Microsoft 365 Archive Eliminates Reactivation Fees by March 31, 2025

Tehzeeb- Unfortunately, this change may prevent us from using Microsoft (AKA. SharePoint) Archive.

Many of our scenarios would be where we need to reactivate a site to retrieve something important such as a research paper, contract, or content within a page/list, etc., and to then re-archive it almost immediately. If we are forced to keep this "inactive" site in our active sites with no option to re-archive it for 4 months, then that's a major concern.

Options I would suggest are:

• Provide a choice of pay for reactivation with the ability to re-archive immediately, or free reactivation and have the 4-month limit.
• Or better option: Re-archive for free with a 4-month limit - but with the ability to re-archive immediately at a cost.

I think the issue before was the significant cost to re-activate a site. This change has made it worse for us, and (I would assume) other Microsoft customers.

There are other major gaps with the current (and future) implementation of Microsoft Archive. Some of these are:

• Still uncertain what site templates are supported - the documentation excludes a lot of site templates. I'll update this once I get confirmation on what the actual restrictions are.
• There is nothing on the roadmap (confirmed with Microsoft engineer) for the ability to fully archive a Microsoft Team. We can only archive the SharePoint site associated with the Team. You will then need to go into the Team and "archive" it. You then need to use PowerShell to "archive" all the Private and Shared Channel sites. We need to be able to go to a Team and click on Archive and Microsoft Archive will take care of archiving everything.
• There is nothing on the roadmap (confirmed with Microsoft engineer) or even any discussion around the ability to archive a Viva Engage community. You can archive the SharePoint site associated with it, but that will just leave the Viva Engage community in a broken state (can still post but can't add any images, attachments, etc.). There is absolutely no way to hide a Viva Engage community either - even if you set it as Private and remove all permissions, users will still see it in the list of communities and be able to request to join. There is no option for private unlisted communities anymore. Our only option now is to fully delete the Viva Engage community (which will also delete the SharePoint site), which isn't the same as archive.

We're really hoping Microsoft decides to not just have SharePoint archive, and instead implement Microsoft Archive (including SharePoint, Teams, Engage, etc.). Quite concerned about the current roadmap though.