What is retention and how does it work in practical terms?

[sympmarc]

Retention is a thorny concept. Not only do many organizations think they either need to retain everything or nothing, but the mechanics of how it works in Office 365 is complicated.

For example, if you are migrating content into Office 365 from an external source (on premises SharePoint, or any other source), you almost always WON'T want to have ANY retention policies in place as you go through that effort, or else you will end up with MANY copies of documents in the Preservation Hold Libraries which you neither want, nor need.

Retention policies shouldn't be put in place until a site/library/whatever is "ready" (whatever that means in your context).

[sinhakislay]

@sympmarc do you mean retention during migration process? or how to deal with retention after migration? Just to understand before I throw my hat in the ring :)

[sympmarc]

I think both. Sort of the lifecycle of retention, if you will. I posted this idea when I ran into lots of issue during a migration. Basically, the cart before the horse. It would be great if you could take a pass at it!

[sinhakislay]

@sympmarc thanks, I will give a try, will let you know the progress

[sympmarc]

Excellent! Let me know if you have any questions.

[eemancini]

Hello @sinhakislay, just checking in to see if you need any support and if you are still interested in writing this article. Thanks so much for volunteering your time for Comm Docs!