Record vs regulatory record
A retention label can additionally declare content a record or a regulatory record — the step that separates records management from ordinary retention:
| Marking | Effect | Reversible? |
|---|---|---|
| Retention label (no record) | Retain/delete timing only; content still editable | Yes — relabel freely |
| Record | Locks against deletion; edits are versioned (an immutable prior version is preserved); label can still be changed under control | Partly — with an audit trail |
| Regulatory record | Strongest lock: label cannot be removed/changed, content cannot be edited, retention cannot be shortened — for genuine regulatory mandates | No (by design) |
The warning: regulatory records are effectively irreversible. Applying one to the wrong content, or with too long a period, cannot be undone — so it's reserved for content under an actual regulatory obligation, not used as a "make sure" default.
The file plan
The file plan is the records catalogue — retention labels enriched with descriptors that map to a real retention schedule: categories, authorities (the regulation/citation behind the rule), departments, citations and reference IDs. It lets a records manager import an existing schedule wholesale and gives auditors the "why does this exist" answer for every label. At scale, the file plan is what makes the program defensible rather than a pile of ad-hoc labels.
Event-based retention
Many real schedules don't start the clock at creation — they start at an event: contract termination, employee departure, product end-of-life. Purview supports event-based retention where a triggered event (posted via the portal or API) starts the retention period for all labelled content tied to that event type and asset ID. The trap is a missing event — content waits indefinitely for a trigger that never fires, so event posting must be an operational process, not an afterthought.
Disposition review — the defensible-deletion workflow
Instead of auto-deleting at end-of-retention, a label can route items to disposition review: named reviewers approve deletion, extend retention, or apply a new label, and every decision is recorded. This produces the artefact regulators and courts want — proof that deletion was a reviewed decision, with who/when/why, not a silent purge. Multi-stage review supports sign-off chains.
What to watch (proofs)
- Record status:
Get-ComplianceTagand checkIsRecordLabel/ regulatory-record flags per label — which labels lock content, and which are the irreversible regulatory ones. - File plan integrity: the file-plan descriptors present (authorities, citations, departments) — labels without them are the "why does this exist" gap.
- Disposition backlog: items pending disposition review and their age (Purview records management / disposition dashboard) — an unworked queue is content overdue for a decision.
- Deletion evidence: disposition/label activity in
Search-UnifiedAuditLog— the defensible-deletion trail, and event-based-retention triggers actually firing.