Enterprise Vault™ Managing Retention

If you use records management or classification, or both, consider the following points:

• The retention settings that are in force when Enterprise Vault archives a user's items determine the retention category and associated record type that Enterprise Vault assigns to these items. This may be a consideration if you have chosen to archive items when they are older than a certain age, instead of archiving them immediately. For more information, see "Applying the retention plans to the target users" in the Administrator's Guide.

• A retention category that is assigned to an item using classification normally takes precedence over a retention category in a retention plan. However, after classification has set the retention category, you can override it by assigning a retention plan with a different retention category to the archive.

• If user actions are allowed to update the retention category of items, then a classification retention category on an item may be changed; for example, if a user moves an item into a retention folder, the retention category of the folder is assigned to the item.

• If classification is used to implement records management, Enterprise Vault uses the following rules to decide which retention category to assign when an item matches several classification rules:

  • Retention categories that mark items as records take precedence over those that do not.

  • Retention categories that mark items as permanent records take precedence over those that mark them as temporary records.

  • Retention categories that mark items as temporary records take precedence over retention categories that mark items as any other type of record.

  See "Using the classification feature for records management" in the Administrator's Guide.

If you use Enterprise Vault Policy Manager (EVPM) to assign different retention categories to different mailbox folders, consider the following points:

• Using Enterprise Vault Policy Manager (EVPM) to assign retention categories to specific mailbox folders is one way to let users change the record types of individual items: users can move items between folders to change the retention category and associated record type of each item. However, a drawback of doing this is that it may override the retention categories that the classification feature has assigned to the items. By default, Enterprise Vault automatically updates the retention categories of moved items.

  To change this behavior for those archives to which you apply the classification policy, select Prevent user actions from updating retention categories in the classification policy properties, and then choose whether to prevent such updates in all instances. You can allow retention category updates in instances where moving the items changes their record types.

• To assign non-default retention categories to individual items, it is advisable to choose either EVPM or the classification feature, but not both. If you use the classification feature for records management, we recommend that you set your classification policies to always prevent user actions from updating retention categories. For more information, see "Potential conflicts between EVPM and the classification feature" in the Administrator's Guide.

• If the user moves an unarchived item into a folder that was created using EVPM, Enterprise Vault applies the appropriate retention category to the item when the mailbox archiving task runs. On the other hand, if the user moves a shortcut (archived item) into one of the folders then, by default, Enterprise Vault applies the new retention category to it when shortcut processing next runs. You can restrict this behavior using the retention settings on the Archive Settings tab of site properties. It is also important to set OverrideArchiveLocks to True in the EVPM initialization file to stop other policy settings from overriding the retention category on the folder. For more information, see "Allowing users to change the record types of individual items" in the Administrator's Guide.