How to Enable Retention Policy in Office 365: Detailed Guide

The digital landscape of today has been evolving rapidly. Because of this, effective management of data has become very important in today’s day and age. Businesses need to maintain their control over important data in order to make sure that it complies with the regulatory and legal requirements. This will help improve the efficiency of storage of data and also, reduce the risk of data breaches. In this article, we are going to learn how to enable retention policy in Office 365.

Table of content: 

1. What are Retention Policies?
2. Benefits of the Retention Policies in Office 365
3. Retention Policy Implementation Requirements
4. Creating and Configuring Retention Policies
5. How to Enable Retention Policy in Office 365 for Teams
6. Configure the Retention Policy for Teams
7. Enable Retention Policy in Office 365 for Viva Engage
8. Steps to Enable Retention Policy in Office 365
9. After How Much Time Does Retention Policy Take Effect
10. Common Challenges and Troubleshooting tips
11. Case Studies for Retention Policies in Office 365
12. What Should You Do if Retention Policies Are Working Incorrectly
13. Conclusion
14. Frequently Asked Questions

One of the most important tools that are in use to manage the lifecycle of the data is the retention policy. This guide will help you enable and manage the retention policies in Office 365 by giving you steps, best practices, and every other detail that you’re going to need. 

What are Retention Policies?

These are a set of rules that manage the data lifecycle in an organisation. Retention policies tell you how long a certain data type should be retained, where it should be stored, and when it should be removed. These policies help businesses comply with various regulatory and legal requirements, ensure the preservation of obsolete data, and manage the cost of storing this data safely. Instead of learning how to archive mailboxes, you can set up a retention policy that will help you manage the data and remove it automatically to reduce clutter. 

Here are some of the key concepts that you should be aware of: 

1. Retention Period: The time period during which the data is kept.
2. Retention and deletion: This is a combination of both actions of retaining the data and then deleting it as well. 
3. Deletion action: This is the process of completely deleting the data after the retention period has been completed. 

These policies can be applicable to several types of data in Office 365 such as chats, emails, documents, and more. 

Benefits of the Retention Policies in Office 365

Applying retention rules provides a number of advantages, including: 

1. Effectiveness of operations — By clearing out unnecessary material from repositories, retention policies increase user productivity. This greatly simplifies the search for crucial facts. 
2. Cost-Effectiveness — Users can cut storage expenses by using retention policies. Outdated data is eliminated to achieve this. 
3. Risk Reduction — In the event of cyber attacks or data breaches, retention policies can dramatically lower the risks of data getting leaked. 
4. Data management — Retention policies aid in data organisation. Older data automatically moves to the bin in order to achieve this. 

Also read: How To Add Rules To A Shared Mailbox In Office 365: The Ultimate Guide

Retention Policy Implementation Requirements

Before you implement retention policies in Office 365, you should make sure that these requirements are met: 

1. Mapping of data — Start by understanding the data landscape of the business in order to understand which data should be removed, and which data should be retained. 
2. Licenses — Make sure that the Office 365 subscription you have, includes the compliance features. These features are available in Office 365 E3, E5, or add-ons. 
3. Permissions — Make sure that you have the administrative permissions. Using this, you can access the Compliance Center and configure the retention policies. 

Creating and Configuring Retention Policies

Even though retention policies offer support for several services that are called “Locations” in a retention policy. A single retention policy cannot be made for all the supported locations. These locations are: 

1. Exchange mailboxes. 
2. SharePoint. 
3. OneDrive. 
4. Office 365 group mailboxes. 
5. Exchange public folders. 
6. Skype for business. 
7. Teams channels, and chats. 
8. Viva Engage community and user messages. 

If a user selects the Viva Engage or Teams locations when they create retention policies, then the other locations are automatically excluded. The Steps to follow to create and configure retention policies depend on whether you want to include Teams or Viva Engage locations. 

How to Enable Retention Policy in Office 365 for Teams

Retention policies for Teams support the shared channels. When these retention settings are configured for the Teams channel message locations, they get the retention settings from their parent Teams. 

Configure the Retention Policy for Teams

To configure this, you can use the Purview portal. Follow the steps given below: 

• Sign in to the Purview portal.
• Go to the Data Lifecycle Management. 
• Select the policies option. 
• Choose the retention policies option. 
• Select the new retention policy in order to start the configuration of Create a retention policy. Name the new retention policy. 
• If your business is using the administrative units in Microsoft Entra ID, the retention policy can be automatically restricted to users. This can be done by choosing administrative units. 
• To select the type of retention policy in order to make a page, choose adaptive or static. You can choose the Adaptive option, but if you have not made adaptive scopes, then you will not be able to finish the configuration with this option. 
• If you select the Static option, go to the Choose locations to apply the policy page, and select the location for teams. 
  • Teams Channel message — Standard and shared channel chats, meeting messages, but not private channels that have policy location. 
  • Teams Chats — For Teams, messages from group chats, meeting chats, and other chats with yourself. 
  • Teams messages in Private Channels — Messages that are from private channel chats, and meetings. If this option has been selected, then you cannot select other Teams locations in the same retention policy. 
• Decide if you want to retain the content, delete it, or both, you can specify these configurations for retaining or deleting the content. 
• Complete the configuration process, and save the settings. 

Enable Retention Policy in Office 365 for Viva Engage

• Navigate to the following location: Sign into Purview portal > Data lifecycle management > Policies > Retention Policies. 
• Choose the new retention policy option. 
• In the Assign admin units page — If your business is using administrative units in Entra ID, the retention policy can automatically restrict specific users. If the account you’re using has been assigned, you can select one or more than one administrative units. 
• Choose the type of retention policy you want to create and select either the adaptive or static options. 
• Depending on the selected scope, 
  • For Adaptive — Choose the adaptive policy scopes and locations page. Choose the add scope option and select one or more scopes that you have made. 
  • For Static — Choose locations to apply the policy page, and then you can toggle on one or more than one of the locations for Viva Engage. 
• Decide if you want to retain, delete, or do both for the content. 
• Complete the configuration process and save the settings. 

Steps to Enable Retention Policy in Office 365

1. Sign in to Office 365 and open the compliance centre.
2. Go to the Information Governance option under the solution section. 
3. Now you can create a retention policy by clicking on the retention policies option, and selecting the Create option to make a new policy. 
4. Make a name and a description for the policy that you have just created 
5. Configure the retention settings by specifying the duration, specifying which content needs to be removed after the period has ended, and setting up both actions if needed. 

Also read: What Is Mailbox Delegation In Office 365 – A Brief Explanation

After How Much Time Does Retention Policy Take Effect

After creating a retention policy, up to seven days can be taken for the retention policy to be applied. 

First, the retention policy has to be distributed, to the locations that you have chosen, then applied to the content. You can check the status of the retention policy by choosing it from the retention policy page. If you see an error in the status, you can try running the following commands:

• Connect the security and compliance PowerShell
• Run one of the following commands:
  • For the policy location of Teams, “Set-AppRetentionCompliancePolicy -Identity <policy name> -RetryDistribution”
  • For all the other policy locations, “Set-RetentionCompliancePolicy -Identity <policy name> -RetryDistribution”

Common Challenges and Troubleshooting tips

After you have learnt how to enable retention policy in Office 365, you should learn some of the troubleshooting tips. 

Here are the several challenges that you can face: 

1. The complicated landscape of data: Managing the retention across various devices can be very complicated. You need to make sure that the mapping of data and the data flow has been understood completely. 
2. Issues of permission: You should ensure that you have the correct permissions in order to make and manage retention policies. 
3. Conflicts between policies: When there are multiple policies that are applied to the same data, there could be conflicts. You should clearly define these retention policies in order to avoid overlaps. 
4. Requirements of Compliance: You should keep yourself updated with several regulatory changes which may affect the policies. You can adjust these retention policies accordingly. 

Here are the tips for troubleshooting: 

1. If the policy is not being applied, you can verify all the settings of policies and make sure that they are applied at the correct locations. 
2. If the data is not retained or move, You can check the settings and see if they are configured correctly or are conflicting with other policies. 
3. If the users are having issues accessing the files, you can configure the settings to start the retention period that is based on events, for example, Completion of a contract, or an employee who is terminated. 

Case Studies for Retention Policies in Office 365

Here are some of the case studies that show you the application of retention policies: 

1. A financial company has to comply with the regulatory requirements to retain communication with the customers. Enabling retention policies in Office 365, they can make sure that all the emails and other documents are retained for the 7-year period that has been set up. Moreover, the financial data that is sensitive, gets deleted after 10 years to reduce the storage costs and also prevent leaks of data. 
2. When a healthcare provider needs to comply with the regulations, in which it is mandatory to retain the records of the patients for a specific duration. Users can store records of the patients securely by enabling the retention policy in Office 365. This can help maintain the security of the data and also the confidentiality of the patients. 

users can store records of the patients securely by enabling the retention policy in Office 365.

Conclusion

By enabling retention policies, you can save a lot of space and also keep sensitive files safe. By following the steps in this article, you have learnt how to enable retention policy in Office 365, and can now set up and also manage the policies that align with the needs of your business. Moreover, you can also improve the security by following certain Office 365 security checklists. This will help you optimise and maintain the security of the system. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. Where does the data go after the retention period has ended? 

After the period ends, retention policy automatically deletes the data permanently. 

Q2. How are the retention labels different from retention policies? 

You can apply retention policies to an entire location, whereas you can apply retention labels to individual items such as emails or documents.

Q3. How often should I review the retention policies? 

You can review the retention policies at least yearly. This will ensure that these policies meet the current regulatory needs of the business. 

Q4. What is retention hold and how do I set it? 

A retention hold is a feature that comes in handy in certain situations where users might be away temporarily. When data is in retention hold, users can log on to their devices and change or delete mails. When users search the mailbox for items that have passed their retention period, they won’t be able to find it.

In order to enable a retention hold, users can choose the Enable retention hold box > configure retention hold duration button > Find mailboxes to modify > Apply.

Q5. How do I disable the retention policy? 

You can follow the steps given below to disable the retention policy:

Mail > retention policies > choose the retention policy you want to disable > (–).

Q6. What is the default retention policy in Office 365? 

Every office 365 mailbox has a retention policy. The default retention policy in office 365 archives the mails after two years.