Disclaimer: In my professional consulting life, I am a product of my customer experiences. This post is based on observations I’ve made during my customer engagements with Purview Records Management. I hope you find value in this perspective.
I work with a lot of (primarily Enterprise) customers implementing Purview Records Management. The majority of my customers already have a retention schedule (sometimes several) they are looking to implement in Microsoft Purview with as much automation as possible.
A pattern I see across my customers is the predictable complexity and effort required to execute on the implementation; largely caused by the presence of 2 main contributing factors:
- Factor 1: The complexity of their retention schedule(s)
- Factor 2: The current state of the SharePoint/Teams Information Architecture and its governance maturity level
Are there other factors that will impact the complexity and effort of an implementation that extend beyond these factors? Certainly yes, but the above 2 are the major contributors to the complexity and effort to automate some of the retention controls in Microsoft.
Examples of other factors are the willingness/ability to leverage some of the advanced AI capabilities for automation, the decision-making authority of the RM team (many decisions must be made by this team), level of executive support, involvement of the right roles in the project team, etc. All of these factors must be part of a broader conversation which is not part of this post.
Ok. Now about these 2 factors I spoke about earlier… I’m analytical by nature and so wanted to come up with a way to help quantify these 2 factors for my customers. The intent of quantifying this was to help customers with conversations they may be having with their program sponsor and/or executive team to explain why the project may be taking longer than initially anticipated. Based on the factors, an organization will end up in roughly 1 of 4 quadrants ranging from least to most challenging:
Important! Please know that this is not a scientific measure of the success you will have in your implementation. It is simply an interesting metric you can use to assess complexity and effort that may be required in your environment before you start.Â
Survey Explained (rank your organization on 2 scales)
By providing a number from 1 to 10 for each of the 2 factors below, it will help provide an approximate level of complexity and effort by positioning your organization in 1 of the 4 quadrants:
#1 Factor: Retention schedule complexity (X axis)
 Where “1” is … for purposes of this post, I call this a “BASIC” retention schedule
Review the list below of what contributes to a Complex retention schedule (my opinion of what a “10” is)… the less you have of the items in that list, the lower your number should be). If you don’t have a retention schedule and are looking to build one from the ground up (a few of my customers are in this situation), then look at what contributes to the complexity of a schedule and try to minimize those things where/when possible.
Where “10” is… for purposes of this post, I call this a “COMPLEX” retention schedule.
Here’s my idea of what contributes to complexity: (the more you have of these things, the higher your number should be)
- Number of record series in your retention schedule and specifically, the number that you will create in Purview for content that will be stored in M365 (this is not scientific, but anything over ~50 to 75 starts to become more complex to manage)
- Ambiguous retention requirements (such as “when no longer useful”, “superseded or obsolete”)
- Event-based retention (when the retention period starts on an external event such as project completion, agreement end, fiscal year-end, etc.)
- Custom disposition requirements (when content cannot be automatically deleted, but must go thru a review process, custom approval processes, etc.)
- Immutability requirements (the record must be locked down from certain types of edits, WORM requirement, etc.)
- Archival requirements (some content must be sent to an archival body after its active retention is complete. Requirements will come from the external body usually.)
#2 Factor: SharePoint/Teams IA and Governance (Y axis)
Note: when I refer to SharePoint/Teams, I’m referring to any type of SharePoint site regardless of how it was provisioned (with or without a Microsoft Team, classic or modern). I’m mostly focused on when business records are stored on a SharePoint site since most records managers I work with are focused on ensuring the appropriate controls are put in place when business records (files) are stored in a SharePoint site.
Where “1” is … established governance and information architecture across SharePoint/Teams
Here’s examples of good governance from a retention perspective: (not an exhaustive list)
- Approval process for creation/deletion of SharePoint sites/Microsoft Teams (this can range from manual approval to fully automated)
- Standardized sites/teams (templates)
- Governed use of metadata when it makes sense (I’m not suggesting you have metadata everywhere, but it is one of the ways to automate retention labels so using it where it makes sense is a good approach)
- Management of tenant-level term store and its usage (Managed metadata is an excellent type of metadata that works for retention – make sure you have administrators defined for it to keep the list of terms up-to-date)
- Assigned site/team ownership with defined responsibilities (perhaps have a recurring attestation process for data stewardship for all site/team owners )
Where “10” is… minimal governance and information architecture across SharePoint/Teams
Here’s examples of minimal governance from a retention perspective: (not an exhaustive list)
- No approval process for creation/deletion of SharePoint sites/Microsoft Teams resulting in uncontrolled site sprawl (sometimes referred to as “wild west”)
- Either no metadata in use or no idea if there is any in useÂ
- A heavy folder culture
- No ownership training
Please fill out the survey
To help me understand how you would rate your organizations, I’ve created an anonymous survey using Microsoft forms where you can provide the above 2 ratings for your organization (or your customer’s organization if you are a consultant).
Link:Â Complexity Quadrant deck and survey
Once I’ve collected a reasonable number of responses, I’ll update this post with the results!
Thanks for joining in!
-JCK