M365 Changelog: Microsoft Information Governance – Update to retention policies for SharePoint site collections

MC244318 – We’re updating the behavior of SharePoint sites which have been released from a retention policy. Today as documented, sites which are removed from a retention policy continue to retain data and prevent any deletion of the site for 30 days to prevent inadvertent data loss. Going forward, when a site is removed from a policy or the policy is disabled or deleted, the site will be allowed to be deleted and moved to the recycle bin, however all other behaviors for data preservation will remain the same, all data preserved in the Preservation Hold Library continue to stay there and any files deleted will be continued to be preserved for the 30 days following this change. This will enable scenarios where the site no longer needs to be under policy and needs to be disposed of immediately.

When this will happen

This change will begin rolling out in mid-April and expect to be complete by mid-May.

How this will affect your organization

Going forward you will be able to delete site collections which have just been released from a retention policy if you choose to do so. 

What you need to do to prepare

You may want to update your Compliance administrators and SharePoint administrators so they are aware of this change as well as update any training materials.