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).
    1. Modern Team Site with an M365 Group
    2. Modern “Groupless” Team Site (classic configuration without an M365 Group)
  • Three Auto-Apply Policies
    1. 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
    2. 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.
    3. 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

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

Retention Auto-Apply Labels Not Functioning - Team Site with M365 Group - Data              Retention Auto-Apply Labels Not Functioning - Team Site without Group - Data

 

Test Results

Label Location ConfigSite TypeResults
SharePoint Site & M365 GroupTeam Site With GroupLabel Applied
SharePoint Site & M365 GroupTeam Site Without GroupLabel Applied
SharePoint Site OnlyTeam Site with GroupLabel NOT Applied
SharePoint Site OnlyTeams Site Without GroupLabel Applied
Microsoft 365 Group OnlyTeam Site With GroupLabel Applied
Microsoft 365 Group OnlyTeam Site Without GroupCannot be Applied

 

Team Site with a Group                                              Team Site without a Group

Retention Auto-Apply Labels Not Functioning - Team Site with M365 Group - Auto-Apply Results                Retention Auto-Apply Labels Not Functioning - Team Site without M365 Group - Auto-Apply Results

 

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!