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Hi,
We are currently migrating users to Exchange Online.
All users have M365 E3 license
I understand for a customer on long term absence (over 30 days) we could convert mailbox to shared and remove the license, so it is available for another customer, however we have online Archives attached so I believe we would need at least an Exchange Online P2 license.
If we Assigned an Exchange Online P2 license to the customer on long term absence and convert the mailbox to shared would this preserve all data i.e. OneDrive, Email (including structure), SharePoint etc?
I'm not sure if we would need to assign a OneDrive/SharePoint license and also the Exchange Online P2 license.
Regards,
Matt
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Hi,
I am writing to see how everything is going on with this thread. If you still have further concern on this, please feel free to let us know.
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1) Please see the following page for documentation below on e-mail archiving. The Exchange Online P2 license is included on the list that has this addon:
Exchange Online Archiving service description
2) To answer your question directly, If we Assigned an Exchange Online P2 license to the customer on long term absence and convert the mailbox to shared would this preserve all data i.e. OneDrive, Email (including structure), SharePoint etc? -- I do not believe the P2 license encompasses this. You would most likely have to at least have an E1 license to save the user's OneDrive data from getting deleted.
I would recommend opening a support case with Microsoft to get an officially supported answer:
Talk one-on-one with a Microsoft sales specialist
https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-M365SMB-web-contact.html
If this is helpful please accept answer.
Hi @Dillon Silzer ,
Thank you for replying.
This is where I get confused.
Microsoft says that a user's OneDrive will ONLY be deleted when the account is deleted (See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/retention-and-deletion#the-onedrive-deletion-process). In our case the account wouldn't be deleted but would be disabled if converted to a shared mailbox so I would have thought the OneDrive/SharePoint data would be kept.
So based on the above I would have thought Exchange Online P2 would be enough. You are not the first to mention I would also need another license such as OneDrive, SharePoint, Office 365 E1, but I'm not sure why I would need the additional license.
NB We have a 7year retention policy for Exchange, but I understand just relying on that would possibly not keep any folder structure in the mailbox.
One Drive is not affected if you remove the 365 license as long as the account is not deleted from Azure:
This addresses your scenario:
Hi AndyDavid,
As you have mentioned above OneDrive should stay intact as long as the account is not removed which we will not be doing.
We are using Online Archives for mailboxes so if we converted the user mailbox to shared, we would still need a license to keep the Online Archive.
So really from what I can understand we would only need to assign an Exchange Online P2 license to the user mailbox. This would then keep the email data and folder structure intact and also keep the archive. OneDrive will be kept intact as the account hasn't been deleted.
Does this sound right?
Do I need to worry about SharePoint in any of this i.e., if the user has created a SharePoint/Teams site or contributed to either?
P1 with an online archive plan or P2 by itself, correct. The sharepoint/teams sites arent affected.
To be clear, this doesnt "preserve" the data in the mailbox or onedrive however - . If you want to ensure the data is preserved, you have to put the mailbox and onedrive on litigation hold.
Hi AndyDavid,
Thank you for the quick reply.
When you say it doesn't preserver the data, what do you mean by that?
So if you were off for say 6 months, I disabled your account and swapped your license to an Exchange Online P2 that would keep everything mail and OneDrive as is. Do you mean that it would still be possible to delete data i.e. an admin could delete a file from the users mailbox ro OneDrive for example and the only way to prevent that from happening is to put the mailbox and OneDrive on Litigation Hold?
In that case would this be the best procedure
Swap license to Exchange Online P2
Disable account
Assign Litigation hold
At this point user cannot login to the account and mailbox or OneDrive data won't be lost.
7 year retention policy in place which will preserve email, however not the structure which is where the litigation hold comes in.
When the user returns
Assign proper license
Enable Account
Turn off Litigation Hold
Sorry for all the questions, just trying to get it right in my head. I don't want to lose user data
Regards
If you want to put a hold on the mailbox and OneDrive, then yes, your plan will work and will ensure the data is not lost. Converting to a shared mailbox alone does not guarantee data wont be lost.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/get-started-core-ediscovery?view=o365-worldwide#step-1-verify-and-assign-appropriate-licenses
Hi AndyDavid,
Great I'm getting there with your help.
In the last screenshot where you had highlighted Exchange online Plan 2, I noticed the AND at the bottom. Is the AND just related to the F5 licenses?
If I was to use ediscovery hold, does this mean I would have to create an ediscovery case and search for everything in the mailbox/onedrive to then put it on hold? I guess this is where litigation hold is better in that it can just be applied to the mailbox/onedrive without having to perform a search, Does this need a minimum of Office365 E3?
Regards,
Matt
If you have an E3 or higher applied to that account you are good.
You can simply create a basic , standard case and choose the locations.
Enter the URL of the users onedrive and select the user's mailbox
Hi AndyDavid,
If I need to use the ediscovery hold it seems that actually an Office 365 E3 license would be the lowest license with all the capabilities I would need. Office 365 E3 would allow an Online Archive for the user's mailbox and the ediscovery hold would also work.
So the following should allow us to keep all data for a user on long term absense?
When the user returns
If the user leaves
Does the above sound right?
One final thing in my scenario am I best using ediscovery hold or litigation hold and why?
Regards,
Matt
Hi @Matthew Ridley ,
You could refer to the official document which introduced about inactive mailboxes
To prevent accidental or unintentional deletion, we recommend you confirm the hold before you delete the user account. If the hold isn't applied, the mailbox won't be converted into an inactive mailbox.
And the differences and details about In-Place Hold and Litigation Hold in Exchange Online
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a traditional hold really only applies to the mailbox, so you use the Edis features to grab the onedrive as well.
Thank you @Joyce Shen - MSFT @Andy David - MVP
I have already ruled out inactive mailboxes as this requires the account to be deleted which we won't be doing.
I asked for a quote on Office 365 E3 and this is more than I thought so I won't be able to use that license. Back to Exchange Online Plan 2 options.
@Andy David - MVP you provided the link for ediscovery standard per user:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/get-started-core-ediscovery?view=o365-worldwide#step-1-verify-and-assign-appropriate-licenses
I'm not sure when reading it if Exchange Online Plan2 on its own is enough as at the bottom is an AND which mentions Office 365 E1. Is this required as well?
Another option that has been mentioned is to migrate the mailbox and online Archive back to on-premises and then disable the account. This should keep the mailbox, Archive data intact and as the account is not being deleted OneDrive should also be kept. An Exhange Cal would be required which we already have. This option requires more work from the admin, but the cost should be less.
Can you think of any other gotchas in going for this option?
Regards,
Matt
Hi,
I'm not sure when reading it if Exchange Online Plan2 on its own is enough as at the bottom is an AND which mentions Office 365 E1. Is this required as well?
Exchange online plan2 license is enough.