Overview of retention policies and retention labels
In this tutorial, we will learn about retention policies and retention labels.
Use retention rules and retention labels with label policies to apply your retention settings to the material. You can utilise simply one or all of these techniques.
- At the site or mailbox level, use a retention policy to assign the same retention settings for content, and at the item level, use a retention label to apply retention settings (folder, document, email).
- For example, if all documents on a SharePoint site should retain for 5 years, it’s more efficient to do this with a retention policy than apply the same retention label to all documents on that site. However, if some documents in that site should retain for 5 years and others retain for 10 years, a retention policy wouldn’t be able to do this. Use retention labels when you need to define retention parameters at the item level.
Unlike retention policies, retention settings from retention labels travel with the content if it moves to a different location within your Microsoft 365 tenant. In addition, retention labels have the following capabilities that retention policies don’t support:
- Firstly, options to start the retention period from when the content was labeled or based on an event, in addition to the age of the content or when it was last modified.
- Secondly, use trainable classifiers to identify content to label.
- Thirdly, apply a default label for SharePoint documents.
- Then, support disposition review to review the content before it deletes permanently.
- Lastly, mark the content as a record as part of the label settings, and always have proof of disposition when content is deleted at the end of its retention period.
Retention policies
Retention policies can apply to the following locations:
- Firstly, Exchange email
- Secondly, the SharePoint site
- Thirdly, OneDrive accounts
- Then, Microsoft 365 Groups
- Skype for Business
- Exchange public folders
- After that, Teams channel messages
- Teams chats
- Yammer community messages
- Lastly, Yammer private messages
Retention labels
Use retention labels for different types of content that require different retention settings. For example:
- Firstly, tax forms that needs to be retained for a minimum period of time.
- Secondly, press materials that needs to be permanently deleted when they reach a specific age.
- Then, competitive research that needs to be retained for a specific period and then permanently deleted.
- Lastly, work visas that must be marked as a record so that they can’t be edited or deleted.
Further, with retention labels, you can:
- Firstly, enable people in your organization to apply a retention label manually to content in Outlook and Outlook on the web, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Microsoft 365 groups.
- Secondly, apply retention labels to content automatically if it matches specific conditions, such as when the content contains:
- Specific types of sensitive information.
- Specific keywords that match a query you create.
- Pattern matches for a trainable classifier.
- Then, start the retention period from when the content was labeled for documents in SharePoint sites and OneDrive accounts, and to email items with the exception of calendar items.
- Now, start the retention period when an event occurs, such as employees leave the organization, or contracts expire.
- Lastly, apply a default retention label to a document library, folder, or document set in SharePoint. So all documents stored in that location inherit the default retention label.
Combining retention policies and retention labels
There is no need to choose between retention rules and retention labels. Both strategies can be utilised in conjunction with one another and, in fact, compliment one another for a more thorough answer. The following are just a few examples of how retention policies and retention labels can be combined for the same place.
Example for users to override automatic deletion
Scenario: Users’ OneDrive accounts’ material is automatically erased after five years by default, but users must be able to bypass this for individual documents.
- You set and implement a retention policy for all OneDrive accounts that deletes content automatically five years after it was last edited.
- You develop and set a content retention label that preserves material indefinitely. And, you include it in a label policy that you distribute to all OneDrive accounts. Further, you show users how to manually add this label to certain documents that should be exempt from automatic destruction after five years if they haven’t been updated.
Example to retain items for longer
Scenario: By default, SharePoint objects are kept for five years before being removed, however, documents in certain libraries must be kept for ten years.
- You establish and set a retention policy that keeps material for five years and then deletes it, and you apply it to all SharePoint and Microsoft 365 Groups instances.
- You design and set a retention label that stores material for 10 years automatically. Moreover, you make this label available to SharePoint site administrators. This is so that they may use it as the default label for all objects in particular document libraries.
The principles of retention
You may apply several retention policies to the same material, unlike retention labels. A retain action and a delete action are both possible outcomes of each retention policy. Additionally, a retention label might make that item vulnerable to these measures. From top to bottom, use the flow below to comprehend the retention and deletion outcomes for a single item, with each level acting as a tie-breaker for disputes.
Explanation for the four different levels:
- Firstly, Retention wins over deletion. Content won’t delete permanently when it also has retention settings to retain it.
- For Example, an email message is subject to a retention policy for Exchange that is configured to delete items after three years and it also has a retention label applied that is configured to retain items for five years.
- Secondly, the longest retention period wins. If the content is subject to multiple retention settings that retain content for different periods of time, the content will be retained until the end of the longest retention period.
- For Example, documents in the Marketing SharePoint site are subject to two retention policies. The first retention policy configures for all SharePoint sites to retain items for five years. The second retention policy configures for a specific SharePoint site to retain items for ten years.
Documents in this Marketing SharePoint site retains for ten years. Because that’s the longest retention period.
- Thirdly, Explicit wins over implicit. Applicable to determine when items will be deleted:
- A retention label provides explicit retention in comparison with retention policies because the retention settings are applied to an individual item rather than implicitly assigned from a container. This means that a delete action from a retention label always takes precedence over a delete action from any retention policy.
- When you have retention policies only: If a retention policy for a location is scoped to use an included configuration (such as specific users for Exchange email) that retention policy takes precedence over unscoped retention policies for the same location.
- Lastly, the shortest deletion period wins. Applicable to determine when items will delete from retention policies and the outcome couldn’t resolve from the previous level.
Reference: Microsoft Documentation