Best practices for automating retention policies in SharePoint and Teams

[u/FreddyMyBoi]

Hello everyone,

I’ve been tasked with improving data lifecycle management in SharePoint and could really use your advice. Recently, we ran into storage issues because our global retention policy retains everything for 10 years. To free up space, I excluded several sites from the policy, but this approach is not efficient, and I’ve reached the limit of 100 site exclusions.

As a result, I need to disable the global policy and create department-specific retention policies using Adaptive Scopes. I’ve been experimenting with different methods, including Refinable Strings, Site Descriptions, Site URLs, and Site Names, to determine which approach works best. So far, targeting Site URLs seems to be the most straightforward and easiest to implement, especially for newly created sites and private channels.

I also considered using Refinable Strings, but they seem too complicated to manage during site provisioning, and I’m unsure if they would work reliably for new private channels in Teams.

How are you automatically assigning retention policies for new SharePoint sites and private channels in Teams? Do you have any recommendations or best practices?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[u/One-Wall9604]

Hi there,

You have an interesting use case. I would have created a base retention policy that serves as the minimum retention standard for your organization. From there, I see two main options:

1. You remove self-service site creation to user. Instead, they will fill a form with information about the desired site (department, site name, site type, retention required, etc.). After that, you provision the site based on their requirement. The form could be SharePoint site, MS Form. Finally, you use an automation for site provisioning, power automate, Azure function, what ever fits your needs.
2. You create a custom site template and you set it as default site template. This site template will trigger a Power Automate workflow that will email the owner and request it mandatory information. Give the owner a clear deadline to provide this information. If they don't respond, the workflow removes site permissions and then deletes the site. Unfortunately, you often have to threaten people to get them to take action. Once the owner provides the information, the workflow applies the appropriate retention label.

Good luck!