Advanced Mailbox Cloud Archiving

Tips on how to do Advanced mailbox management. Using Retention tags within Microsoft Purview to modify auto-archiving time frame.

Adjusting Policies to Provide More Online Archiving and Folder Deletion Options (AKA, the more complicated way)

• Basically, if you don’t like the folder deletion or auto-archiving options already available, you can make adjustments within Microsoft Purview.  NOTE: You should almost never have to do this, as the options provided by the default MRM policy are fairly reasonable. 
• The general process is as follows: 
  1. You create a Retention Policy. 
  2. You add retention policy tags to that policy. 
  3. Then, you apply the retention policy to the Outlook mailbox.   At this point, the default settings of the retention policy will be applied to the mailbox. 
  4. To change from default settings of that retention policy, you can choose the other options within the policy via Outlook.  The details of each steps are outlined below.

Creating and Applying Retention Policies for a Mailbox:

First you need to create Desirable Retention Policies:

1. Use Microsoft Purview at link: https://compliance.microsoft.com/homepage
2. Navigate to:  Data lifecycle management à Exchange (legacy)
3. You will now see this screen:
4. Now, your end goal here is to create a retention policy.  Each retention policy is composed of retention tags.  You will also have to create retention tags to add to each policy.

Here are some rules for Applying Retention Policies to a Mailbox:

• Within the MRM Retention Policies List, the “Default MRM Policy” is automatically applied to all mailboxes.  I would suggest NOT modifying this.  However, I think using this as a template for new policies is a good practice if you need to make changes.
• If you click the Default MRM Policy, you will see a bunch of tags appear on the side.  You’ll notice for each category, there are some redundancies.  This is because 1 tag for each category can be default, but the rest must be personal.  In other words, if a policy is assigned, the default will be used for each category, but the personal tag can be chosen later within their Outlook application instead.

• To actually apply a retention policy to a mailbox, go to Exchange Admin (Online) and select a mailbox.  When the mailbox side panel appears, click "mailbox".  Then, scroll to the bottom of that side-panel and click "Manage Mailbox Policies".  On this new page that opens, you can select the desired MMR retention policy.  Beware, you will still need to configure the tags applied within your inbox, or else the default tag for that MMR policy will be applied. 

Using the Retention Policy Tags to Select the Desired Time Frame for an Inbox

1. To choose a personal tag for say… Online Archiving, right click a folder within their inbox (or just use inbox to do so for the entire inbox).  Click the policy tab, then select the option below.  Youll notice that these options will reflect the tags that have been added to the assigned MRM retention policy for an Outlook Account.
2. If you have already added a tag to an MRM Policy, and assigned that retention policy to a user account, and then the desired policy tag is not appearing in the desired list.  Then, make sure to click “Add or Remove Retention Policies” within the policy tab.  The Outlook server will appear  with the “Retention Policies” page, and you can finish the process here.