Retention Policies

Retention policies determine the length of time messages are stored in the archive, for which users, and under what conditions. If no specific policy is applied to a message, a default policy of 30 days is used. Changes to policy membership and policy retention periods can have significant impact to the way that mail is stored for your organization.

NOTE

A retention policy determines when a message is eligible to be purged from the data center, not the actual date the message will be purged. The eligibility date is determined by retention policy settings, starting with the date the message was received. Purging is performed in the data center; you may notice a delay between the date a message must no longer be kept according to the governing policy and the date it disappears from the server.

You can configure several types of retention policies to meet your organization’s message retention needs. See Retention Policy Best Practices for information pertinent to all retention policies.

  1. Membership-Based (Current Membership) Policies
  2. Capture-Based Policies
  3. User Classification Retention Policies
  4. Query-Based Retention Holds

NOTE

The date used in establishing and managing a message’s retention policy behavior is the email message’s received date.

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