Email Retention Period / Policy

[enjay]

I've just managed to get a colleague out of a little hole by referring to an email from 2021. It's not an email I'd have flagged for longer retention at the time, but it was useful now. This is why I'm a bit concerned about forced retention policies.

[GrumbleDook]

I've just managed to get a colleague out of a little hole by referring to an email from 2021. It's not an email I'd have flagged for longer retention at the time, but it was useful now. This is why I'm a bit concerned about forced retention policies.

 

Would that email have information that could have been recorded elsewhere? A ticket within a service management solution, that also supports any change management you might be involved in?

It sounds like there would have been a reason the email was kept. If so, then have areas within your mail account with different retention periods. Or make sure it is recorded in the relevant system.

[enjay]

Would that email have information that could have been recorded elsewhere? A ticket within a service management solution, that also supports any change management you might be involved in?

 

Technically yes, but unless I remove my direct address and have everyone contact me via the helpdesk, there will always be emails (one of our admins CCs every email to her manager, maybe I should do that with the helpdesk!). It was advice only, there was no change management.

 

It sounds like there would have been a reason the email was kept. If so, then have areas within your mail account with different retention periods. Or make sure it is recorded in the relevant system.

 

Agreed, except it isn't an email I'd have flagged for longer retention at the time, as I wouldn't have expected it to become useful again. Maybe I should start flag all of my emails for longer retention, which I'm sure is what many people are doing anyway.

[GrumbleDook]

Agreed, except it isn't an email I'd have flagged for longer retention at the time, as I wouldn't have expected it to become useful again. Maybe I should start flag all of my emails for longer retention, which I'm sure is what many people are doing anyway.

 

I make heavy use of rules and categories for this. It also means that I can set aside a day every so often to review anything that might be useful in the future and have a rolling approach to reviewing things.

Generally, anything I know will be stored in another system will be moved to a given folder and a desktop notification is sent. I tag other items remaining in my inbox and move those to other places too. It is not perfect and because I have done it this way for about 20 years now, I know it works for me. I know I will loose some emails that I have sent, but it is more about the email recipient also needing to reetain.

 

That said, I think I have tried pretty much most of the add-ons for Outlook on my Windows machines and Mail on my Macs. Some are just plain strange and create more work for me, but have saved time for any assistant/support I have had.

[kennysarmy]

It is, but the policy takes time to apply everywhere. It took about a week to properly kick in on everything here.

 

Been plenty time for this policy to have kicked in but still the test user has "old" emails left in their "Deleted Items".

 

I've been advised the way to deal with this is to go via Data Lifecycle Management and then Exchange (Legacy) and create an MRM Retention Tag and Policy and apply to the user.

 

Surely this should not be necessary as the Microsoft 365 policy applying to Exchange mailboxes should work on all default folders including Deleted Items :/

[DGardiner]

Our retention period saved our bacon last year when an energy brokerage firm had informed us that we had given them permission to resell our supply as they saw fit, given our size its not even one that would get past approvals without a number of people signign this off... something was up...

 

they forwarded proof to the finance department. Panic ensued as the person who agreed to it no longer worked at the company and hadnt for a number of years....

 

opened up vault, and found the email in question, turned out they had edited the "evidence" email... high tech i know, im not sure what happened after that as that was the end of my involvement but our finance team were more than happy and they reported it to the DFE and the company never said a peep again

[PotNoodleTech]

Our retention period saved our bacon last year when an energy brokerage firm had informed us that we had given them permission to resell our supply as they saw fit, given our size its not even one that would get past approvals without a number of people signign this off... something was up...

 

they forwarded proof to the finance department. Panic ensued as the person who agreed to it no longer worked at the company and hadnt for a number of years....

 

opened up vault, and found the email in question, turned out they had edited the "evidence" email... high tech i know, im not sure what happened after that as that was the end of my involvement but our finance team were more than happy and they reported it to the DFE and the company never said a peep again

 

See this is exactly the situation where long email retention on important accounts can literally save your bacon or even save someone's job!

 

Meanwhile our LEA didn't tell us but they changed the email retention on SLT admin and Headteacher email accounts to 90 days.....

[kennysarmy]

Is my understanding correct?

 

Currently the Deleted Items folder does not auto-remove any items no matter how old, I've emails in this folder going back to 2018, others are likely to have the same.

 

Once a retention policy runs on a user's mailbox any items over the threshold (say 14 months) are moved to the Deleted Items folder.

 

Items moved to the Deleted Items folder by the retention policy are subject to 30 days wait, before they are then deleted from the Deleted Items folder.

 

Manually deleted items before the retention policy is turned on will remain forever.

 

What happens to manually deleted items after the retention policy is turned on will they be removed from the Deleted Items folder once they get to the age set in the retention policy.

 

 

The background to the above is SMT want specific staff to have no access to emails over 14 months old and I need to ensure this is doable.

It looks like I may need a powershell script to remove emails older than 14 months from the Deleted Items folder if anyone can assist with this....

[kennysarmy]

Microsoft have removed our ability to manage retention policies as it's no longer covered by the Office A1 licence

 

How are others coping with this?

 

Buying A3 licences for all mailboxes they need to run retention policies on?

 

Any other options to stop staff hoarding data in their mailboxes?

 

Could powershell scripts remove all emails in user's mailboxes older than a set date?

[kennysarmy]

Still not getting anywhere with this :/

 

I thought what I required would be easy to setup!

 

We need user's email folders to be pruned so that all emails over a certain age are automatically removed (14 months or 36 months depending on job role) AND at the same time have emails in the deleted items folder auto-deleted once they have been stored there for 30 days.

 

 

Does anyone know how I achieve this?

[PotNoodleTech]

My supplier told me I would need Azure AD P1 Annual add on licence per teacher to do more advanced conditional access and data retention stuff?

[kennysarmy]

My supplier told me I would need Azure AD P1 Annual add on licence per teacher to do more advanced conditional access and data retention stuff?

 

Yes, I was told our A1 would not suffice so for testing we've purchased one A3 licence and applied to a user.