Microsoft Purview Records Management – Daisy Chaining Retention Labels

Some time ago, Microsoft released a feature into Purview that provided a new “after retention” action to a retention label.  Microsoft called it “Automatically apply another retention label”.  The Record Management community of Microsoft Purview immediately changed that and now fondly calls it “Daisy Chaining Retention Labels”.  Microsoft still uses its boring explanation for it 😉 . Daisy-chaining is exactly as it sounds.  Assigning a new label after an existing label has completed its schedule.  There are a few different use cases for this.  Joanne Klien and Martin Lingstuyl did a partner post to use daisy-chaining for archiving content.  My use case is a bit different so in this post I’ll provide a good use case and illustration for daisy chaining retention labels.

As always, please be aware of my blog disclaimer

Daisy Chaining Retention Labels

The action “automatically applying another retention label,” or as I mentioned above, we fondly call daisy chaining retention labels, is a process by which a retention label is configured to run a retention schedule based on a specific trigger for the label.  After the retention schedule has been completed, instead of performing a disposition activity, the label will instead assign a new label to the document with different configurations as necessary.  If you really wanted to, you could have a number of labels firing one after the other by having the next label in the chain and also daisy chain to another label.  I can’t really think of a good reason why you would want to do this, but if any of you reading this post have an idea, throw it in the comments.

Use case: Dynamic label to Record Label

The use case I want to cover is a situation I hear often from organizations I work with.  In their record plan, they need to have the document be considered dynamic or non-deleting transitory.  Meaning that the document isn’t a record; it must be allowed to be modified, and it can’t be deleted.  After this dynamic data has NOT been edited for a specified amount of time (i.e. a year without modifications) the document is now considered a record within the organization and needs to be configured as such.  This is where daisy chaining will come in handy, as it will allow me to do just that.  The following summary will provide an overview of the solution (I’ll dig into details as we build it out):

1. The label (let’s call it Daisy-1) is created and configured to have a trigger based on the last edited date.
2. The label (Daisy-2) is created and configured as required.  Daisy-2 is a record label, whereas Daisy-1 is a standard or non-record label.

Note: Daisy-2 does not need to be created as part of this process.  The secondary label can be an already existing label within the environment.

3. Content is created and labeled with the Daisy-1.
4. Content is modified as needed throughout its lifecycle.
5. After the required amount of time without being edited passes, the retention trigger fires, and Daisy2 is applied to the document, making it a record.

Implementing the Use Case

Create the second label in the chain (Daisy-2).  This needs to be in place so the first label in the chain can point to it.

Personal note: I was going to just point the post at my previous blog on creating a retention label, but I wrote that blog almost 5 years ago. Things have changed a bit since then 😉

1. Login to the Purview Records Management solution – https://purview.microsoft.com/recordsmanagement/overview
2. Click on File Plan and then “+ Create label“

3. Provide the label with a meaningful name and a description.  The description is optional, but I recommend it because this is part of a series of labels, and you may wish to indicate it.  In my example, I am calling it Daisy-2, but in your environment, that certainly wouldn’t make sense.
4. The descriptors screen hasn’t really changed from 5 years ago.  Set your descriptors as necessary and click Next.
5. Select the action you wish to occur when the label is applied.  Your options include:
   1. Retain items forever or for a specific period – This option will hold the content within your environment for as long as the schedule requires.
   2. Enforce actions after a specific period – This option will not enforce retention of the content meaning users can delete freely, but it will perform after-retention activities if the document still exists when the schedule is complete.
   3. Just label items – Exactly as it sounds.  Just lets you classify the document and does not apply any retention controls or disposition actions.
6. Set the retention schedule for your content (amount of time it needs to be retained before disposition).
7. Next, set the trigger for the retention schedule. 

Special Note: If this label is built strictly to be the second stage of a daisy-chained label, I highly suggest the “When items are labeled” option be selected as the intent of this label is to start its control when the new label is applied.  However, this trigger is not necessary if there is a possibility the content can still be modified while this label is applied.

8. In my use case, we want the content to become a record when the label is applied in the daisy chain.  So select the option “Mark items as a record”.  

Special Note #2: As the intention of this process is to make dynamic content static by setting it as a record, I suggest the option “Unlock this record by default” is not checked.

9. Finally, select the activity that occurs after the document has completed its retention schedule under the new label.  For my use case, I am simply going to let the label dispose of the content automatically, but any option can be selected, even “Change the label”.
10. Click Next, review the settings, and click Create label.

 

The next step is to create the first label in the daisy chain.  To do this, repeat the steps above to step #7 based on the requirements of your environment.  The following steps pick up from #7 above:

7. My use case is to change the label after the document hasn’t been modified for a specific amount of time, so I am going to set the trigger to “When items are last modified”

8. Because I want the document to be dynamic and it isn’t a record yet, I will select the option “Retain items even if users delete” on the next screen as this maintains the document but doesn’t set it up as a record.
9. On the after retention activity page, the option Change the label needs to be selected.
10. Click on + Choose a replacement label.
11. Select Daisy-2 or the next label in your daisy chain process.

12. Review the configurations of your label, but be aware that Microsoft does not display the name of the label, but the GUID of the label (I hope they change this soon as I feel it should be the name to avoid confusion).

13. Click Create label.

 

Special Note #3: When you push out the labels with a retention label policy, if you do not want users to select the second label in the chain (Daisy-2) you don’t actually have to push it to the site.  It will still apply the label similarly to how an auto-apply retention label policy work,s except in this case the daisy chain has the capability to override the existing label, unlike the auto-apply policy.

The Results

I am not going to walk through the process as I feel it is pretty self-explanatory, but you can see from the screenshot below that both documents were created on the same day. Because the file “Modify Me.docx” was updated more recently, the daisy chain did not fire for it, meaning it was not moved to a record yet.  The older document has Daisy-2 applied to it and is now a record.

 

Let me know if you have other use cases where this would be beneficial.

Thanks for reading!