Tag Archives: days

Office 365 Retention Policies

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KB ID 0001620

Problem

Most things in Office 365 operate on a 30 day retention principle, but what if you are governed by restrictions that require you to retain your data for 5 years or 7 years in some cases? We have had Retention policies in Exchange for years, and I knew you could create a policy in exchange online, but what about OneDrive or SharePoint data?

Well with O365 you can specify a ‘top level’ retention policy that applies to ‘most’ of your data. I say most because some application data is not 100% retained.

BE AWARE: Despite the name containing ‘retention’ this is also how you specify when to automatically delete old files (if that is MORE your requirement).

Solution

From Office 365 admin > Admin Centers > Security and Compliance.

Information governance > Retention > Create.

Give your policy a name > Next.

Obviously we want to choose ‘Yes I want to retain’ > I would change the retain based on to ‘when it was last modified’ > Next.

Note: You can choose the second option to automatically delete files that are a certain age.

Note2: You can add a specific policy for files containing certain words/phrases or specific date i.e. financial, (at present this does not apply to Teams).

Specify ‘What’ you want to apply the policy to, by default it’s off for Skype and Teams Data, and Exchange public folders strangely? > Next.

Review the settings > Create this policy.

 

Office 365 Retention Policies via PowerShell

As usual, you can do similar things with PowerShell;

[box]

New-RetentionCompliancePolicy -Name "PeteNetLive-Retention-Policy" -ExchangeLocation All -SharePointLocation All -ModernGroupLocation All -OneDriveLocation All -Enabled $true
New-RetentionComplianceRule -Name "PeteNetLive-Retention-Policy-Rule" -Policy "PeteNetLive-Retention-Policy" -RetentionDuration 2555

[/box]

Note: 2555 Days is 7 years.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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Delete Local ‘Cached’ Copies of User Profiles with Group Policy

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KB ID 0000602 

Problem

I have a client who manages the network at a school. They wanted to stop the profiles of their users being cached, in either the c:documents and settings or c:users folders (depending on the version of Windows and profile the users were using).

Solution

1. Log into a domain controller or a machine running the RSAT tools, Start > Administrative Tools > Group Policy Management > Either edit an existing group policy, or create a new one that is linked to your COMPUTERS.

2. If creating new policy, give it a sensible name > OK

3. Edit the relevant policy.

4. Navigate to;

[box]Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > System > User Profiles[/box]

Locate and edit “Delete User Profiles older than a specified number of days on system restart”.

5. Enable the policy and set it to 1 (24 hours) > Apply > OK.

6. Then edit the “Delete cached copies of roaming profiles” and enable that policy. (This will stop the copies caching locally as the user logs on) > Apply > OK.

7. Close the policy editor. Then get the clients to reboot, wait a couple of hours, or manually run “gpupdate /force” on them.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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Outlook Web App 2013 – Offline Mode

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KB ID 0000727 

Problem

A great new feature of OWA 2013 is the ability to run in ‘Offline mode’. This runs in the same manner as Microsoft Outlook’s ‘Cached Mode’ which has been built into full Outlook since version 2003.

There are a few caveats before you can get it to work;

Requirements for OWA Offline Mode

1. A compatible browser (Internet Explorer 10, Chrome 18, or Safari 5.1). source
2. You have to be connecting to OWA being hosted on an Exchange 2013 CAS server.
3. Your mailbox needs to be hosted on an Exchange 2013 Mailbox server.

Capabilities of OWA Offline Mode

1. While you are in offline mode, you can open OWA, read and reply to emails, send new emails, respond to meeting requests, view your calendar, view and edit your contacts.

Note: Obviously all sent and updated data will not be sent to recipients, or changes reflected in Exchange until you are no longer in offline mode.

2. The system will only cache data for the past month and calendar entries for the next twelve months.

3. Contact information for recently used recipients will also be cached.

Disadvantages of OWA Offline Mode

1. A prolonged period in cached mode can cause scheduled events in your calendar to stop working. (Its only designed for users to be sporadically disconnected).

2. You cannot access Archived folders.

3. With the exception of the Inbox, Sent Items, Calendar, and Drafts items folder, only folders you have accessed will be cached.

Solution

1. Whilst online and connected to OWA > Settings > Use mail offline.

2. For security reasons you will be asked if you are on a public computer > Prompted to add the URL to favorites (or bookmarks depending on the browser).

Note: DO NOT use this feature on a shared or public computer, the cache is accessible from other user accounts on the machine.

3. In this example I’m using IE10 > Just for ease I’m enabling the Favorites bar to see the shortcut.

4. Depending on the size of the mailbox and speed of connection, it may take a while to syncronise. Whilst offline OWA will display the time it last connected to Exchange, and while you are working offline if you send any mail it will keep a track of pending options for next time you are online.

Internet Explorer 10 Caches and Databases

The whole system works because the supported browsers have the ability to cache information locally, to see where that’s being set in IE10, Internet Options > General > Browsing Data > Settings > Caches and Databases.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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