The principles of retention, or what takes precedence?

 

Unlike retention labels, you can apply more than one retention policy to the same content. Each retention policy can result in a retain action and a delete action. Additionally, that item could also be subject to these actions from a retention label.In this scenario, when items can be subject to multiple retention settings that could conflict with one another, what takes precedence to determine the outcome?The outcome isn't which single retention policy or single retention label wins, but how long an item is retained (if applicable) and when an item is deleted (if applicable). These two actions are calculated independently from each other, from all the retention settings applied to an item. For more at Data Retention Policy

For example, an item might be subject to one retention policy that is configured for a delete-only action, and another retention policy that is configured to retain and then delete. Consequently, this item has just one retain action but two delete actions. The retention and deletion actions could be in conflict with one another and the two deletion actions might have a conflicting date. The principles of retention explain the outcome.At a high level, you can be assured that retention always takes precedence over permanent deletion, and the longest retention period wins. These two simple rules always decide how long an item will be retained.There are a few more factors that determine when an item will be permanently deleted, which include the delete action from a retention label always takes precedence over the delete action from a retention policy.

 

Use the following flow to understand the retention and deletion outcomes for a single item, where each level acts as a tie-breaker for conflicts, from top to bottom. If the outcome is determined by the first level because there are no further conflicts, there's no need to progress to the next level, and so on.Before explaining each principle in more detail, it's important to understand the difference between the retention period for the item vs. the specified retention period in the retention policy or retention label. That's because although the default configuration is to start the retention period when an item is created, so that the end of the retention period is fixed for the item, files also support the configuration to start the retention period from when the file is last modified. With this alternative configuration, every time the file is modified, the start of the retention period is reset, which extends the end of the retention period for the item. Retention labels also support starting the retention period when labeled and at the start of an event.Example for this first principle: An email message is subject to a retention policy for Exchange that is configured to delete items three years after they are created, and it also has a retention label applied that is configured to retain items five years after they are created.

The email message is retained for five years because this retention action takes precedence over deletion. The email message is permanently deleted at the end of the five years because of the delete action that was suspended while the retention action was in effect.A document in a user's OneDrive account is subject to two retention policies. The first retention policy is scoped to include this user's OneDrive account and has a delete action of 10 years after the file is created. The second retention policy is scoped to include this user's OneDrive account and has a delete action of seven years after the file is created. For more at Data Retention Policy

This document will be permanently deleted after seven years because that's the shortest retention period for the item from these two scoped retention policies.