With ShareGate you don't have to worry about losing important documents when you want to clean up your inactive teams and groups. Once you have set up an Azure storage account, you can archive teams and groups manually or collaborate with the owners.
Index
Microsoft retention settings
The Microsoft retention settings include retention policies and retention labels. These settings can be used to help you retain your content for a set amount of time or permanently delete old content that is no longer needed.
Each Microsoft workspace has a separate retention setting. You can choose to set just a retention policy, just a retention label, or a combination.
SharePoint and OneDrive
This table shows a summary of the differences between the Microsoft retention settings for SharePoint sites and OneDrive for Business:
| Retention setting can: | Retention policy | Retention label |
|---|---|---|
| Be set to retain and then delete; retain-only; or delete-only. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Be automatically applied. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Be manually applied. |
No |
Yes |
| Declare an item as a record. |
No |
Yes |
For more information, see the Microsoft article, Learn about retention policies and retention labels.
Microsoft Teams
Chat data and channel messages are supported through a separate Microsoft Teams retention policy.
Note: Private channel messages are not currently supported by the Microsoft Teams retention policy. ShareGate can archive the files and folders located in the sites of private channels if they are present in your environment.
Microsoft Exchange
Mail messages and drafts with attachments, tasks with end dates, and notes are supported through a separate Exchange retention policy.
Note: Items stored in a mailbox, such as Teams messages, are not included in the Exchange retention policy.
Relationship to archiving with ShareGate
The Microsoft retention settings you put in place will not prevent you from using ShareGate to archive your content and maintain your environment.
The behavior in your Microsoft admin center will depend on the type of retention setting you have in place.
- If you have a SharePoint retention setting - When the archive is complete, your team or group is deleted. The SharePoint site remains active in your environment because of the policy in place.
- If you have a Microsoft Teams retention policy with no additional SharePoint retention settings - When the team archive is complete, its Microsoft 365 group and SharePoint site are deleted from your admin center. The channel conversations remain searchable through eDiscovery.
For information on what content is archived by ShareGate, see Archiving overview.