Unified document retention management system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2018276223-A1
Application number	US-201715469762-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Mar 27, 2017
Priority date	Mar 27, 2017
Publication date	Sep 27, 2018
Grant date	—

Abstract

A unified document retention management system exposes a retention policy management portal to enable a user to selectively prescribe a unified retention policy to multiple productivity platforms to deploy the unified retention policy across the user selected productivity platforms. Data retention rules of the unified retention policy may define actions to be performed with respect to files that satisfy certain predefined conditions. An exemplary data retention rule prescribes a retention age threshold to files that have been tagged with a particular label. Files may be manually labeled by users and/or may be automatically labeled by the system in accordance with one or more smart label rules. The retention age threshold may be enforced for such tagged files by preventing the files from being deleted and/or modified prior to them reaching the retention age threshold. Then the files may automatically be purged from system storage upon reaching the retention age threshold.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A system for deploying unified retention policies across multiple productivity platforms, the system comprising:
at least one processor; and at least one memory in communication with the at least one processor, the at least one memory having computer-readable instructions stored thereupon that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to:
obtain productivity platform data corresponding to at least a communication platform and a file hosting platform;
determine a unified retention policy defining a retention age threshold and associating at least one action with the retention age threshold;
expose a retention policy management portal to enable an administrator to prescribe the unified retention policy to at least the communication platform and the file hosting platform; and
enforce the unified retention policy across at least the communication platform and the file hosting platform by:
analyzing first data corresponding to the communication platform to identify at least one first file, corresponding to the first data file type, that reaches or exceeds the retention age threshold;
analyzing second data corresponding to the file hosting platform to identify at least one second file, corresponding to the second data file type, that reaches or exceeds the retention age threshold; and
causing the at least one action to be performed with respect to the at least one first file and the at least one second file.

2 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the computer-readable instructions further cause the at least one processor to:
obtain account data corresponding to a plurality of user accounts that are provisioned with access to at least the communication platform and the file hosting platform; expose the retention policy management portal to enable the administrator to select, for exclusion from at least a portion of the unified retention policy, at least one of: a communication account of an individual user account, or a file hosting account of the individual user account; and exclude at least one of the communication account or the file hosting account from at least the portion of the unified retention policy.

3 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the computer-readable instructions further cause the at least one processor to:
receive a request to delete a particular file from at least one of: a communication account corresponding to an individual user account, or a file hosting account corresponding to the individual user account; determine that the particular file does not reach the retention age threshold, wherein the particular file corresponds to at least one of the first data or the second data; retain the particular file within at least one storage device at least until the particular file reaches the retention age threshold; and purge, based on a determination that the particular file reaches or exceeds the retention age threshold, the particular file from the at least one storage device.

4 . The system of claim 3 , wherein the computer-readable instructions further cause the at least one processor to prevent, subsequent to the request and prior to purging the particular file from the at least one storage device, the particular file from being displayed on a user device in association with at least one of the communication account or the file hosting account.

5 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the at least one action includes purging at least one storage device of the at least one first file and the at least one second file.

6 . The system of claim 5 , wherein the computer-readable instructions further cause the at least one processor to:
analyze at least one of the first data or the second data to identify a particular file that has been tagged with a label to designate the particular file as a record; and prevent, based on the label, the particular file from being modified until the particular file is purged from the at least one storage device based on the particular file reaching or exceeding the retention age threshold.

7 . A computer-implemented method, comprising:
obtaining data corresponding to at least one user account that is provisioned with access to at least a first productivity platform and a second productivity platform; exposing a retention policy management portal configured to receive an instruction to prescribe a unified retention policy to the at least one user account with respect to at least the first productivity platform and the second productivity platform, wherein the unified retention policy defines at least one condition and associates at least one action with the at least one condition; and deploying the unified retention policy across at least the first productivity platform and the second productivity platform by:
analyzing the first productivity platform to identify a first plurality of files that satisfy the at least one condition of the unified retention policy;
analyzing the second productivity platform to identify a second plurality of files that satisfy the at least one condition of the unified retention policy; and
causing the at least one action to be performed with respect to the first plurality of files corresponding to the first productivity platform and the second plurality of files corresponding to the second productivity platform.

8 . The computer-implemented method of claim 7 , wherein the at least one condition corresponds to individual files reaching or exceeding a retention age threshold, and wherein the at least one action includes automatically purging the individual files that reach or exceed the retention age threshold from at least one storage device.

9 . The computer-implemented method of claim 8 , further comprising preventing the individual files from being deleted from the at least one storage device prior to the individual files reaching or exceeding the retention age threshold.

10 . The computer-implemented method of claim 7 , wherein causing the at least one action to be performed with respect to the first plurality of files and the second plurality of files includes prompting a user to indicate whether to retain at least some of the first plurality of files and the second plurality of files.

11 . The computer-implemented method of claim 7 , further comprising:
receiving, via an individual user account of the at least one user account, a request to delete a particular file from the first productivity platform; causing the particular file to be removed from a storage allotment of the individual user account with respect to the first productivity platform; and based on a determination that the particular file does not reach or exceed a retention age threshold:
retaining the particular file in an archive at least until the particular file reaches or exceeds the retention age threshold, and
subsequent to the archiving, automatically purging the particular file from the archive based on the particular file reaching or exceeding the retention age threshold.

12 . The computer-implemented method of claim 7 , wherein the at least one condition corresponds to individual files being associated with at least one predefined label that is caused to be deployed across at least the first productivity platform and the second productivity platform via the retention policy management portal.

13 . The computer-implemented method of claim 12 , further comprising:
receiving an indication to associate at least one sensitive information type with the unified retention policy; and automatically associating the individual files with the at least one predefined label based on a determination that the ind

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Dhanasekaran Kannan
• Nguyen Tho Van
• Tung Le-Wu
• Garg Nakul
• Xue Mingquan
• Kohli Gagandeep
• Ramaswamy Dheepak

Classifications

• G06F17/30117

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F17/30215

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F17/30085 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F17/30073

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F16/13 Primary

  File access structures, e.g. distributed indices (arrangements of input from, or output to, record carriers G06F3/06) · CPC title