Introduction:
The purpose of this blog post is to demonstrate what happens to a user's conversation chat history in Microsoft Teams after they have been terminated from the organization and deleted from Office 365.
Background: Below is a chat conversation taking place in a Microsoft Teams channel, where Adele and other team members are participating in the conversation:
In addition, Adele and Megan are having a 1:1 private chat:
Terminating an Employee:
To terminate the Adele, I will delete their Office 365 user account which will also remove them from Azure Active Directory. In the Office 365 Admin Portal, under Active Users, I will select Delete User and then click Delete:
The user account has now been deleted, and I will click Close:
Now that the user has been deleted, let's take a look at what is displayed in the previous chat conversations in Microsoft Teams.
Channel Conversation:
As you can see, in the conversation in the team channel, Adele's chats are still visible:
Private 1:1 Chat:
In the private 1:1 chat with Megan, the conversation history is still visible. However, notice on the left side, Unknown User is displayed instead of Adele's name:
Team Members:
Clicking the ellipsis next to the name of the team and selecting View Team, under the Members tab – Adele is no longer displayed as a member of the team:
Important:
If a user is restored (within 30 days), their membership to the team will be automatically added back to the team.
Conclusion: When a user is deleted from Office 365, content the user generated such as a chat conversation remains in the team's channel and in private chats. If there's any questions, comments, input, or feedback or you would like for me to go deeper – please let me know in the comments below!