P2P

32 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S P R I N G 2 0 2 3 those items, as well as any retained copies, will be automatically deleted. This ensures that records are permanently deleted once they age out of the retention period. • Delete only: Items will be permanently deleted when they reach the age specified in the policy. No retention will take place, meaning that items can be permanently deleted by end users at any time. The retention settings outlined above can be based either on an item's creation date or its last modified date. Retention Labels In contrast to policies, which are location-based, retention labels are item-based and applied to specific email messages or SharePoint/OneDrive files. Configuring retention labels is a two-step process: administrators first create the label, including its retention settings, and then publish the label to the desired Microsoft 365 locations. While policies can be used across all major Microsoft 365 workloads, labels can only be published to Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft 365 Groups and cannot be used within Teams, Yammer, or any other Microsoft 365 locations. Once a label has been published, it will be available for end users to manually apply to documents within the specified locations. Labels can also be configured to be automatically applied to content based on preset rules – for example, automatically labeling content which contains addresses or Social Security numbers. Once a retention label has been applied to a document, the label and the associated retention rules stay with that document even if it is moved to a location where that label has not been published. In addition to the retention options available via policies, several additional actions can be triggered by retention labels. For example, you can choose to have labeled items undergo a disposition review at the end of the retention period to confirm that they can be safely deleted, change the label to a new one, or even run a custom Power Automate flow tailored to your specific business processes. Static vs. Adaptive Scopes Retention policies and labels can be either static or adaptive in scope. When a retention policy is static in scope, administrators can either apply a policy across the entire organization or pick the specific locations to be governed by the policy – for example, the Exchange mailboxes for a particular set of users or a specific SharePoint site. Similarly, labels that are static in scope can be published to all locations or to specific locations chosen at the time that the label is published. With adaptive scopes – available only with an E5 license or equivalent – administrators can use queries to identify the locations to which a policy is applied or a label is published. Adaptive scopes can be configured based off of Azure Active Directory attributes for users and Microsoft 365 Groups (e.g., department or description), as well as SharePoint properties (e.g., site name). As the attributes for a location change, locations will automatically fall into or out of scope for the policy or label in question. Retention Principles When more than one retention scope is applied to an item either by multiple policies or a combination of policies and a label, the principles of retention determine how long that item is retained. These principles are outlined in the diagram below (courtesy of Learn about retention policies and labels to retain or delete): • Retention wins over deletion: If an item has both a retention and a deletion policy applied, the retention policy wins. For example, if an email message is in a mailbox within scope for a policy that retains items for five years after creation, that message will be retained for the full five years even if a retention label is applied to that item calling for deletion three years after creation. • Longest retention period wins: If an item has multiple retention policies and/or labels applied, the longest retention period wins. For example, if an email message is in a Q 1 W H I T E P A P E R S

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