Deleted Teams chat should be deleted permanently 6 months after a user is deleted

Question

Hi

I would like to configure the following policy:

1) When a user exists, all teams chat history is never deleted. By "user exists" I mean any user that hasn't been deleted.
2) As soon as the user is deleted, all teams chat history is kept for 6 months and then it's deleted.

Would you please let me know if the below configuration is correct to achieve the above?

1) M365 Compliance ] Policies ] Retention Policies ] New Retention Policy ] Static ] Teams channel messages and Teams Chat ] Retain items forever
2) M365 Compliance ] Policies ] Retention Policies ] New Retention Policy ] Static ] Teams private channel messages ] Retain items forever
3) Turn on litigation hold for 180 days so that when a user is deleted, their mailbox becomes inactive for 180 days.

Please let me know if this would work. I've read somewhere that when two policies are conflicting the one with the greater retention period is used and I'm worried that after 180 days, the inactive mailbox won't be deleted because the Teams Retention policy dictates the data to be retained forever.

Answer 1

1) this is the default behavior, no need to configure anything here. If you want to prevent users from inadvertently deleting stuff, or need to preserve data for compliance requirements, configure a retention policy
2) that's where a retention policy comes in place (or hold)

As to your proposed solution, I'd recommend skipping steps 1 and 2. Only use them if you have to meet regulatory requirements. Another thing to keep in mind is that channel conversations are not kept in user's mailboxes, but within the mailbox of the Office 365 Group underlying the corresponding Team. So the retention you configure on the user mailbox plays no role here.

And yes, you are probably right that in the proposed configuration the mailbox will be kept indefinitely, although I'd admin I havent tested what happens when only a "Teams" retention policy is acting on the mailbox.