Microsoft 365 - Preserving organizational data due to a position change or retirement

Whether you have worked for the University for only one day or for thirty years, you will have data you have accumulated which may need to be preserved or handed off to your colleagues.

This document will give you some ways you can go about sharing this data. Important: The information provided here is primarily in the context of Office 365 - there are other locations, services, and applications you may have used that will still need to be checked to make sure the data/workflows are preserved. Remember, depending on the service/applications you are currently using, the data stored within it may no longer be accessible or retained after you have left the university - it is important you find out the retention policy prior to leaving.

Important: At this time there are conversations happening between the Office of Compliance and CyberSecurity to develop policy around retention of data generated within collaboration applications. Because of the broad scope of applications and data types this will impact, providing guidance specific to Office 365 services will need to align with whatever policy changes occur as part of those discussions. The current policy in place (as of 11/2023) is documented here but only has guidance specific to email and text messaging. Updates to the current policy will include guidance for other data platforms (e.g. recorded meetings, chat, etc.).

We will update our documentation when policy decisions are made.

Types of data include but not limited to:

  • Files (documents, spreadsheets, notebooks, etc.)
  • Emails
  • Calendar events
  • Contacts
  • Tasks

Data can currently be stored within your account or on local media. Make sure you perform a detailed inventory of all your data before leaving the university.

What to do if you want to preserve any of this data:

There are a multitude of ways to save/store data - these are recommendations.

  • Data within your Office 365 account
    • Emails can be copied/moved to another account.
    • Move the data to a shared location: such as Office 365 Group, Office 365 Service Account, Google Shared Drive, Box Project Directory, and/or shared network drive
    • Share the data with other user(s) via permissions
    • Export the data and share it with others via media (e.g., flash drive)
  • Data outside your Office 365 account
    • Move the data to a shared location: such as Office 365 Group, Office 365 Service Account, Google Shared Drive, Box Project Directory, and/or shared network drive
    • Share the data with other user(s) via permissions
    • Export the data and share it with others via media (e.g., flash drive)

Resources


Keywords:
microsoft ms office365 o365 m365 microsoft 365 box google drive gsuite project directory onedrive group service account emails calendar events meetings appointments work flow files transfer share store faculty staff students continuity export quota copy move storage 
Doc ID:
72684
Owned by:
O365 S. in Microsoft 365
Created:
2017-04-18
Updated:
2024-06-28
Sites:
DoIT Help Desk, Microsoft 365