Unified Communications (UC) tools are now synonymous with the modern workplace. Decisions are made in chat, approvals happen in meetings, and evidence lives in recordings and transcripts. The catch is that this content is spread across platforms and storage locations, which can make compliance slow and painful when an audit, investigation, or lawsuit hits.
Microsoft’s own guidance shows how Teams content can be stored in different places depending on the conversation type (for example, group chats vs channel meetings), which is exactly why many organizations look for a dedicated UC archiving approach.
If you are selecting a compliance platform or partner, here are the criteria for choosing a UC archiving vendor – beyond simply brand names.
Capture coverage: prove what you can collect, not what the brochure claims
“Coverage” means what the vendor can reliably capture and preserve across your real environment: chat, channels, meeting messages, files, and meeting artefacts (recordings, transcripts, attachments). This is harder than it sounds because modern organizations often use multiple collaboration apps.
IDC MarketScape research found that most companies have almost seven different collaborative applications, which increases the chance of missing data if your archive only covers one or two tools.
What to check in demos:
- Which platforms are supported (Teams, Slack, Zoom, Webex), and which content types are included.
- How external collaboration is handled (guests, cross-tenant access, partner spaces).
- Whether capture uses vendor-supported APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), which are the official “pipes” for pulling data.
For example, Cisco explicitly states that Webex can integrate with external compliance platforms. This is done through its Events API and related APIs to access, monitor, and archive Webex data.
Retention logic: keep what you must, delete what you should
Retention is the rule set that determines how long content is kept, and when it is defensibly deleted. Buyers often fixate on “longer is safer,” but that can increase cost and risk.
Your UC archiving partner should support:
- Multiple retention schedules by policy (for example HR, customer support, executive comms).
- Legal hold (also called litigation hold), which pauses deletion when content must be preserved for a legal matter.
Supervision and review: can you spot risk early, with separation of duties?
Supervision (often called communications compliance) is the ability to monitor or review certain communications for policy breaches, misconduct, or regulatory issues. In plain English, it helps you catch problems before they become incidents.
Microsoft describes Communication Compliance as supporting the separation of duties between people configuring policies and those reviewing messages, which is important for governance and audit defensibility.
Mimecast positions modern collaboration governance as extending monitoring beyond email into tools like Teams and Slack, with proactive monitoring and alerts.
Ask vendors:
- Can you target supervision by group, channel type, region, and risk category?
- Can reviewers work in queues with audit trails (who reviewed what, when, and why)?
- How does the solution reduce false positives so compliance teams are not buried?
eDiscovery performance: speed, completeness, and export you can defend
eDiscovery (electronic discovery) is the process of finding, collecting, and exporting relevant content for legal and compliance needs. Performance matters because slow search and messy exports create real cost and risk.
Microsoft’s Teams eDiscovery guidance highlights why this can get complex. Content and attachments can live in different back-end services (like Exchange Online mailboxes and OneDrive), so you need accurate collection across locations.
Evaluation tips:
- Run a timed test using realistic queries (names, dates, keywords, channels).
- Validate exports, chain of custody, and reviewer experience.
- Check how the vendor handles meeting artefacts and edits.
Conclusion: pick the partner that matches your real collaboration footprint
The best UC archiving decision is the one that holds up under pressure. Prioritize capture coverage across your toolset, retention logic with legal hold, supervision workflows with separation of duties, and eDiscovery performance you can prove in a test.
Remember – your archive is only as good as its coverage and operational fit. It’s imperative that you are aware of how to find a suitable UC compliance and archiving partner.
To find out more about the latest tools for security and compliance in UC, check out our ultimate guide on the topic.
