Restrict access to Mgr’s Outlook delegate and not access Teams meeting chat?

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Hello, we happened to discover this week that a Manager’s Outlook delegate (that creates, manages many of the manager’s Teams meetings) has the rights, and in fact is notified, whenever the meeting’s chat feature is used and content is entered. The Manager’s delegate is not inviting themselves to the meeting, though they show up as the Meeting Organizer (when viewed by other meeting participants, but not by the Manager themselves).

In one way, I’m not surprised to become aware of this, though from another perspective, I agree with my Manager’s comment that this isn’t right. Note, we’re aware that if the Manager uses Teams chat outside of the meeting (i.e. chatting directly with a participant, similar to using Teams chat without a meeting), then the delegate cannot see the chat and such that’s an alternative.

We’re running Microsoft 365, Teams latest version 1 or 2, with a hybrid setup to 2016 Exchange server.
-not that I believe this is a contributing factor

IT Manager Geek

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If they are a delegate, I would honestly expect that they would blanket inherit the Teams rights.

https://www.jumpto365.com/blog/how-to-control-file-permissions-in-microsoft-teams-chats#:~:text=To%20do%20that%2C%20open%20your%20OneDrive%20for%20Business,permissions%20using%20internal%20names%20or%20external%20email%20addresses.

I believe you can restrict this but you’d need to do this after the fact and not expect it from the get go.

 

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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IT Manager Geek

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Susan, appreciate the follow up and article, though the article is specific to a file saved during a Teams meeting and I’m discussing Teams Meeting chat (though I get why you referenced it and I do appreciate it’s content).

You make the point, and I’m not disagreeing with you “If they are a delegate, I would honestly expect that they would blanket inherit the Teams rights.” though why does Microsoft allow for an Outlook delegate / Meeting organizer / not invited to that meeting, the ability to monitor that chat of a meeting between invitees?  Or better, where does Microsoft outline what rights an Outlook meeting organizer have to a Teams meeting?

Look at it from our users perspective, Manager has a delegate create / setup a number of confidential meetings and therefore expects that anyone not invited, not to have access to that Meeting’s content.

Again, part of me isn’t surprised, though I believe this should be stated clearly somewhere, and so far I’m not seeing any official Microsoft statement on what rights an Outlook delegate has to a Teams meeting.

Look forward to further discussion and insight.

Thanks,

 

IT Manager Geek

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https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/client-developer/outlook/mapi/delegate-access

If you are a delegate of someone in Outlook you have full rights of that person.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/allow-someone-else-to-manage-your-mail-and-calendar-41c40c04-3bd1-4d22-963a-28eafec25926

By default, when you add a delegate, the delegate has full access to your Calendar and Tasks folders. The delegate can also respond to meeting requests on your behalf.

So everything that comes with that access.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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IT Manager Geek

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Thanks Susan, though the missing item from the 2 urls, and from what little I’ve received from everyone the Reddit & Microsoft Community (both in their respective Teams groups), is the mention of Teams in the Outlook references regarding Delegate permissions.

The manager in question still has concerns, though it appears the answer is that Teams is carrying on the same meeting permissions from Outlook, and with a delegate being the “Meeting Organizer” literally translate as admin privileges to that Teams meeting, along with the verbiage and any recordings (which I can see why Microsoft decided this should be as many managers would expect their delegates to have access).

Guess we’ll see if anyone else flags the inheritent permissions Teams assumes from an Outlook delegate and has concerns.

Take care,

IT Manager Geek

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Delegate should be used sparingly and as the links showcase, you need to edit permissions as what suits your needs.  Microsoft always sets permissions to get things to work, but not necessarily for privacy.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Hi, was asked to get Microsoft’s formal response to the above and, no surprise, support states:

• there no way to block the access to the Teams Chat when the user has a delegate access unless you remove the delegate access.

To be fair, when I asked our 3rd party support to formally ask Microsoft, they were also in agreement with the Manager’s initial concern.

That ends that. 🙂  Thanks all,

IT Manager Geek

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