UWCM Retention Policy & eMail Archiving

eMail Retention:

The following procedures allows us to comply proactively with the internal UWCM Data Retention policy that requires us to retain content to:

• Reduce our risk in the event of litigation or a security breach by permanently deleting old content that we’re no longer required to keep.
  
• Help the organization to share knowledge effectively and be more agile by ensuring that staff work only with content that’s current and relevant to them.
  

Managing content requires two actions:

• Retaining content so that it cannot be permanently deleted until the end of the retention period.
  
• Deleting content permanently at the end of the retention period.
  

UWCM uses a single policy for the entire organization to retain and then delete the content.

The policy applies to all content, not just content meeting certain conditions, such as content containing specific keywords or specific types of sensitive information.

When content is subject to a retention policy, people can continue to edit and work with the content as if nothing’s changed because the content is retained in place, in its original location. But if someone deletes content that’s subject to the policy; a copy is saved to a secure location where it’s retained while the policy is in effect.

To comply with UWCM’s internal regulations, we are using a Preservation Policy, which requires that after a retention policy is turned on, it cannot be turned off or made less restrictive.  The UWCM eMail Retention Policy has been set for 6 years and no one—including the administrator—can turn off the policy or make it less restrictive.

Recoverable Items folder

The Recoverable Items folder resides in a storage area within the mailbox that contains operational data about the mailbox. This isn't visible to users using Outlook, Microsoft Office Outlook Web App, or other email clients.

The following are key benefits:

• When a mailbox is moved to another mailbox database, the Recoverable Items folder moves with it.
  
• The Recoverable Items folder is indexed by Exchange Search and can be discovered using In-Place eDiscovery.
  
• The Recoverable Items folder has its own storage quota.
  
• Exchange can prevent data from being purged from the Recoverable Items folder.
  
• Exchange can track edits of certain content.
  

eMail Archiving and Office 365

In Outlook for all email sent or received, the retention policy and expiration date of the mail is displayed at the top of the mail item.

Each person has a personal mailbox and an eMail Archive folder within your mailbox.  The items in the eMail Archive folder were imported from the former email archive service Veritas.  You will see the original date on these items along with the expiration date.  

When you open the eMail Archive folder, expand it so that you see all the sub-folders and select Archive.  To view and search for mail, you will see this option:

Once you click on the link “Click here to view more on Microsoft Exchange”, all the emails that were saved in Veritas will be displayed.

In the past, when you deleted an item, it would go to your Deleted Items Folder and that folder would be emptied each night.  With the conversion to Office 365, you can now keep all your mail within Outlook – there is no external archive service.  A copy of all sent and received mail is retained and if there are items that you do not see, the message “There are more items in this folder on the server” message will be displayed. 

In Office 365, you have 50 GB of storage in your Personal Mailbox.  You should use folders and rules to keep your mail organized.  

You can manually select which items to archive to reduce the clutter in your Personal Mailbox.