The use of Microsoft Teams and other enterprise communications tools understandably surged in the last two years. However, while the rapid adoption rates seen during that time have inevitably slowed, this still leaves yet another communications channel to consider as part of compliance recording programmes. All communications concerning personal data and other compliance regulations, regardless of user location, will still need to be recorded and securely stored if enterprises are to meet their obligations.

Put simply, compliance demands a rigorous approach to recording, ensuring that all channels are covered with a suitable recording solution. However, treating Teams as a separate channel risks the emergence of silos – undermining efficiency, increasing costs, and creating a host of potential problems when it comes to accessing and correlating recordings for audit or quality assurance purposes.

Microsoft Teams has 270 million worldwide active users

Microsoft Teams is one of the most popular enterprise collaboration tools available. According to Microsoft, at the end of 2021 MS Teams had 270 million monthly active users (up from 250 million in July 2021). The figure includes users who started a chat, placed a call, shared a file, edited a document or participated in a meeting on an MS Teams desktop client, mobile client, or web client, and accounts for users in over 500,000 organisations.

At the same time, Microsoft noted a 252 per cent increase in weekly time spent in Team meetings by the average user since February 2020.

While the pace of adoption has slowed, a report from Statista shows that there were still 10.83bn downloads of the Microsoft Teams mobile app in Asia Pacific during the first quarter of 2022.

Another survey on workplace collaboration by Metrigy, meanwhile, found that of those respondents using or planning to deploy Teams, 72 per cent of users are using (or will use) Teams in a multi-vendor environment.

This suggests that MS Teams will be increasingly used alongside multiple enterprise collaboration tools. Of course, this has a knock-on effect for meeting compliance obligations.

One of the main uses of MS Teams is still to make voice and video calls within and outside the organisation. Teams allows users to make one-on-one calls, conference calls, share files during a call, add participants to a call, switch from a chat to a call, transfer a call, and so on, making it quick and easy to either receive a quick response to a query, or to schedule a conference call with multiple users.

The compliance challenge facing Singaporean businesses

Organisations in Singapore, however, have to meet multiple compliance obligations, which means that many organisations are obliged to record conversations. The Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), for example, has forced many businesses to adjust their processes to comply with the provisions of the PDPA.

But at the same time many companies in Singapore are also subject to regulations outside of the region. For example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to any company that collects data on EU citizens under certain circumstances.

Likewise, the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) imposes an obligation on finance professionals within the EU to record voice calls, including those that on mobile phones. However, just like the GDPR, MiFID II requirements can impact a significant number of Singaporean companies.

That’s because a Singaporean company providing financial services to EU citizens would have to comply with the PDPA, GDPR and MiFID II – as well as conditions imposed locally by the MAS and SGX. More information can be found in our previous in-depth blog, by clicking here.

Touch Call Recording Service for MS Teams – it just works

The upshot of all of this is that businesses in Singapore must ensure that all conversations made on MS Teams – and any other enterprise collaboration tool – are recorded so they can meet all of their compliance obligations, regardless of where their employees are located. So, how do you overcome this challenge?

Touch Call Recording Service for MS Teams resides in the network, so it requires no additional hardware or software, is quick and easy to deploy, secure, scalable, and requires no direct input from users.

On-boarding of users is quick and efficient – typically less than a day – whether you are an existing user of MS Teams or looking to adopt and integrate it into your compliance recording programme. All calls in MS Teams are recorded automatically, without the need for user intervention.

On-boarding and access to recordings is allocated to designated administrators, with every search undertaken logged by user ID, time, date, and so on, providing absolute transparency. Once calls are concluded, the call’s metadata is encrypted and automatically available in Touch Web-Portal. The service meets all requirements for compliance recording, meaning that it’s entirely tamper-proof.

Importantly, it integrates with over 50 other channels too, ensuring that every call and communication is captured and securely stored for as long as compliance or business performance obligations require. – and allowing full correlation to track conversational histories. Furthermore, Touch is constantly reviewing compliance requirements, meaning that you don’t have to worry about incorporating new channels into your programme, and can rest assured that your organisation is always up to date.

To take the hassle out of MS Teams call recording and compliance in general, contact us today to find out more.