Archiving in Exchange Online

wscsuperfan

I am new to Microsoft 365 and Exchange based email in general.

I have setup hosted email via Microsoft for about 30 users with Exchange Online Plan 2.

This is for a small government entity, so we need to archive everything to comply with records retention and not allow any messages to be deleted.

I'm somewhat confused between retention policies, litigation/in-place holds and archive mailboxes.

Can someone point me in a direction of which route to take or how those things are all inter-related?

Thanks!

dbeato

Posting from what I posted in Spiceworks
Since you have Exchange Online Plan 2 you have a 100 GB Mailbox and unlimited in-Place Archiving for the mailbox. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/exchange/compare-microsoft-exchange-online-plansFor Exchange Online The Retention Policies go in hand with the Archive Mailboxes. The retention policies are set so you can move files to the archive on a predetermined amount of time or you can also add deletion policies as well. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/enable-archive-mailboxes?view=o365-worldwi...The Litigation and in-place holds is for Legal and Case matters so nothing that the user does deletes from the mailbox but it keeps all those emails and changes on the mailbox without the user destroying information. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/policy-and-compliance/holds/holds?view=exchserver-2019

gjacobse

One thing I would add, though not important per say-

GPO rule to prevent the creation, writing to .PST files.

They had their time.

wscsuperfan

One thing I would add, though not important per say-

GPO rule to prevent the creation, writing to .PST files.

They had their time.

There is no Active Directory in this setup.....just a hosted email solution.