How to Create Retention Policy in Office 365 Exchange Online?

Office 365 is used in several large organizations to store and manage data in the cloud. Exchange Online provides several options to manage O365 data. One of them is Message record management or the MRM, which helps in Office 365 retention management. Retention Policy and Retention tags are part of the MRM. Messaging record management (MRM) in Exchange Online helps in managing the records. MRM is possible through retention tags and retention policy. Here, we will talk about how to Create Retention Policy in Office 365.

What is Retention Tags? 

Retention tags help in applying the retention setting to Office 365 messages and folders. These retention tags are used to apply the retention policy. There are three types of retention tag:

• Default Policy Tag
• Retention Policy Tags
• Personal Tags

Steps to create Retention Tags

Below are the steps to add Office 365 retention tags:

1. In the Exchange Admin Online center, under compliance management, click retention tags.
2. For creating retention tags, click the arrow beside the plus sign, a drop-down menu will appear. From the menu, the user can choose any needed option.

• Applied automatically to entire mailboxes (default)
• Applied automatically to a default folder
• Applied by users to items and folders (personal)

3. After selecting any one of the above, a new pop-up window will appear. Enter the name of the tag; choose retention action, and the retention period. Then, hit the Save button.

Retention Action: There are three types of the retention period-

• Delete and Allow Recovery: It allows users to recover deleted items by moving data to the Recoverable Items folder in Exchange Online until the deleted item retention period for the mailbox database or the user is reached. It helps the user in recovering the data for the second time using the Recover Deleted Items dialog box in OWA. If the user has set the deleted item retention period to zero days, items are permanently deleted.
• Permanently Delete: Here, the user cannot recover the data once deleted permanently. If the Office 365 mailbox is on Litigation Hold, items are preserved in the Recoverable Items folder based on the hold parameter.
• Move to Archive: It moves the item to the User’s archive mailbox if it exists. If a user does not have an archive mailbox, no action is taken.

 

Using PowerShell:  

New-RetentionPolicyTag -Name “DPT-Corp-Delete” -Type All -AgeLimitForRetention 2556 -RetentionAction DeleteAndAllowRecovery

The command allows creating a default policy tag to delete all messages in the mailbox after 7 years (2,556 days).

 

What is Retention Policy?

Retention Policy is a rule that is applied for protecting Office 365 data from any kind of deletion. Administrators can create policies according to their business requirements. Also, it is a group of retention tags that can be applied to a mailbox for Office 365 retention and deletion policies.

How to Create Retention Policy in Office 365?

1. In the Exchange Admin Online center, under compliance management, click retention policy. Hit the plus icon, a pop-up menu appears.
2. Provide a new name to the policy. Again, click on the plus sign in that particular window, a new window appears.
3. Choose the required retention tags and click Add and OK. A message appears “saving completed successfully” and then again click OK.

 

Steps to Add Office 365 Outlook retention policy for a Particular User

• Under the Exchange Admin Centre, go to Recipients. Click on the User, a new window “Edit user mailbox” will open.
• Hit on the option mailbox features, under retention policy choose the newly created policy and Save. A message appears, click OK.

 

Steps to Apply Litigation Hold in Office 365

• Under the Exchange Admin Centre, go to Recipients. Click on the User, a new window “Edit user mailbox” will open.
• Hit on the option mailbox features, under this, go to litigation hold option and click on Enable. Enter the litigation hold duration in days and click the save button.
• Similarly, to disable the litigation hold in Office 365, click the Disable option of the litigation hold option.

 

Using PowerShell:
To apply retention policy for multiple mailbox.

$OldPolicy=(Get-RetentionPolicy “Old-Retention-Policy”).distinguishedName

Get-Mailbox -Filter “RetentionPolicy -eq ‘$OldPolicy'” -Resultsize Unlimited | Set-Mailbox -RetentionPolicy “New-Retention-Policy”

 

Conclusion:

Here, in this blog, we learned how to Create Retention Policy in Office 365 and how to use office 365 email retention settings. Hope this blog will be helpful for Office 365 data retention policy.