I was recently working on a pilot for a client that required auto-apply of retention labels. The client wanted to understand if Microsoft 365 could meet their needs for records retention and disposal. To assist we set up your standard assortment of retention labels and policies such as auto-delete, disposition reviews, etc. One of the requirements was to configure auto-apply labels to decrease the level of involvement required by users. In their current record management system, they were configuring retention at the folder level. While this can certainly be accomplished with SharePoint Online, I strongly encouraged them to process auto-apply labels based on metadata instead. So one of our pilot configurations was to create a couple of auto-apply policies that applied labels based on a site column value. We created the policies, added content, set the metadata, and waited. Microsoft states it will take a little time for the labels to apply. I suggested a week, but by the second week, we still didn’t have any labels being applied automatically. I confirmed the queries were configured correctly (I’ll cover this in my next post), but in the end, we had to admit the auto-apply retention label policies were not functioning.
Auto-Apply Retention Label Policy Not Functioning
So you can scroll down to the conclusion to find out the cause, but I invite you to stick around as I explain the testing that leads to the outcome.
Test Configuration
- Two SharePoint Sites (Check out my post for the full process of creating an auto-apply retention label).
- Modern Team Site with an M365 Group
- Modern “Groupless” Team Site (classic configuration without an M365 Group)
- Three Auto-Apply Policies
- Applies the label “Finance – Internal Projects” to any document with the site column value of “Project Finance”
- The label is applied to both SharePoint sites only
- Applies the label “Administration – Meetings” to any document with the site column value of “Internal Meetings”
- The label is applied to “groupified” site via the SharePoint and the M365 group locations.
- Applies the label “Administration – Terminations” to any document with the site column value of “Employee Terminations”
- The label is applied to the “groupified” site via the M365 group location only
- Applies the label “Finance – Internal Projects” to any document with the site column value of “Project Finance”
I uploaded a number of files to both SharePoint sites to provide a variety of information for testing.
Team Site with a Group Team Site without a Group
Test Results
Label Location Config | Site Type | Results |
---|---|---|
SharePoint Site & M365 Group | Team Site With Group | Label Applied |
SharePoint Site & M365 Group | Team Site Without Group | Label Applied |
SharePoint Site Only | Team Site with Group | Label NOT Applied |
SharePoint Site Only | Teams Site Without Group | Label Applied |
Microsoft 365 Group Only | Team Site With Group | Label Applied |
Microsoft 365 Group Only | Team Site Without Group | Cannot be Applied |
Team Site with a Group Team Site without a Group
Conclusion
Auto-Apply retention label policies will not apply to M365 Group-backed sites. It appears the avenue to access the content for these types of sites is NOT via the SharePoint site as one would expect, but instead through its Microsoft 365 Group. I do not know if this is by design within Microsoft or if it is a bug. To me, I would flag this as a bug. Normally, users aren’t going to know if a SharePoint site is backed by a group or not. Yes, it is easy to tell if there is a “Conversations” component to the site, but most users are not going to know what that means. Admins would also have to go looking to determine if the site they are creating an auto-apply label for is backed by a group or not when determining the policy configuration. For this reason, I recommend the following process when applying an auto-apply policy:
When deploying auto-apply retention label policies to multiple locations, it is important that both the SharePoint Site and the M365 Group are included in the policy. This is to ensure that M365 Group-backed sites and non-group-backed sites are picked up by the policy. Even if the policy is only being pushed to a single location, this process should be followed (where applicable) as the number of locations may grow over time.
Hope this helps anyone trying to explain why their policies are not being deployed properly.
Thanks for reading!
Comments
Thank you for explaining your scenario David. This is indeed by design and we have some improvements down the line that will hopefully clarify that auto-apply policies as you say need to include both SPO & M365 Groups to cover all SharePoint sites.
Hi Roberto,
Thanks for the reply. I look forward to the improvements here.