Site And Site Collection Retention Policy In SharePoint

SharePoint 2013 has introduced a new feature Site and Site Collection Retention Policy. Usually, a Site has a lifecycle – site creation and site deletion. Also, in the life cycle, we can track which sites are used, unused, and old. SharePoint 2013 comes with the new option to easily delete old sites, not in used sites, sites that have a lot of data, etc. Through this way (Site retention Policy) we can easily track, delete, and provide the expiry date by using and providing some information to Site Policies.

Site Policies

• We can assign a Site retention policy at site creation.
• Site Policies are created at the Site collection level.
• You can configure how sites under this policy are closed and eventually deleted automatically.

The following are the three options set to create new site policies.

• Closed and then deleted automatically.
• Deleted automatically after a certain period.
• Marked read-only.

Create a site policy

Here are the steps to create a new site policy at the site collection level to apply this site policy to close and delete sub-sites automatically.

1. Go to the Site (Site collection) and click on Site Settings on the left ribbon.
   
   Figure 01. Home page with Site Settings.
2. In the Site Settings page, click on Site Policies under the Site Collection Administration section.
   
   Figure 02. Site Policies feature under Site Collection administration.
3. To create new Site Policies, click on Create. A new Site Policy pop-up opens to enter the information.
   
   Figure 03. Create new Site Policies.
   
   Figure 04. New site policy.
4. Enter a name and description, and in Site Closure and Deletion for the policy, click on close and delete sites automatically. Fill the appropriate information and click OK.
   
   Figure 05. Edit Site Policy.

Useful terms in site closure and deletion

• Close event: We can set the close event of the Site-created date starting with days, years, and months.
• Deletion event: We can set the site closed date under the Deletion event with days, years, and months.
• Send an email notification to the site owner this far in advance of deletion.
• Send follow-up notifications every: We can set send follow-up notifications for every value that we choose to send, like 1 year/month/day.
• Postpone deletion: The owner can postpone imminent deletion for it may be 5 years/month etc.
• Site collection closure: When a site collection is closed, you can choose for it to become read-only.

5. Click OK to create the new policy. New created policy displays the Site policies list: “Test Site Policies”.

Figure 06. New Created Site Policies

To apply the site policy in site collection to new sub-site/existing sub-site.

The following are the steps to apply the site policy to the subsite. Let’s go to the site on which we are going to apply the site policy.

1. Go to the site and click the Site Settings menu.
2. On the Site Settings page, click Site Closure and Deletion, which is under Site Administration.
   
   Figure 07. Click on Site Closure and Deletion
3. In the Site Closure and Deletion page, select the site policy name from the drop-down listing that we created earlier.
   
   Figure 08. Site Closure and Deletion in a new window.
4. Select the “Test Site Policies” site policy to apply for the selected sub-site.
   
   Figure 09. Select Site policy from the listing.
5. Click OK. The policy is applied to the site.
6. Go to the Site Closure and Deletion link again. The applied policy result is displayed in the Site Closure and Site Deletion window.
   
   Figure 10. Result applied site policy into Subsites.
7. To postpone site deletion, you can click on Postpone deletion of this site for 5 years button so the site will postpone for 5 years deletion.
8. Now go to the site home page to see the applied result of the site Closure. At the top of the ribbon, the message will be visible at the time of site deletion: “The site will be deleted on 9/2/2015”. At the time of site closing, the site is in read-only mode, and we cannot modify the site. On the other pointer, the site collection has the ready-only mode indicator that appears on the top of the ribbon home page.
   
   Figure 11. Notification results at the time of site deletion.

So this way we can accomplish and apply Site collection policies in SharePoint 2013.