Teams backups are generally slower due to limitations in the Microsoft Graph API. Specifically, retrieving the full list of Teams chats for all users is a time-consuming process. This is because:
- Users often have a large number of chats. This includes one-on-one conversations, group chats, and meeting chats. Every scheduled Teams meeting creates a separate chat thread, which adds to the total volume of chat objects that must be queried and backed up.
- Real-time data handling: Unlike Exchange or OneDrive, which allow for some delay in data syncing, Teams operates in near real-time. This means Microsoft enforces stricter limits on how many requests can be made concurrently to ensure data integrity.
- API throttling: These limits slow down the backup process, especially when backing up only Teams data.
Even though we've implemented several optimizations, a full backup for Teams chats can still take over a day to complete. We're also working on UI improvements to better communicate these processing expectations.