Organizations often review collaboration platform usage data to understand how employees communicate, meet and share information in digital work environments. Microsoft Teams, in part due to its bundling with Microsoft 365, is widely used to analyze collaboration activity across organizations.
Does Teams track activity? Yes, Microsoft Teams tracks certain user activities. Through Microsoft 365 usage reports, administrators can view metrics such as messages sent, meetings attended, calls made and device usage. However, Teams does not track keystrokes, screen activity or detailed employee behavior. Let's look at what is considered activity in Teams, what it can and cannot track, and how businesses can monitor employee productivity without sacrificing personal privacy.
What types of activities can Teams track?
Within the Microsoft 365 administrator dashboard, organizations can track user activity across multiple Microsoft 365 applications, including Teams. These reports can be viewed directly in the Microsoft 365 admin dashboard or exported into a CSV format. This data can be viewed in seven, 30, 90 or 180-day layouts. Administrators can track numerous usage metrics, including the following:
Number of Teams group and private messages initiated by a user.
Number of replied messages.
Device types used, including Windows, Mac, Linux, web, Android, iOS.
Number of Teams meetings a user participated in.
Number of one-on-one calls conducted.
Number of meetings organized by a user.
Sum of audio and video call duration.
Sum of screen share time duration.
These reports measure usage of Teams features but do not capture screen activity, keystrokes or detailed monitoring of employee behavior within the application. These metrics help administrators understand how Teams is used across an organization but are not designed to measure individual productivity.
What counts as an activity in Teams?
Anytime a user engages with Teams in one-on-one, group and channel messaging, voice, video, conference meetings or file sharing, it counts toward active use for reporting purposes. Looking specifically at chat messages, all posts, replies, mentions and reactions are tabulated over a specified time frame. It's important to note that an activity metric is tabulated and historically tracked only when a user engages with the tool. Additionally, tracking is active regardless of whether the user is accessing Teams on a PC, mobile device or through a web browser.
What Teams activity data administrators can and cannot access
Employers have access to all the aforementioned activity metrics. Administrators can create usage reports listing all monitored activities or a selected subset of those activities.
One Teams metric not currently tracked is the amount of time that the Teams presence feature indicates if users show a status of available, busy, away, offline or "be right back." This is because status tracking is not considered a reliable way to measure productivity. Organizations can, however, use other commercially available tracking tools to obtain this type of information.
Tracking is active regardless of whether the user is accessing Teams on a PC, mobile device or through a web browser.
How to use activity data without sacrificing employee privacy
Microsoft Teams activity reports are designed primarily for usage and adoption analytics rather than direct employee surveillance. Organizations can protect employee privacy by enabling anonymized reporting in Microsoft 365 usage reports. When anonymization is enabled, identifying information such as user names and email addresses is hidden in activity reports.
Examples of identifiable information that can be anonymized include the following:
User or display names.
Email addresses.
AD object IDs.
Note that anonymizing Teams user activity data requires Microsoft 365 administrators to enable this capability within the Reports section.
Another way to protect activity data is to limit the number of administrators who have access to activity reports. Users with the following roles have access to reports:
Global Office 365 administrators.
Teams administrators.
Global readers (read-only administrators).
To keep Teams user activities from being misused, Microsoft recommends that customers using Teams to track activity limit the number of administrators within these user roles to a trusted few.
Microsoft Teams activity reports are primarily designed to help organizations understand how collaboration tools are used across the workplace. While administrators can view metrics related to messaging, meetings and calls, these reports focus on platform usage rather than detailed monitoring of employee behavior. Used responsibly, Teams activity data can help organizations improve collaboration workflows, support hybrid work environments and ensure communication tools are used effectively.
Editor's note: This article was updated in March 2026 to reflect current Microsoft Teams activity reporting capabilities and updated privacy controls in Microsoft 365 usage reports
Andrew Froehlich is founder of InfraMomentum, an enterprise IT research and analyst firm, and president of West Gate Networks, an IT consulting company. He has been involved in enterprise IT for more than 20 years.
