After working with many customers mapping their retention schedule into a workable Purview File Plan, I’ve observed some predictable challenges.
I call them Hot Spots and I’ve previously listed them in a blogpost titled Retention Schedule “Hot Spots” for Microsoft Purview.
This post is a detailed explanation of Hot Spot 1… the number of record series.
What I mean by this is the number of record series that will become a Purview retention label. For this there are 2 kinds of limits to be aware of: technical and practical.
Microsoft documents the technical limit for the number of retention labels supported in a tenant’s Purview File Plan as 1000. From my experience, performance in the Purview File Plan UI begins to have performance degradation long before that limit is reached – even with hundreds of labels, Purview administrators will start to see things slow down. (Note: this is a Purview File Plan UI slow-down, NOT a slow-down in the application of labels)
In my experience, a far more important limit to pay attention to is the practical limit. If you have many retention labels, what will be your strategy for publishing and applying them to content across your tenant? How many published labels will you plan on having in the retention label dropdown for end-users to select from? If you want to default the label, how are you going to control what structure (library, folder) the retention label is set as default on? If you want to auto-apply the label, what condition will you use to apply the label? I could go on, but you get the idea… there are a lot of granular, challenging decisions to be made for each and every retention label.
This takes time. A lot of time.
My non scientific rule of thumb is as the number of labels increases, the overall complexity to apply the labels to your content also increases due to the time it takes to answer the questions above and the follow-on planning and setup required to implement it in practice.
Fewer retention labels is always better. I will die on this hill.
It will be easier to operationalize from both an administrative and business-user perspective and will likely result in being more compliant at scale.
💡A strategy to help
I wouldn’t be very good at what I do if all I suggested was to reduce the number of retention labels without also sharing some ideas on how to do just that.
For some customers, I have seen the number of record series in their retention schedule number in the hundreds, some very close to the 1000 mark. This can be daunting. Don’t make the mistake of creating a Purview retention label for each record series in the retention schedule before going thru the mapping exercise I describe in this post. Your future self will thank you.
I have worked with several customers that have reached out to me for help where a previous consultant had created EVERY record series in their retention schedule into a retention label in the Purview File Plan in their production tenant as step 1. Don’t be that consultant. 🙂
One of the most important tasks any retention project has is Mapping the retention schedule into a workable Purview File Plan.
Unless your schedule is extremely small and well understood, take the time to go thru a mapping exercise first before creating a single retention label in Purview’s File Plan. What do I mean by a “mapping exercise”? Follow these 3 steps:
1️⃣ Rationalization
2️⃣ Simplification
3️⃣ Consolidation
The working assumption for this mapping exercise it to ALWAYS stay within the spirit of the retention schedule and adhere to all regulations that are non-negotiable.
My tool of choice for the process is Excel. It’s easy to change, can be shared with business users when discussing record series that relate to their business processes and it is a great documentation tool. Eventually, you can also use a correctly formatted Excel file to import your retention label definitions into the Purview File Plan; however, by far that is not the most important part of this process.
1️⃣Rationalization
What is meant by this? Although a retention schedule is media agnostic, the Purview file plan is not. Perhaps stating the obvious, but if you don’t need it in your Purview file plan, don’t create it. Ask yourself if there are record series in the retention schedule that are stored in other LOB systems or are legacy record types and will never have content stored in Microsoft 365. If this is the case, they do NOT need to be part of the Purview File Plan.
Example 1: the record series is referencing an official contract record; however, official contract documents are housed in a Contract Management system outside of Microsoft 365. If only working documents will be stored in Microsoft 365, they may have a different retention requirement than the official record providing an opportunity to consolidate it with other “non-official” record series.
Example 2: the record series is referencing a paper record, and, at the current time, there are no plans to store a digital version in Microsoft 365. Once digitalized, it can be added to the Purview File Plan later.
Once you’ve determined that the record series in the schedule will have matching content stored in Microsoft 365, it is “rationalized”. Do this for each record series in the retention schedule before proceeding to the Simplification step.
2️⃣Simplification
What is meant by this? Keep it as simple as possible; but no simpler. Remember, you must always stay within the spirit of the retention schedule. For the remaining record series left after the rationalization step, answer these questions for each one:
Question 1: what kind of immutability requirements do you need for the record? Often Records Managers want every retention label to be a record label; however, that has an end-user impact that must be considered. Options are standard, record starting unlocked, record starting locked. Work with business teams to understand the business processes around the records they work with and which option will work best.
Question 2: what is the event triggering the retention period? You must identify this for each record series. Options are created date, last modified date, labeled date, event date, and (coming soon) last accessed date. If it is an event date, consider if this is really required – perhaps last modified date with an extended retention period may be sufficient. If it must be tied to an event, identify what the event is (contract end, fiscal year-end, agreement end, etc.) and what system/human/process will be aware of the event occurring.
Question 3: is a disposition review really required? Any time a disposition review is required for a record series, there is a human touch impact, a business process impact, and a technical impact (limit on # of reviewers in tenant). Only use a review when required and identify the business area that must be part of the disposition review process for the record series.
Question 4: is there an archival requirement for the record series once it’s at the end of its active retention period? Identify the archival requirement and archive destination.
3️⃣Consolidation
What is meant by this? Fewer retention labels are both easier to operationalize and easier to train end-users on. Now that you’ve rationalized the record series for Purview and have simplified the configuration as much as possible, look holistically across all Purview record series with an eye to consolidate as many of them together as you can that share (close to) the same retention period, retention trigger, disposition requirements, and immutability requirements. The goal is to minimize the number of retention labels required in the Purview file plan.
This step involves working closely with business teams to understand how they manage and use records in practice, which directly informs consolidation decisions.
Sidebar: I asked Copilot to complete the consolidation piece for me thinking that would save some time; however, what Copilot is lacking is the ability to collaborate with business teams on how they work with their records which is a critical part of the process. Perhaps some day it will get there, but for now, this is a hands-on, human exercise.
Example 1: several Finance record series share the same retention period of 10 years past Fiscal Year-end, and all require the same disposition review process. Consider combining them into 1 Purview retention label in the File Plan.
Example 2: an Administrative record series is found across numerous departments each with a slightly different retention period. By taking a risk-based approach and creating 1 “Administrative” retention label in Purview by selecting the longest retention period across all departments can reduce the number of labels required while keeping you within the spirit of the retention schedule.
Note: there may be some record series that you will have to do the opposite of consolidation and split it into multiple retention labels based on unique disposition requirements or immutability requirements. Keep this to a minimum if possible and always challenge your requirements.
Closing thoughts
Although you may not be able to ever get to a small or simple Purview file plan, doing what you can to rationalize, simplify, and consolidate your retention schedule is always a pragmatic approach and my recommendation.
Once you’ve gone thru the mapping exercise, you can proceed to building out a Proof-of-Concept and Pilots before moving to firmwide deployment. The approach you take will depend on the size of your organization, the complexity of your schedule, and how prepared you are for operationalizing Records Management… a topic for another post.
Thanks for reading.
-JCK