Forum Discussion
Using Office 365 retention policies with Office 365 Groups
Hi Tony, I know this is an old thread but I'm hoping you can answer a question for us that MS has not been able to answer. When enabling an Office 365 Retention Policy for an Office 365 Group, do we need to have an Exchange Online P2 license allocated for the Group Mailbox?
If so, how do we apply this license as the mailbox is associated with a group and therefor cannot have a license applied to it.
Nope. Group mailboxes don't need licenses. You access Office 365 Groups as part of your general Office 365 plan (including via Teams).
TR
Hi All,
To be explicit, does user license cover the retention policies (litigation hold) as Andrew mentions above? The Team or Group itself does not require a license for this function? My understanding is that it is a licensed feature.
Thanks for your time,
S.
Litigation hold is a specific feature for an Exchange mailbox.
Set-Mailbox -LitigationHoldEnabled $True -Identity Amailbox
See https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn743673(v=exchg.160).aspx. You can't put a group mailbox on litigation hold.
The effect of a litigation hold is to hold the complete contents of a mailbox. You can accomplish the same effect for group mailboxes by creating an Office 365 retention policy through the SCC to retain all content for a long period and assign the policy to whatever group mailboxes you want to be in scope.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Overview-of-retention-policies-5e377752-700d-4870-9b6d-12bfc12d2423 says that you need at least an Exchange Online Plan 2 license to use a retention policy. But group mailboxes don't need a license and therefore this point is moot.
