DavR Posted March 25, 2024 Posted March 25, 2024 I wonder if anyone here has managed to make sense of the licensing requirements for Office 365 email retention policies? I've struggled, and my reseller isn't entirely clear either. We have O365 A1, paired with ProPlus on an OVS, so we've got the real basics when it comes to the online elements. Are we we entitled to use any of the retention policy options under the Data Lifecycle Protection in M365 Admin? There are quite a few there, and we have built up effective retention policies, but after speaking to Microsoft support, I've found we're not licensed for a lot of what we're using. I had it in my head that we'd be OK to use just a simple whole school email retention policy (rather than different policies per mailbox, and/or the adaptive scope options), but actually I can't find anywhere in the documentation which supports that. If we can't use any of the DLP retention policy settings, is there another way of implementing a basic "delete after three years unless user places hold" retention policy? I've seen auto-archiving mentioned as an option, but then seen others saying this too is an add-on for Exchange Online Plan 1, so we're back to where we started. Thanks in advance folks!
Olliedawg Posted March 25, 2024 Posted March 25, 2024 I wonder if anyone here has managed to make sense of the licensing requirements for Office 365 email retention policies? I've struggled, and my reseller isn't entirely clear either. We have O365 A1, paired with ProPlus on an OVS, so we've got the real basics when it comes to the online elements. Are we we entitled to use any of the retention policy options under the Data Lifecycle Protection in M365 Admin? There are quite a few there, and we have built up effective retention policies, but after speaking to Microsoft support, I've found we're not licensed for a lot of what we're using. I had it in my head that we'd be OK to use just a simple whole school email retention policy (rather than different policies per mailbox, and/or the adaptive scope options), but actually I can't find anywhere in the documentation which supports that. If we can't use any of the DLP retention policy settings, is there another way of implementing a basic "delete after three years unless user places hold" retention policy? I've seen auto-archiving mentioned as an option, but then seen others saying this too is an add-on for Exchange Online Plan 1, so we're back to where we started. Thanks in advance folks! Following
DavR Posted July 21 Author Posted July 21 I never really got anywhere with it I'm afraid, we ended up just leaving it as we had it set up, rightly or wrongly. I got the below graphic from our reseller showing what you're allowed on A1 - basically just manual retention labels, which no-one at a school level is going to use. To be licensed correctly under Microsoft Purview, you'll need A3 for users to set basic retention policies (eg "these mailboxes" = 3 yr retention), and A5 to set retention policies against dynamic groups (eg "security group Staff" = 3 yr retention policy). At least, that is my understanding. It's possible that something can be achieved using the legacy Exchange MRM policies, but I haven't investigated much further on this. I suspect there was some barrier or other but I forget what.
Boredguy Posted July 21 Posted July 21 Check to see if you still have the Legacy Exchange Mailbox Tags here https://purview.microsoft.com/datalifecyclemanagement/exchange/retentiontags As we are still using this for our schools on both A1 and A3 licences, and have done for a while, even before we got P1.
DavR Posted July 21 Author Posted July 21 24 minutes ago, Boredguy said: Check to see if you still have the Legacy Exchange Mailbox Tags here https://purview.microsoft.com/datalifecyclemanagement/exchange/retentiontags As we are still using this for our schools on both A1 and A3 licences, and have done for a while, even before we got P1. We do still have those legacy MRM tags, of which the 'Personal' ones appear as options for manual tagging in our mailboxes. It's all on defaults, but, not doing any actual archiving or deleting as far as I can tell. Do you have any info as to what licensing you need to use MRM tags and policies? My understanding is Exchange Online P1 (ie A1) allows you manual tags, but you need Exchange Online P2 (ie A3) to do anything useful with policies, much the same as Purview Retention policies. This is all from reading between the lines on other discussions though, I can't find it written down anywhere.
Boredguy Posted July 21 Posted July 21 I detailed our Retention Policy and the tags we have applied on a previous thread -> I've got this setup on the majority of our MAT tenancies, and as the tags we're using are not the "Personal" ones, they take effect for everything in the Inbox etc without any issues. In fact I've not put any of "Personal" tags that users can select into the Retention Policy.
DavR Posted July 21 Author Posted July 21 4 minutes ago, Boredguy said: I detailed our Retention Policy and the tags we have applied on a previous thread -> I've got this setup on the majority of our MAT tenancies, and as the tags we're using are not the "Personal" ones, they take effect for everything in the Inbox etc without any issues. In fact I've not put any of "Personal" tags that users can select into the Retention Policy. Fair enough. Like I said, ours is still on the defaults, as I'm fairly sure we're not licensed to use any of the MRM retention policies under our A1 license. I'm sure it's all possible in the console, but that doesn't mean we're licensed for it.
Boredguy Posted July 21 Posted July 21 Well as I'm setting it up on tenancies that only have A1 licences, and it is a legacy part of Exchange you should still be able to use it.
DavR Posted July 21 Author Posted July 21 Interesting. Reading the below, I think you're right, using the MRM options could be permitted under A1 (Exchange Plan 1). Just to be aware though, the Archiving options only seem to be licensed for A3 (Exchange Plan 2). Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-archiving-service-description/exchange-online-archiving-service-description Something to think about, thanks!
Boredguy Posted July 21 Posted July 21 The option to move to the online archive (which is a mailbox option within Exchange) is different to the Archive option for Exchange Plan 2. As I said, I've been running this config on A1 and A3 tenancies for the last 8 years without any issue.
DavR Posted July 21 Author Posted July 21 I'll take your word for it re Archiving, I tend to just go straight from live to deleting tbh.
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