Backing Up Your Teams Chats : Cirrus Customer Support Portal

Microsoft have made a change in Microsoft 365 that may affect your Teams chat backups and incur additional charges.

Microsoft have introduced a new set of Teams Export APIs designed to access Teams chats directly from the underlying Cosmos DB service that hosts the chats. Cirrus for Microsoft 365 will support the backup of Teams chats by using these Teams Export APIs. Because these APIs access sensitive data, they are considered protected APIs, and to access these APIs, the backup administrator must fill out a form to request access from Microsoft.

Microsoft has begun to deprecate any access to the hidden folder: TeamsMessageData within Outlook that currently saves Teams chats. Going forward, Teams Export APIs will be the only way to backup Teams chats with Cirrus. Groups, Channel, and metadata will continue to be protected regardless of you opting to enable this feature or not.

We have released a new feature in Cirrus that will allow you to manually switch to the new Teams Export APIs. If you do not wish to backup Teams chat, please ignore and Cirrus will function as it did before by backing up Groups, Channel, and metadata in Teams. The following steps will cover the cost and pre-requisite steps in Microsoft Azure AD and Cirrus.

Cost

The cost to backup chats in Teams will be calculated on a per tenant/per message basis, relative to the license model. Cirrus for Microsoft 365 will support Model B, which means that the protection of Teams chats data will cost you $0.00075 per message/per tenant. Microsoft will invoice you at the end of the month if you choose to opt in to enable this feature.

(Note: Cirrus costs will remain the same, as it won’t charge any additional cost).

You can also estimate costs in Microsoft 365 admin centre by Usage Reports.

How to be eligible

Step 1. Ensure you have an active Azure subscription (PAYG/CSP).

If you don’t have an active subscription, you will need to create one to be able to use this feature as Microsoft will be invoicing straight to the Azure subscription of your tenancy.

Step 2. Apply for access to the protected APIs.

To configure this process in Microsoft, you will need to fill in this special form and submit.

Please read the Microsoft documentation for more information how to access Teams Export APIs.

Following are the steps to fill in the Microsoft form:

Email Address
- Your tenancy’s Global Admin/Azure admin email (user submitting the request form)
Publisher name
- CT4: Cirrus
Application name
- Put the name of the app that you use to add your Microsoft 365 organization to the Cirrus for Microsoft 365. You can find it in the Azure Active Directory admin centre > App registrations
Application ID(s) to enable permissions for (GUID, semicolon separated)
- Put the application (client) ID of the app that you use to add your Microsoft 365 organization to the Cirrus for Microsoft 365. You can find it in the Azure Active Directory admin centre > App registrations > Overview of your app:
Which category best describes your application (select one)
- Select “Backup/restore”
Why does your application need read access to all messages in the tenant? (If you don’t, you don’t need access to protected APIs)
- To allow for backup/protection of Teams message data
Data retention (select one):
- Select “It is obvious to any admin installing this app that it will make a copy of Microsoft Teams messages”
What are the tenant IDs that this application needs to run in? (GUID, semicolon separated. If you’re writing software for other organizations to use, include “all”).
- Put the tenant ID of your Microsoft 365 organization that you protect with Cirrus for Microsoft 365. You can find it in the Azure Active Directory admin centre > Overview of your tenant:
Does your organisation own all those tenants? (Answer may vary depending on your Microsoft 365 setup)
- Select Yes
May we contact you about your app’s use of non-protected APIs?
- Select Yes
I have read and agree to the Terms and Conditions for Licensing and payment requirements that apply to these APIs (Service specific terms in the link below)

https://aka.ms/Product_terms_for_Microsoft_Azure_services

(Note: selecting “no” will reject your request.)
- Select Yes