MS-203 Microsoft 365 Messaging – Managing Compliance

1. Configuring Retention Policies in the EAC

Now we’re going to do is we’re going to click on right here where it talks about compliance management. And you’re going to see two things involving retention. Here you’re going to see an option that says retention policies and retention tags. Now we’re going to start with retention tags, okay? And if you look closely, you’re going to notice that there are already some retention, retention tags that have been created. Now first off, let me clarify what the purpose here is of retention policies and tags. Retention policies allow your users to control how long they’re going to hold on to certain things, certain messages, emails, all that.

We may want to hold on to email for a month and then delete it. We may want to hold on to a year or five years and then delete it. Or we may want to archive that email after a certain amount of time and have it moved over to an archive mailbox. So you have a bunch of different retention policies here. I’ve even got a couple that I’ve created in previous lessons that are already here. And then you have a bunch that are default. Notice that some of these say personal and some of them say default. So default ones, these are some that I can place on somebody’s billbox and then it just automatically moves mail or deletes mail after a certain amount of time. Personal allows a user to select one of these tags for a particular email if they want.

So if a user, for example, wanted to hold on to an email forever and never want to delete it, they could manually themselves, select this never delete. So this is where you’re going to create your retention tags and then we’re going to apply those through a policy. So if I was to drop down here, I can say that I want to do a default one. So applied automatically to the entire mailbox, apply it automatically to a default folder, which means a certain folder it’s going to apply it to. Or I can do personal. I’m going to do a personal one here. So let’s go ahead and select Personal and it’s going to pop a little box up. And this is where I can define the parameters of this.

Okay, so I’m going to create a retention tag that basically says 45 day, then delete. So this would allow it to basically be deleted, but I’m going to say delete it permanently. So after 45 days it’s going to permanently delete. But this is a personal tag. So a user will be able to select if they want to delete it, move it into this tag, or tag their message with this tag themselves. Then I’m going to set this date to 45 days. I could give it a description and then at that point I can click save. And at that point I’ve now officially created my tag.

Now another key element of this is you also have to apply it through a retention policy. So I would need to come over here to retention policies and I could create a new retention policy if I wanted to. Like I have an archive one here that I’ve created that makes it where email gets archived. Or I could use the default one.

Now if I use the default one, that basically just applies to everybody. So everybody gets the default retention policy right out of the gates. Okay? So if I wanted to create another one, I could, or if I wanted to add my retention tag to the existing default one, I could, I can edit that and then I can go through there and I can select that. I would like now to support the new 45 day one. So I’m going to hit the plus sign here and then I’m going to add that 45 day policy that I’ve got there. All right? So then at that point I’m going to click okay, and I’ve now going to click Save.

And I’ve added that as my new retention policy. Now on the flip side of that, I could also, again, as I said, I could create a new one if I wanted to. I’ll just create one called Test. I could add the retention policies that I want right here, which are the retention tags that I want. I should say I’m just going to add those three and then I’m going to click OK, but then I actually can save this and I have to apply this to somebody’s mailbox. You can do that by going to recipients. You can select a particular recipient you want. Like, I’ve got Adam Todd here. I can click edit on Adam Todd. Let me zoom in on this for you. And then from there you can go right down here to mailbox features.

And you see where it says retention policy. Right now there’s no policy selected so it’s just going to use the default. But I can drop that down and I can choose that test policy I’ve created and I can click Save. And I’ve now applied that. If you wanted to do this to a bunch of users at one time, you could also use PowerShell to do that. All right, so next thing I want to show you is we’re going to jump over to Exchange Online and look at how things look with Exchange Online. So we’re on the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. You can get there by going admin Microsoft. com or portal Microsoft. com. We’re going to click the Show all lip symbol. We’re going to go to Exchange.

This is going to bring us into the EAC, okay? And just like before we’re going to click on Compliance management. And you’ll see right here, it says retention policies and retention tags. Now you can do this exactly the same way in Exchange Admin Center, exact same scenario. But also I’d like you to notice this yellow warning message here.

It says you can now create and publish the labels in Office 365 Security and Compliance Center to protect content, SharePoint OneDrive and exchange. So what Microsoft is now trying to do is they’re trying to centralize all of this directly over into the Security and Compliance Center so that it’s sort of an all in one thing that handles retention policies not just for exchange, but for all those products. Okay, so again, you can do it through the AC, but they’re also now trying to centralize it all inside of the Security and Compliance Center.

2. Configuring Retention Policies in Microsoft 365

I want to look now at the concept of retention as it’s managed through the Security and Compliance Center. So here I am in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Admin Microsoft. com, also known as Portal Microsoft. com. I’m going to drop down Show All, and I’m going to click on the Security blade here, and that’s going to bring me into the Security and Compliance Center. Okay? So when you get into the Security Compliance Center, we’re going to take a look at Information Governance.

So I’m going to drop down where it says Information Governance, and I’m going to click on Retention. Okay? So this is going to bring me into retention. And the great thing about dealing with retention here in the Security Compliance Center is it manages it not just for Exchange, but it manages it for things like SharePoint and teams and all that good stuff as well. So I’m going to click on Create, and then from there, I can give this policy a name. I’ll just call it test retention. Okay? And then I’ll click next. And then from here it says, do you want to retain content? I can say yes, I want to retain it. For how long? Or retain it will say for how long? Seven days. You could say forever.

I’m sorry, seven days. Seven years is the default. If I wanted to do seven days, I could, or seven months. And then it says retain the content based on when it was created or when it was last modified. So you can choose between when it was created or last modified. Do you want to do you want us to delete it after this time? I could say yes, or I could say no, which if I say no, this is going to change it from yes, I want to retain it to no, just delete it. So if I say yes, delete it after the time period, then it is going to get deleted after the seven years.

Okay? From there I can click next, and then this is where I can choose the specific locations I want. If I want to do exchange email, SharePoint OneDrive office, 365 Skype for business, exchange public folders teams, all that. I’m going to add Exchange Public folders to that also, okay? So I can select all of the things here that I want. This is what’s really nice, again about the Security Compliance Center with retention is you get to choose these different locations. At that point, I click Next, and I would then click to create the policy. And away we go. We’ve now created ourself a retention policy that’s going to not just oversee Exchange, but it’s going to oversee Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, all those things that I selected.

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