Retention Policy v Retention labels

[chrishorsted720]

We are using M365 E3 licenses only allowing us to use Static Scopes and I have the following scenario. We have an overall MS Exchange retention policy which retains for 7 years and then deletes but we have a department of staff that need to retain for 3 years and then delete. If I create a retention label of retain 3 years and then delete and those staff label a document will the retention label take precedence over the overall MS Exchange retention policy? Hopefully this makes sense.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi @chrishorsted720,
Thanks for the question. Please look at the Principles of Retention which describes what happens if there are conflicting polices on a single item. Retaining an item will always take precedence over deleting an item, so the seven-year retention policy will take precedence.

The easiest way to accomplish this requirement is to use the E5 adaptive policy scopes feature, which enables you to target specific mailboxes based on active directory profile attributes. Using this feature, you could create a scope for the department of staff that need to retain for 3 years, and then use that to exclude them from the 7-year policy and target them for the three-year policy.
Please mark as best response if this answered your question.
Thanks!

Erica