Forum Discussion
Using Office 365 retention policies with Office 365 Groups
As part of the Office 365 data governance framework, tenants can now create retention policies that apply to the mailbox and team site belonging to Office 365 Groups. The process is quite straightf...
TonyRedmond Apologies for resurrecting this from so long ago - but I'm seeing behaviour in multiple tenants that leads me to question whether that is still the case.
Namely - that a retention policy applied only to a single Microsoft 365 group (and not applied to any SharePoint sites)...
...appears to block deletion of the group connected SharePoint site:
The behaviour when trying to delete non-empty folders from the SharePoint site also indicates a retention policy is in effect:
I will raise through the normal support channels, but if you are able to impart any wisdom, I would be grateful!
The simple answer is that the retention policy applied to Microsoft 365 Groups covers the group mailbox and the SharePoint Online site (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/solutions/groups-teams-compliance-governance?view=o365-worldwide#information-retention). What you're seeing is as expected. The retention policies applied to SharePoint sites are for non-group connected sites.
- Thanks Tony - so based on your points mentioned in 2020, the behaviour has changed - you no longer need a separate policy to cover the group connected SharePoint site.
- I think it's fair to say that a certain amount of confusion existed in this space. It's clear now. The penny dropped for me when a bunch of SPO sites were retained long after their group disappeared. You live and learn, which is why we republish the Office 365 for IT Pros book every month.
TonyRedmond I have one more query here. We have retention polciy for 90 days on groups based on last modified.Now many teams owners deleted teams, The siates are retained due to policy. Bu even after 6 months still the sites avaiable and not abel to delete. Showing the site has compliance policy set to block delete. Is policy hold site forever ? I expected that site will be deleted if there is no data modified in last 90 days.
