Retention Policies

Retention policies define how long archived emails are kept before they become eligible for automatic deletion. Each policy targets a specific set of emails using condition rules and specifies a retention period in days.

Navigating to Retention Policies

Go to Compliance > Retention Policies in the sidebar.

Creating a Policy

Click Create Policy and fill in the following fields:

• Name -- A descriptive name for the policy (e.g., "Legal Hold - 7 Years").
• Priority -- Determines evaluation order when multiple policies exist. Higher priority policies are evaluated first.
• Retention Period -- The number of days an email must be retained from its ingestion date.
• Ingestion Scope -- Defines which ingested emails the policy applies to.
• Condition Rules -- One or more rules that an email must match for the policy to apply.

Condition Rules

Each rule consists of a field, an operator, and a value. Multiple rules can be combined using AND or OR logic.

Supported Fields

Field	Description
sender	The email sender address
recipient	The email recipient address
subject	The email subject line
attachment_type	The MIME type of any attachment

Supported Operators

Operator	Description
equals	Exact match
not_equals	Does not exactly match
contains	Value appears anywhere in the field
not_contains	Value does not appear in the field
starts_with	Field begins with the value
ends_with	Field ends with the value
domain_match	Matches the domain portion of an email address
regex_match	Matches a regular expression pattern

Editing a Policy

Select an existing policy from the list and click Edit. All fields can be modified. Changes take effect on the next lifecycle worker run.

Deleting a Policy

Select a policy and click Delete. Removing a policy does not retroactively delete any emails -- it only stops the policy from governing future retention decisions.

Policy Simulator

The policy simulator lets you test your condition rules against archived emails without affecting any data. Use it to verify that a new or modified policy targets the correct set of messages before saving.

Multiple Matching Policies

When an email matches more than one retention policy, max-duration-wins logic applies: the policy with the longest retention period determines the effective retention date. This ensures that the most conservative retention requirement is always honored.