About the properties of Enterprise Vault retention categories

By assigning an Enterprise Vault retention category to items at the time they are archived, it is possible to categorize stored items. This categorization makes it easier to retrieve items because it is possible to search by category.

A retention category also specifies the minimum amount of time after its last modification date that an item must be retained. This length of time is the retention period. For mail messages, the retention period is the time since the message was received. For documents, it is the time since the document was last modified.

With Exchange Server archiving, users can select retention categories for mailbox folders or items so that, when archiving occurs, items are stored with the appropriate retention category.

If you later modify a retention category, the changes are retrospective. For example, if you have a retention category called Customer Accounts with a retention period of 5 years and you change the retention period to 10 years, items that have been already archived with the Customer Accounts retention category are retained for a minimum of 10 years.

Enterprise Vault can automatically delete expired items. See the Administrator's Guide for more details.

Note:

You cannot delete retention categories. You can rename them as required and you can hide them from users.

A retention category has the following properties:

Name	You can modify the retention category name as needed. The new name is used immediately, so users of the Web access application must search using the new name to find items stored with this retention category.
Description	(Required) This is a description of the retention category. Make sure that the description you give here is meaningful to users.
Retention period	This is the minimum amount of time to retain an item that has been archived using this retention category. The period runs from the date the item last changed, not from the date that the item is stored in an archive, as follows: For mail messages, the date is the date that the message was received. For documents, the date is the date the document was last modified.
Retain items forever	Select this if you want items never to expire. If you plan to store items indefinitely on a WORM storage device, then ensure that the retention settings on the device are correctly configured.
Prevent deletion of archived items in this category	Select this to prevent users deleting items that have been archived using this retention category. This protection applies during the retention period, and also after the retention period has expired. In other words, while this option remains selected, users can never delete items that have been stored using this retention category. This setting affects only those items that are stored in archives. It does not affect items that are still on archiving target servers.
Hide this category from users	Check this to prevent users using this category when archiving new items. The category is still available to users when they are searching for items that have already been archived. Enterprise Vault does not allow the site default retention category to be hidden from users. If you hide the site default retention category, Enterprise Vault automatically chooses another retention category and makes it the site default.
Lock this Retention Category	To prevent unintentional changes, check this to lock all the retention category settings.
Base expiry on	Select one of the following: Inherit from Site settings. The retention period is inherited from the Site default retention category settings. Modified date. The retention period is based on the date when the item was last modified. For mail messages, a retention period that is based on the Modified date is the time since the message was sent or received. For documents, it is the time since the document was last modified. Archived date. The retention period is the time since the item was archived.
Administrative Note	For your notes. Edit this text as necessary. This text is visible only to Enterprise Vault administrators.