Intelogy’s Information Management & Compliance Practice Lead, Rob Bath, has recently been heavily involved with helping to get an international discussion on the retention capabilities in Microsoft 365 up and running for the Information & Records Management Society (IRMS). The discussion was conducted as an online Round Table, with an objective of identifying a list of records management features that the community would like to see introduced into Microsoft 365.
The international event featured discussion between some of the most prominent experts in Microsoft 365’s retention capabilities, including Vivek Bhatt, Andrew Warland, and of course our own Rob Bath. They were joined by representatives from regulatory authorities from around the world, to discuss how Microsoft 365’s retention capabilities affect records management and archival. These regulatory authorities included:
- The National Archives, UK
- National Records of Scotland
- Norwegian National Archives
- Public Record Office, Victoria
- State Records of South Australia
During the event various potential retention capabilities were explored by the participants, from classification right through to disposition. There was a broad consensus amongst all present that a few small additional features would significantly enhance the value provided by the already powerful retention features. Some of the key capabilities requested by participants included:
- Ability to trigger a process at the end of disposition (e.g. workflow/web service call etc.)
- Introduction of a seamless export process at the end of disposition (for archival)
- Store a broader set of metadata for disposed records
- Introduction of disposition stubs, with option to preserve proof of disposition forever
- Easier access to audit/system metadata on sites/items – possibly through restoration of local audit logs at site level.
- Aggregated disposition review functionality
- Capability to make retention labels mandatory in specified sites/libraries
- Separation of permissions required to modify content from permissions needed to apply/change retention labels on files
- Ability to run separate disposition reviews in scenarios where multiple organisations share a tenancy
Our practice lead, Rob Bath, was delighted with the event “It was great to see such enthusiasm and momentum at short notice. It’s very clear that the current retention capabilities in Microsoft 365 are great and with a couple of tweaks here and there could become really useful to organisations right around the world. We’re planning to arrange a follow up session later this year, where we hope to work together to help to steer the future direction of the Microsoft 365 retention roadmap.”
If you missed the Round Table, you can always catch up here.
