Scenario: Implement Retention of Information on File Servers

Applies to: Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012

A retention period is the amount of time that a document should be kept before it's expired. Depending on the organization, the retention period can be different. You can classify files in a folder as having a short, medium, or long-term retention period, and then assign a time frame for each period. You may want to keep a file indefinitely by putting it on legal hold.

Scenario description

File Classification Infrastructure and File Server Resource Manager uses file management tasks and file classification to apply retention periods for a set of files. You can assign a retention period on a folder and then use a file management task to configure how long an assigned retention period is to last. When the files in the folder are about to expire, the owner of the file receives a notification email. You can also classify a file as being on legal hold so that the file management task won't expire the file.

You can find planning information for configuring retention in Plan for Retention of Information on File Servers.

You can find steps for classifying files for legal hold and configuring a retention period in Deploy Implementing Retention of Information on File Servers (Demonstration Steps).

Note

That scenario only discusses how to manually classify a document for legal hold. However, it is possible to automatically classify documents for legal hold. One way to do this is to create a Windows PowerShell classifier that compares the file owner to a list of user accounts that are under legal hold. If the file owner is a part of the user account list, the file is classified for legal hold.

In this scenario

This scenario is part of the Dynamic Access Control scenario. For more information about Dynamic Access Control, see: