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Retention policies and labels in a glance
Retain-only: Retain content forever or for a specified period
Delete-only: Permanently delete content after a specified period
Retain and then delete: Retain the content for a specified period and then permanently delete it
Click here to learn about subscription and licensing requirements to use retention labels and policies.
For SharePoint and OneDrive sites: The copy is retained in the Preservation Hold library.
For Exchange mailboxes: The copy is retained in the Recoverable Items folder.
For Teams and Yammer messages: The copy is retained in a hidden folder named SubstrateHolds which is a subfolder within the Exchange Recoverable Items folder.
Data in the Preservation Hold Library counts against your SharePoint storage quota. The total SharePoint storage limit per organization is set at 1TB plus 10GB x number of licensed Microsoft 365 users in your tenant. If you exceed the limit, you will have to purchase additional storage priced at $200/month/TB. To save on storage costs while retaining data, you can opt for a third-party cloud backup solution, like SysCloud.
Use trainable classifiers to identify the content to label
Support disposition review for the content before it is permanently deleted
Mark the content as a record in the label settings, and always have proof of disposition when the content is deleted at the end of its retention period
To compare retention capabilities for retention policies and retention labels, refer to the comprehensive table provided by Microsoft.
Note: To create and configure retention labels, one needs to be a global administrator or a compliance administrator.
Step 1: In the Microsoft 365 compliance center, navigate to the Information Governance tab under Solutions. Click on Create a label.
Step 2: Define the retention label settings according to your needs. You can define how long the data needs to be retained, when to start the retention, and what to do once the retention period is over. Learn more about each setting.
Step 3: Review the details of the label and click Create label.
Step 4: After creating the label, you can choose to publish it immediately, set an auto-apply rule to a specific type of content, or save it and publish it later.
After creating retention labels, you need to publish them. Retention labels can be published to different locations, depending on what the retention label does. When you publish retention labels, they are included in a retention label policy that makes them available for admins and users to apply to content.
A single retention label can be included in multiple retention label policies. Also, a single retention label policy can include multiple retention labels (except auto-apply retention label policies which can include only a single label).
Note: Retention labels can also be created using PowerShell.
Step 1: In the Microsoft 365 compliance center, navigate to the Information Governance tab under Solutions. Under Label policies, click on Publish labels.
Step 2: In the pop-up dialog box which lists all the labels available for publishing, select the ones you want to publish.
Step 3: Choose if you want the policy to be static or adaptive. Learn more about policy scopes for retention.
Step 4: If you chose Adaptive in Step 3: Click on Add scopes and select one or more adaptive scopes that have been created. Then, select one or more locations. The locations that you can select depend on the scope types added. Click here to learn more about adaptive scope types, available locations and attributes, and how to configure an adaptive scope.
If you chose Static in Step 3: Choose the locations where you want to apply the selected retention labels.
Step 5: Add a name and description to the policy and review the details.
2) Labels that are auto-applied:
Note:
Learn how to apply retention labels in Outlook and Outlook on the web.
Learn how to apply retention labels in OneDrive and SharePoint.
2. Administrators can apply a default retention label to all content in a SharePoint library, folder, or document set. Learn how to do this.
3. Retention labels can be automatically applied to emails by creating rules in Outlook. Learn how to do this.
Note:
After retention labels are applied to content, content search can be used to find all items that have a specific retention label applied.
A retention label can also be used as a condition in a DLP (Data Loss Prevention) policy. To learn more about how to use a retention label as a condition in DLP policy, click here.
Note: A global administrator or a compliance administrator alone can create or configure retention policies.
Step 1: Open the Compliance admin center and navigate to the Information governance section.
Step 2: Select Retention policy-> New retention policy. Enter a name and description.
Step 3: Choose the scope (adaptive or static) for the retention policy. Learn more about policy scopes for retention.
Step 4: If you chose Adaptive in Step 3: Click on Add scopes and select one or more adaptive scopes that have been created. Then, select one or more locations. The locations that you can select depend on the scope types added. Click here to learn more about adaptive scope types, available locations and attributes, and how to configure an adaptive scope.
If you chose Static in Step 3: In the Locations page, select the locations to be included in the retention policy.
Step 5: Configure the retention settings according to your organization’s requirements.
Step 6: Review the settings and click Submit. Your new retention policy will be created.
Preservation Locks can be used to restrict changes to retention policies and retention label policies. A Preservation Lock locks a retention policy or retention label policy so that no one—including a global admin—can turn off the policy, delete the policy, or make it less restrictive. Preservation Locks can be enabled only via PowerShell; enabling this feature is not available in the UI to prevent accidental configuration. Learn how to lock a retention policy or retention label policy using PowerShell
To learn more about how retention conflicts are resolved along with relevant examples, refer to the Microsoft documentation.
Retention policies and legal holds are part of the Microsoft Compliance Center which is only available in senior E3 and E5 plans, that are priced higher than Microsoft (Office) 365 Business plans.
There are also limits on the maximum number of items per policy. Learn more
Retention policies and labels provided by Microsoft are necessary for proactive regulatory compliance, to reduce the risk of litigation or security breaches, and to ensure that users work with only current and relevant content. Nevertheless, they are not designed for the purpose of backup and restore, and therefore, have serious limitations as a backup solution. Third-party cloud backup applications like SysCloud are better options to back up your Microsoft 365 data.
SysCloud Backup for Microsoft 365 provides automated, secure cloud backup for all your Microsoft 365 apps - Exchange Online, OneDrive, People, SharePoint, Teams, OneNote, Planner, Stream, Whiteboard, Public Folders, and Archived Mailboxes. With SysCloud, administrators can easily recover from accidental deletions or ransomware attacks and identify compliance gaps in the backup archives.
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