees
Telling your employees you are monitoring them is a challenging feat. Prepare yourself for any gossip or rumors about what you are doing and why. If you are getting ready to implement spyware into your employee’s computers, there are several ways you can soften the blow:
Be Specific and Clear
Tell employees your intentions and be clear and specific about why you are choosing to monitor them. This will help assuage their worry about whether you are targeting them. Explain to them that the software you install is a way to keep them from falling into the trap of misusing company time. Let them know that you do not intend to invade their privacy.
You should also address in what type of capacity you are using this spyware. It could be keystrokes or how many messages you send back and forth with other members of the team. Tell them it has nothing to do with you not trusting them, but it is a way to regulate the company and ensure it stays on track. Team messages should be monitored for training purposes as well.
Only Monitor For Valid Reasons
Only monitor your employee’s team messages if there is a valid reason for doing so. You are not looking to monitor their messages outside of Teams, but you want to ensure everything runs smoothly. Let them know that you will have access to the content of chats, emails, direct messages with other workers, or any messages that do not exist in Teams.
Monitoring employees should always be professional and nothing more. You do not plan on invading their personal business, but Microsoft Teams is a company platform, and you should know what is going on in YOUR business. It will prevent misunderstandings if your employees know you have good reason to monitor them.
How Can Wolfeye Help?
Wolfeye is spyware equipment or remote screen monitoring you can use to make sure your employees are doing their job. You can see the live PC screen as if you were looking over your employee’s shoulder. You can take screenshots and check your employee’s browsing history. Wolfeye is an easy, top-of-the-line solution to a complicated business problem.
Conclusion
If you want to view your employee’s team messages, there is a list of steps you need to follow. The first step is to verify your Microsoft 365 license, and the last is to see how users respond to the program. You choose whom you monitor through team chats and chat histories. As long as you monitor your employees for the right reason, checking your Teams messages is the right way to go.
Sources
- https://www.computerworld.com/article/3276276/microsoft-teams-its-features-how-it-compares-to-slack-and-other-rivals.html
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- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/admin-overview/what-subscription-do-i-have?view=o365-worldwide
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- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/commerce/licenses/subscriptions-and-licenses?view=o365-worldwide
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