Administration - Email Retention Information

This article contains information on email retention in Mimecast, detailing how retention periods are set, viewed, and adjusted, including the impact of litigation holds and folder-based retention policies.

Email retention is the length of time that messages will remain in the Mimecast Archive. When a message is processed by Mimecast, either by inbound, outbound, or internal email flow, each message is allocated a retention period based on the Maximum Retention setting of your Mimecast service.

Retention Adjustments and Configuring a Content Examination Policy can be used to modify the email retention period.

A message's retention is included in the metadata for each email in the Mimecast archive. This allows you to view the retention information for a specific email. This information can be used to determine:

• • • How long will the email remain in the archive?
    • Whether or not the email has been assigned to a Smart Tag or Granular Folder Retention policy.

Viewing a Message's Retention

To view a message's retention:

1. Log on to the Mimecast Administration Console.
2. Select the Archive | Archive Search menu item.
3. Use the Search Parameters to find the message you want to check.
4. Click on the Message from the search results.
5. Scroll down to the Retention and Audit Information section.

Retention Values Explained

Field / Option	Description
Current Purge Date	The date that the email is scheduled for permanent removal from the Archive. If this date displays as 2500-01-01 00:00:00, the email retention has already been set to 0, and the email will expire imminently.
Purge Based On	By default, the status is set to Original. If a retention adjustment is applied, the status is changed to Admin Purge. If a litigation hold is applied, the status is displayed as Hold.
Retention Adjustment (Days)	Indicates the number of days remaining until the adjustment will be processed.
Litigation Hold	Displays an active status only if a litigation hold has been applied to the email, which will prevent the adjustment from taking place until the hold expires.
Original Purge Date	Indicates the original purge date stamped on the email prior to the retention adjustment.

Litigation Hold Information

A litigation hold prevents a retention adjustment from taking place until the hold expires and is based on an eDiscovery Case:

Folder Based Retention Stamps

Folder-Based Retention (FBR) allows administrators and users to control reasonable data destruction policies for emails based on the folders in which the email is placed:

Messages in the archive can be assigned to Smart Tags. These allow specific users to access the contents of the message within the folder, provided that they have the required permissions:

Archive Update Audit

This audit trail provides information on the last updates made to the retention information for this message:

 

See Also...

• • • Managing Retention Adjustment