Data Lifecycle and Records Management help organizations manage the lifecycle of data. You can automatically retain, delete, and store data and records in a compliant manner. This solution is a part of the broader Microsoft Purview family and delivers on our vision to protect and govern data wherever it lives.
At Microsoft Ignite, we are taking a deeper look into our protect and govern data offerings in our on-demand session: Get started with discovering, protecting, and governing sensitive data. Join the session to learn more about the Data Lifecycle and Records Management Ignite announcements we are covering in this blog.
We have four exciting releases to tell you about:
- Power Automate integration helps you to customize lifecycle management workflows to meet your organization’s unique requirements, now in public preview.
- The ability to apply retention labels to files in Microsoft Teams enables end users to apply retention and deletion settings where they do their work - in the Files tab of a Microsoft Teams channel, now generally available.
- Our new feature to find and retain cloud attachments helps admins with investigations and to meet financial services industry regulations. This feature keeps and associates the version of a file shared in a Teams message or email for later retrieval through eDiscovery (Premium), now in public preview.
- Microsoft Graph APIs for Records Management enable organizations to create new retention labels and manage event-based retention. This release is our first round of APIs, with more coming in 2023, now in beta.
Let’s learn more about each of these announcements.
Power Automate integration with Data Lifecycle and Records Management
Our new Power Automate integration with retention labels helps organizations extend Microsoft Purview to meet your business requirements. The integration enables running a Power Automate flow at the end of a retention period.
Figure 1: Run a Power Automate flow after the retention period.
The possibilities for extensibility are endless, but here are a few examples of how customers leveraged the integration during our private preview program:
- Customize the disposition review process. For example, admins may want the file or site owner to review the content or show specific file metadata to the reviewer.
- Notify the document owner that their content is up for deletion. Ask them to extend the deletion date if they still need the file.
- Move files from a collaboration site to a centralized archive site. This example is beneficial for files with long retention periods.
- Generate a custom certificate of destruction as a PDF. Different regulations require different metadata and information in the proof of destruction certificate. With Power Automate, you can generate a PDF document that meets your requirements.
Additionally, organizations can use our Power Automate integration to access the value of the entire Microsoft Power Platform. Build a Power App to manage disposition approval that displays file information in the ideal view for your users and enables them to access it from any device. Or create a Power BI dashboard to visualize disposition trends by region, department, or reviewer.
Power Automate integration with retention labels is available in public preview today.
Microsoft Teams: apply a retention label to a file directly from the Files tab
We want it to be easy for end users to apply retention labels right where they do their work. For many of our customers, Microsoft Teams is where people access their files.
Figure 2: Apply a retention label from the Files tab in a Microsoft Teams channel.
Today we are announcing the ability to apply a retention label to a file directly from the Files tab in a Microsoft Teams channel, now Generally Available and ready for you to use. End users can see the retention label applied to a file or apply a missing label directly in a Microsoft Teams channel.
Retention for Cloud Attachments – Find the file version shared in a message
Our next Data Lifecycle and Records Management announcement helps to provide a point-in-time context for internal investigations and compliance with financial industry regulations.
A cloud attachment occurs when an end user stores a file in OneDrive or SharePoint. The user then shares a link to that file in a Microsoft Teams message or an email. Previously, when an admin performed a search, they could not see the file version shared at the time of the message.
Today we are announcing the ability to find and retain cloud attachments, now in public preview. When you enable this feature, the version of the file shared as a cloud attachment in a message will be retained. This retention allows a compliance admin to retrieve the exact version of the file shared in a message later.
Watch our recent webinar on the Microsoft Security YouTube channel covering How to find and retain cloud attachments.
Microsoft Graph APIs for Records Management
One of the major requests we have heard from our customers and partners is to provide a modern, secure, and programmatic way of working with our Data Lifecycle and Records Management solutions. Today we are highlighting our first set of Microsoft Graph APIs for Records Management, now in beta (public preview).
Our first set of Microsoft Graph APIs for Records Management enable organizations to create new retention labels and trigger event-based retention using external events. For example, you could start the retention period on an item when an employee leaves the organization, a project hits a completion milestone, or when a case is closed.
These Microsoft Graph APIs enable CRUD – create, retrieve, update, and delete – scenarios on the following entities:
- Retention Labels (security/labels/retentionLabels)
- Events (security/triggers/retentionEvents)
- Event Types (security/triggerTypes/retentionEventTypes)
The Microsoft Graph team recently released demos of top use cases for the Records Management API set as Postman collections, which you can find in the official Microsoft Graph Postman collection. For more details on how to access the samples, check out the documentation on Use Postman with the Microsoft Graph API.
These samples are available under the Delegated section, and you will find the scenarios grouped under their respective namespaces:
Compliance
- Records Management (Beta)
- Label Management
- Trigger Event for Existing Label
The Microsoft Graph team will add samples to Graph Explorer as well! Like Postman, Graph Explorer is another great tool for getting started with our Microsoft Graph APIs for Records Management. Stay tuned.
Conclusion
That’s it for our fall Ignite announcements. We look forward to hearing your feedback on Power Automate integration, Microsoft Teams native retention labels, retention for cloud attachments, and the Microsoft Graph APIs for Records Management.
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