Membership-Based (Current Membership) Policies

Under membership-based policies, a message is retained based on whether the sender or recipient is a member of the policy. The message is retained only as long as the user remains a member of the group to which the policy applies. When a user is no longer part of the policy group, the message is eligible for purging. Updates to membership-based policies occur after a directory synchronization or when an administrator modifies the policy.

Example 1: For example, a user is initially a member of the Sales Group, which has a membership-based retention period of 50 days. When the user separates from the sales organization and becomes part of the Assistant Group, a new membership-based policy applies. The new retention period is 30 days. On the first day that the user is a member of the Assistant Group, mail collected during days 31-50 is eligible for purging.

Example 2: A user is a member of the Marketing Group retention policy, which has a 30 day retention period. The last 30 days of mail is routinely retained. One day, the user leaves the company and his mailbox is disabled, hidden, or deleted. The next day, because the user is no longer part of the membership-based policy, the user's last 30 days of retained mail is eligible to be purged.

Example 3: A user is initially a member of the All Employees retention policy, which has a 30 day retention period. An administrator increases the All Employees retention period to 45 days. The user’s mail will now be retained for 45 days.

Example 4: A user is a member of the VP retention policy, which has a 365 day retention period. An administrator decreases the retention period for the VP policy to 90 days. The next day, the user's mail for days 91-365 is eligible for purging.