Effective data lifecycle management is key for governance and compliance. By defining how long content should be retained or deleted, organizations can meet regulatory requirements, manage storage, and reduce legal risks.
Automate365 allows you to integrate your Microsoft Purview retention strategy by applying default retention labels to content within workspaces provisioned from your templates. For more on data lifecycle management, read our blog: Data Lifecycle Management in Microsoft 365: Making Retention Labels Work For You.
This article guides you through setting up retention labels within your Automate365 templates to ensure content is managed according to your organization's compliance standards from day one.
Retention Labels are configured during the creation/editing of an Automate365 template. To edit these:
Navigate to the template editing wizard (e.g., when creating a new template or modifying an existing one).
In the left-hand navigation of the wizard, click on Classification, then select Retention Labels.
Prerequisites
Before you can assign retention labels in Automate365, these labels and their associated policies must first be defined and published at the tenant level within your Microsoft Purview compliance portal. Automate365 will then retrieve the list of available retention labels for your selection.
☝️ The article mentioned above guides you through the process of defining retention labels and policies at the tenant level.
Assigning a default Retention Label
You have two main options for applying retention labels when editing a template:
1. Apply a default retention label to: All lists and libraries
This option allows you to apply a single, overarching retention label to all SharePoint lists and libraries within the workspace created from your template.
Select this option. From the dropdown menu, choose the specific retention label that will be used for all content across the entire template's SharePoint site.
2. Apply a default retention label to: Selected list(s) and library (s)
This option provides more granular control, allowing you to assign different retention labels to specific lists or libraries within the workspace.
Select this option. You will be presented with a tree view displaying the lists and libraries available in your template. For each individual list or library, you can select a distinct retention label from a dropdown menu.
In both application methods, the available retention labels for selection will be conveniently grouped by their associated retention policy, making it easier to identify and choose the correct label.
Important considerations
The successful application of retention labels depends on your Microsoft Purview Label Policies:
Policy Rules: Labels may not be successfully applied if the properties of the workspace (or its content) do not meet the specific rules or conditions defined within the corresponding Microsoft Purview label policy.
Verification: It is crucial to check your Microsoft Purview policy settings to ensure that the labels are correctly configured to apply to the intended content and locations.
Next, learn how to automatically set the privacy status (Public or Private) for teams provisioned from your templates.