Retention Policies: SharePoint Group-Connected Sites vs Groups

[David Snyder]

In modern SharePoint, new SharePoint Team Sites are group-connected by default.

Groups can also be created from within Outlook, which provisions a Group SharePoint library.

In the Security and Compliance Center, you can specify retention policy scopes, or label publishing scopes, for specific Sites as well as specific Groups. I'm unclear how these policies interact, if at all. For instance:

If I create a SharePoint Team Site which is group-connected, I assume any documents would be subject to the published policy I scope to that site. But if I then publish a separate policy for the same Group - which would include not only files but email and possibly other elements such as Planner - does that policy supercede the Sites policy when it comes to the documents associated with the Group?

Thanks for helping me untangle this!

Dave

[#2]

Hi @David Snyder,

From Overview of retention policies:

The principles of retention, or what takes precedence?

1. Retention wins over deletion. Suppose that one retention policy says to delete Exchange email after three years, but another retention policy says to retain Exchange email for five years and then delete it. Any content that reaches three years old will be deleted and hidden from the users' view, but still retained in the Recoverable Items folder until the content reaches five years old, when it will be permanently deleted.

2. The longest retention period wins. If content's subject to multiple policies that retain content, it will be retained until the end of the longest retention period.

3. Explicit inclusion wins over implicit inclusion. This means:

   1. If a label with retention settings is manually assigned by a user to an item, such as an Exchange email or OneDrive document, that label takes precedence over both a policy assigned at the site or mailbox level and a default label assigned by the document library. For example, if the explicit label says to retain for ten years, but the policy assigned to the site says to retain for only five years, the label takes precedence. Note that auto-apply labels are considered implicit, not explicit, because they're applied automatically by Office 365.

   2. If a retention policy includes a specific location, such as a specific user's mailbox or OneDrive for Business account, that policy takes precedence over another retention policy that applies to all users' mailboxes or OneDrive for Business accounts but doesn't specifically include that user's mailbox.

4. The shortest deletion period wins. Similarly, if content's subject to multiple policies that delete content (with no retention), it will be deleted at the end of the shortest retention period.

I know its not straight forward but I hope this helps.

Norm