Office 365 Records Management and Compliance Resource Documentation

Thanks Michael, this is a very helpful and useful reference list and Microsoft deserves a lot of credit for listening to the records management community to improve on how records are managed in Office 365. 

A key point of concern that comes up in many of my discussions with organisations is how to effectively the outcome of records retention, based on the best practice described in ISO 16175. 

The two main options now are (a) destroy automatically ('conveyor belt into a furnace' was the analogy I was given), and (b) subject the records to a disposition review. 

A concern about auto destruction is if any of the records may be required for litigation purposes - either potential or actual. As I'm sure you're aware, section 1519 of the US Criminal Code ('Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy') makes it an offence to destroy records, documents or tangible objects 'with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter'. You would want to be pretty sure that the records subject to auto-destruction will never be required for litigation purposes. 

The concerns about the disposition review process are that it (a) targets and (if approved) destroys individual documents/records in a document library leaving the library in place, and (b) no record is kept of what was disposed. Records managers I have spoken with said they would want to review not just the individual records but the entire original 'aggregation' of records (the document library) before making a decision about disposition. Of course, they can do this by using the link in the disposition review to go back to the library, but it's an extra step. 

Additionally, it is good records management practice to keep a record of records that were destroyed; currently the disposition review only shows and allows the export of default, basic metadata, not any other metadata that may have been applied in the original library. It would be good if, instead of culling the individual documents in the library, the outcome of the disposition review could include the option to (a) export all the library's original metadata (including the library URL) to a different location and (b) then delete the actual library, including all the documents contained in it (rather than targeting individual records).