In my previous post I talked about the Exchange 2010 Archiving and what it does.  This post continues on from that previous post.

In order to enable Archiving in Exchange 2010 the exchange administrator needs to be familiar with Retention Polices and Retention Tags.

First let me start out on Retention Tags.  Retention Tags are used to apply retention settings to folders and individual items such as messages, notes, and contacts. These settings specify how long a message remains in a mailbox, and the action to be taken when the message reaches the specified retention age. When a message reaches the specified retention age, it’s moved to the personal archive, deleted, or flagged for user attention.  If you recall in my previous post there are five different actions that can be taken on a mailbox item when it reaches the retention age.  Again, those actions are: move to archive, move to deleted items folder, delete and allow recovery, permanently delete, or mark as past retention limit. 

Now when considering a RPT keep in mind that you can create RPT’s to the following default folders:

• Deleted Items
• Drafts
• Inbox
• Junk Mail
• Outbox
• Sent Items
• RSS Subscriptions
• Sync Issues
• Conversation History

To note you can not include more than one RPT for the same folder type in one retention policy.  This means that if you have a retention policy with a RPT for the inbox, that you cannot add another RPT configured for the inbox to that retention policy.  You will need to create another retention policy and assign that RPT to that retention policy. 

The next type of Retention Tags is the Default policy tags (DPTs).  DPTs are created to apply retention settings to untagged mailbox items. Untagged items are mailbox items that don’t have a retention tag applied to them either by inheritance from the folder they are located in, or applied explicitly by the user. DPTs are created by specifying the type All. A retention policy shouldn’t contain more than one DPT.  The DPT gives the Exchange Admin the ability to specify a retention policy to all objects in the users mailbox (except Calendar, Contacts, Journal, Notes, and Tasks).  By specifying a DPT the admin is able to control all contents of the mailbox.  What about custom folders that users create in their Exchange mailbox you ask?  Well, those items can be archived as well!  While you can create a RPT to specify a default folder you can also create the DPT that will act as a default policy tag.  This default Policy tag will then perform the specified action assigned to the Retention Policy on all folders in the mailbox.  This even includes folders created by the user to store mail data, i.e. a client’s folder containing email only specific to that client either as a sub folder to the inbox or a new folder under the root. 

The final type of Retention Tag is the Personal tags.  Personal tags are retention tags available to users as part of their retention policy. Users can apply personal tags to folders they create or to individual items. For example, you can create a personal tag to allow users to tag messages that are business critical, that have a higher message retention age of three years, and use the MoveToArchive retention action to move the messages to the user’s archive mailbox after three years.

From the perspective of Archiving however the best course would be to use the Default Policy tags.  What the Default Policy tag will do is create a retention policy that is applied to all users assigned the Retention Policy.  Perhaps in your organization you are not looking for a default policy, but rather one that applies strictly to the inbox, that’s great, but when coming to archiving you want to get all folders possible.  Think from a perspective where you have users who create another folder for certain clients, or filter items in another folder based on a month.  If you simply apply a RPT to the inbox, those items will not be included in the archiving process and risk being lost.  The same idea can be applied to an area where you want to delete items after x days.  You don’t want to miss anything!

So, how do we create the new tag that will be later applied to a policy?  Well, in the effort to archive you will want to leverage the command New-RetentionPolicyTag.  Basically what this command does will create a new retention policy tag.   Anyway, in effort to archive everything in the mailbox that is possible you will want to use the following command at the EMS.  Please note, you cannot use the EMC to create or delete retention policies. 

The command to use is:

New-RetentionPolicyTag “Users-RPT” -Type All -Comment “Items older then one month will be moved to Archive” -RetentionEnabled $true -AgeLimitForRetention 30 -RetentionAction MoveToArchive

What this command will do is create a new RPT called Users-RPT.  The key to this is the –Type.  By specifying the Type “All” it creates a DPT which will then include all folders capable of being archived in the users mailbox.  Comment I simply added what this policy does.  For the Age Limit I added 30 days.  Keep in mind the default setting for this is setting is in days, not years or months.  Finally the action we have is MoveToArchive.  This will archive the content of the users mailbox to the users archive mailbox which by current standards is stored in the same mailbox database as the users production mailbox. 

As a result of the command we now have a new retention policy tag which is configured to archive all content in the users mailbox except Calendar, Contacts, Journal, Notes, and Tasks. J 

In my next post I will talk about the Retention Policy and how to connect the Policy Tags to the Retention Policy and apply it to users or a group of users.

To continue reading check out Part 3 of this series.

Other Posts related in this four part series: Part 1 and Part 4