eDiscovery - Managing Retention Adjustments

When a message is archived, its retention is calculated according to the Maximum Retention setting in your Mimecast Account Settings. However, there are situations where you may need to modify the expiration date for emails in your organization's Mimecast Archive, so you can:

• Remove messages from the corporate archive permanently (known as a purge).
• Reduce the time messages are kept in the corporate archive (e.g., personal messages).
• Increase the time messages are kept in the corporate archive. This is useful for customers with a shorter Retention Period who upgrade to a longer Maximum Retention setting.

Considerations

• Retention Adjustments are applied to an eDiscovery case and allow you to change the amount of time messages are retained.
• The adjustment can be set to either expire emails immediately or after a certain number of days.
• Retention Adjustments cannot be used to extend the retention period of emails longer than your Maximum Retention setting.
• Mimecast uses a single instance storage service, where any email that is subject to a Retention Adjustment is updated or expired in its entirety for all recipients of the message.
• Once a message has expired, it is not recoverable.

What You'll Need

• Two Mimecast Administrators are members of a protected Administration Console role. One to create the Retention Adjustment, and a second to approve it.
• An eDiscovery case containing the emails that you want to adjust the retention of. See the eDiscovery Cases page for more information

Walkthroughs

The process of adding a Retention Adjustment involves:

• Creating an adjustment request
• Approving the adjustment request

Creating the Retention Adjustment Request

To create a Retention Adjustment request:

1. Log on to the Mimecast Administration Console.
2. Navigate to Archive | Retention Adjustments.
3. Click on the New Adjustment Request button.

This is only available if you are a member of a protected Administration Console role.

1. Enter a Description.
2. Enter any Notes required. This will assist the second approving administrator in making the final decision regarding the adjustment.
3. Select the Adjustment Type:

• • Reset Message Lifespan (based on sent date): You can reduce the lifespan of messages as required, by entering the number of days in the Days Retention field.
  • Message Purge Request (Immediate Removal): This option allows you to instantly expire messages from the Archive.

Once the message has expired, the purge cycle will begin immediately. Additionally, once this option is selected, the Days Retention (from sent date) field is not available.sss\

4. Select the eDiscovery Case by clicking on the Lookup button next to the Discovery Case field. 

Once the eDiscovery Case has been selected, it will be locked, and no further searches can be added to the case.

5. Click on the Save and Exit button to save the request.

The Retention Adjustment is listed on the Archive Retention Adjustments page with a status of Awaiting Approval. For auditing purposes, the Retention Adjustment cannot be removed once it has been saved.

Approving a Retention Adjustment Request

Once the request is successfully completed, a second Administrator needs to approve the Retention Adjustment before it will start processing. This cannot be the same Administrator who created the request. If the Administrator who created the request also attempts to approve it, this alert is presented:

To confirm the retention adjustment request:

1. Log in to the Mimecast Administration Console.
2. Navigate to Archive | Retention Adjustments.
3. Select the Retention Adjustment that requires approval:
   
4. Click on the Confirm Adjustment Request button. As a result:

• • The Status Bar is refreshed:
  • The list of Retention Adjustment Requests should now display an Adjustment Pending status. This changes to Completed once all messages have been processed successfully.

5. To view the status or details of any adjustment, either:

• • Select it from this list.
  • Navigate to Archive | Exports and Updates, and click the Archive Updates button.

Next Steps

Once the Retention Adjustment Job has completed:

• If you used the Reset Message Lifespan option, verify that the retention has been updated on a selection of the messages in the affected eDiscovery case. See the Viewing Email Retention Information page for more details.
• If you chose the Purge option, verify that the messages selected to be purged are no longer discoverable in the Mimecast archive. See the Searching the Archive page for further information.