I’ve been learning a lot about Data Governance in O365 and the investments Microsoft is making to implement true retention across all O365 services (including Groups!). If you’re interested in learning more and have a couple of hours to spare, I’ve shared links to some excellent presentations relating to this from the Ignite 2016 conference at the end of this post.
I want to share an interesting tidbit I learned that applies to retention policies for preservation and deletion in O365.
There are 3 overriding rules that determine when content is preserved or deleted if there are multiple policies applied that cover the same content. Here are the 3 rules as shared in the ‘Data Governance in O365’ session at Ignite:
- RULE #1: Longest preservation wins
- RULE #2: Shortest deletion wins
- RULE #3: Explicit wins over implicit
According to Microsoft, these rules have been tested over many scenarios and will always preserve/delete content correctly.
Example #1:
- Preservation Policy #1: “Content in site collection ‘X’ has a preservation policy of 4 years”
- Preservation Policy #2: “Content across the entire tenant has a preservation policy of 3 years”
- Result: Content in site collection’X’ would be preserved for 4 years
Example #2:
- Deletion Policy #1: “Content across all site collections provisioned with the team site collection template will be deleted after 3 years”
- Deletion Policy #2: “Content in team site collection ‘X’ will be deleted after 2 years”
- Result: Content in team site collection’X’ will be deleted after 2 years
Example #3:
- Explicit policy: “Content that contains the tag ‘Litware Inc.’ will be preserved for 4 years”
- Implicit policy: “Content across the entire tenant has a preservation policy of 3 years”
- Result: Any content across the tenant tagged with ‘Litware Inc.’ will be preserved for 4 years
Here are my recommendations for great sessions to watch from Ignite 2016 relating to Data Governance and specifically how this relates to Office 365 Groups:
- Discover Office 365 Groups – overview, what’s new and roadmap
- Learn how Microsoft IT governs SharePoint Online and Office 365 Groups
- Manage Microsoft Office 365 Groups
- Take control of your data with intelligent data governance in Office 365
Thanks for reading.
-JCK