Retention, legal hold and eDiscovery

The Compliance tab in Admin has four sections: Retention, Legal hold, DLP (see Data protection rules) and eDiscovery. Setting these up is part of the Business plan. Turning things off, removing and reading them always works.

Compliance permission

Legal holds and eDiscovery can reveal anyone's mail and files, so being an administrator is not enough: an administrator also needs the Compliance permission. The workspace owner always has it and can Grant or Revoke it for another administrator by email address. Keep it to nobody besides the owner unless you need more.

Retention

Retention deletes old data automatically. It runs daily in small batches.

1. Open Retention and pick the App: Mail, Chat, Drive files or Docs & Sheets.
2. For Mail, optionally pick a Folder such as trash or junk. Leave it empty to cover every folder.
3. Enter Keep for (days). Anything older is deleted for good, does not go to Trash and cannot be restored. For example, Trash after 30 days, plus all folders after 7 years (2555 days).
4. Choose Dry run to see Would delete counts first. Then Save policy.

There is one policy per app and folder: saving again replaces it. Keep forever saves a policy that deletes nothing for that app and folder, to replace one that deletes. It does not protect against other policies: a Mail policy for all folders still removes old mail in a folder set to keep forever. Remove a policy with Remove. With none, everything is kept. Anything under a legal hold is skipped.

Legal hold

A hold makes sure nothing is lost while a lawsuit, audit or investigation is open. People can delete as usual and see no difference, but a copy of what they delete (and of chat messages they edit) is kept in a hidden hold store. Retention skips them.

1. Choose New hold and enter a Name (matter), like "Smith contract dispute".
2. Under Covers, choose People, Mailboxes or The whole workspace, and list Addresses if needed.
3. Add a Description, then Place hold.

It takes effect at once and lasts until you Release it. The Hold store holds the hidden copies, and only people with the compliance permission can search it.

eDiscovery

Searches everyone's mail, chat and files at once.

1. Open eDiscovery and type Search for words (at least 2 characters; all must match).
2. Optionally set a date range and People, and pick Where to search, including the Hold store.
3. Choose Search. About 200 results per app are shown. Mail and chat are searched by text, Docs and Sheets by text and name, other Drive files by name.
4. Choose Export results to build a downloadable archive (up to 1,000 per app) for lawyers or auditors. Download it from Data export.

Searches and exports are recorded in the audit log, and the archive holds real contents, so share it carefully.