Consider a hypothetical interfaith service organization whose participants include religious and secular members. Someone asks to retire an existing Teams project conversation. RCP’s March 14, 2017 reporting described persistent, searchable chat and tools for archiving and legal holds. Those capabilities make the request more complicated than stopping the discussion: closing a conversation cannot be presented here as a promise that its record disappears. [rcp]

Our proposed response worksheet would record the conversation, the participant’s concern and an accountable records contact. It would ask whether an archive or hold applies, and leave disposition explicitly unresolved until supported by actual organizational confirmation. A reported capability establishes neither a hold in this case nor a legal duty. This is not a provider deletion procedure, and no erasure has been requested or performed here. [rcp]

There is a second decision: where to continue deliberating. TechCrunch’s interview with Microsoft’s Mira Lane distinguished speaking to the whole organization from closer collaboration and allowed for multiple tools. The proposed worksheet would therefore name a setting and purpose for a whole-group project update, then separately name a setting and purpose for a smaller continuing discussion. That choice would not resolve the existing-record request. [tc]

Participants could record differing reasons for preserving institutional memory or wanting to move on, including unresolved objections rather than an invented shared religious rule. A smaller group or another tool would not be presumed private, unrecorded or exempt from preservation. This editorial exercise assumes eligible internal access, not nonprofit entitlement. Its output is two accountable decisions, with unanswered questions retained, not a claim that transparency or erasure must always prevail. [rcp][tc]

Source documents

  1. Microsoft Teams General Availabilityhttps://rcpmag.com/articles/2017/03/14/microsoft-teams-general-availability.aspx
  2. Teams, Microsoft’s Slack rival, opens to all Office 365 usershttps://techcrunch.com/2017/03/14/teams-microsofts-slack-rival-opens-to-all-office-365-users/
  3. Microsoft Teams readies for battle in highly contested collaboration spacehttps://www.cio.com/article/234515/microsoft-teams-readies-for-battle-in-highly-contested-collaboration-space.html