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.
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.
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.
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:
Step 1. Open the Cirrus app.
Step 2. Select Settings > System > Setup Teams Chats.
Step 3. Tick the box to agree to enable this feature.
Step 4. Follow the steps to reauthenticate (this will allow Cirrus to access those requested APIs).
Step 5. Select to automatically enable or manually enable the option.
If you require assistance, you can access online help at https://support.cirrusbackup.com or reach out to our Support Team via email at support@cirrusbackup.com.