Yes, agreed!
I do have concerns on the SAR/FOI side and also that once we've agreed and implemented 12 months it will be incredibly difficult to reduce it if we later think it is necessary. But I am starting to see that there are very different use cases in place for professional services areas and the teaching side, which I perhaps hadn't considered in enough detail previously.
We've had to find a balance somewhere, and hopefully this will work for everyone.
Nicki
Nicki Hargreaves
Information Records Manager
-----Original Message-----
From: The Information and Records Management Society mailing list <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Zoe Cooper
Sent: 04 August 2020 17:00
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Retention of chat messages in Teams
Hi all,
I'm seeing that it's hard for Universities to find a balance here as they need to service academics and students as well as professional service staff. The 3 days that Fife has wouldn't be right for us.
It's interesting to hear about the feedback you had on the 90 days Nicki, as that's one of the options I put forward. I know academics are finding Chat a really useful platform for providing one-to-one teaching support and it is reasonable that they would want to refer back to ongoing chats over the year.
I would be concerned about the amount that might come back for requests. But from a Retention Schedule perspective it would work as we state 1 year maximum for general requests or enquiries.
Best wishes all,
Zoe
Zoe April Cooper
Corporate Records Manager
Legal and Governance
University of Central Lancashire
-----Original Message-----
From: The Information and Records Management Society mailing list <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Donald Henderson - CHX
Sent: 04 August 2020 15:49
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Retention of chat messages in Teams
12 months feels very long - FOI requests and SARs could be problematic...
-----Original Message-----
From: The Information and Records Management Society mailing list <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Nicki Hargreaves
Sent: 04 August 2020 13:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Retention of chat messages in Teams
Hi all,
This is an interesting thread, and a discussion we’ve been having at MMU recently, as we’re also implementing Teams at the moment and facing a lot of similar questions.
In terms of chat retention, we initially proposed a 90 day retention rule on chat messages, with all the guidance around it being intended for informal discussions and nothing with a long term value. Similar to what both you and Zoe have said – that if it needs to be retained, it should be elsewhere. The 90 days was based on guidance I’ve read on this list and knowledge of what other sectors are doing, but at the time I wasn’t aware of what any other Universities had done.
Once the message got to academics however there was reluctance to accept that 90 days was enough, based on their belief of how students will use chat.
So, following a number of meetings/discussions around it all, we’ve increased the chat retention period to 12 months – still with the exact same usage guidance. I’ve also been emphasising the functionality in chat: for example sharing documents or adding them onto their own tab and using that as decision logs or similar to record key decisions being made, as well as use of the ‘meeting notes’ tab in a meeting (we also had push back because chats in meetings are treated the same as other chats and people might want to refer back, especially for recurring meetings). Any files or meeting notes managed in this way are saved in OneDrive so unaffected by the deletion policy.
We accepted the view from academics, however that 12 months fits with the new block teaching models, and will be enough for them to support students doing dissertations.
We’re not implementing Teams as a replacement for anything else, so I’m trying to stress that just because we may now be able to record every single interaction everyone has doesn’t mean that we should – because the more we have, the less value it has and we should concentrate on ensuring that the important stuff is properly managed. It’s a behavioural question as much as anything, but I want people to treat chat as unstructured and unmanaged and more of an instant comms tool that nobody will need again. If a record was ever made of a face to face meeting/phone call then this should still happen if it takes place in Teams chat, but if that record was never needed before, why would we keep it now?
I’d thought about whether having more than one chat retention policy would work best as a sort of Capstone like approach – so perhaps for the more senior staff only, but we’ve not gone for that, we’ve implemented a blanket 12 months for all users. At the moment we’re in the fortunate position of not having many users on Teams yet, so we’re focusing on getting everyone using it in the right way.
I was initially very reluctant to accept that the 90 days needed to be increased, because it seemed to be very much a ‘just in case’ request based purely on speculation that people might use chat differently to how we’re saying they should, and I don’t think that’s enough. It was academics who proposed 12 months and gave the block teaching and dissertation support examples and I think those are justified, and at least this way we have got the support of the academics too so it is hopefully more likely to be successful.
I’d also be very happy to hear about the approach that others have taken and how it has been received.
Thanks,
Nicki
Nicki Hargreaves
Information Records Manager | Manchester Metropolitan University
-----Original Message-----
From: The Information and Records Management Society mailing list <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Meic Pierce Owen
Sent: 03 August 2020 13:35
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Retention of chat messages in Teams
Hi Zoe and Sian
Fife Council has 9000+ users on its M365.
We operate a 3 day retention on chat in teams. This is draconian and we understand it as such. Its purpose is to restrict the Info requests risk and resource exposure. It is explained to staff that they need to capture any key decisions- screenshot, copy/paste, confirming email.
I understand that mbe 'next midnight' deletion is now possible? If so, we will go for that and replicate SFB deletion- which we have been very comfortable with. Mbe Rob or Andrew or similar could advise on this?
Channels chat is different. This can be valuable so where we have that, we are looking at 2 years' retention. In looking at Pilot Project use of this, it does seem to be strongly business focussed so we are more relaxed about this.
Hope this assists
Meic
Meic Pierce Owen FIRMS FIIMA AMIRMS
Fife Council Records Manager
-----Original Message-----
From: The Information and Records Management Society mailing list <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Zoe Cooper
Sent: 03 August 2020 13:23
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Retention of chat messages in Teams
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organisation. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the content is safe.
________________________________
Hi Sian,
I don't have any great advice but wanted to comment as we're having the same discussion at UCLan. We want a short retention on the majority of chats but there are conversations which record key decisions and one-to-one student support, which could be lost too soon.
We're considering implementing a 6 month rule and raising awareness that chat is an informal platform and any exchange which needs to be retained longer should be recorded elsewhere, as we might have done following a phone call or in-person conversation. I realise this isn’t ideal.
I'm interested to hear the responses to your question.
Zoe
Zoe April Cooper
Corporate Records Manager
University of Central Lancashire
-----Original Message-----
From: The Information and Records Management Society mailing list <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Sian Astill
Sent: 02 August 2020 15:37
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Retention of chat messages in Teams
Hello all
We have recently introduced Teams at the University of Huddersfield and have hit a potential snag relating to chat retention policies. I’ll give some background below, but my questions in short are:
1) Has anyone implemented more than one chat retention policy (or one policy applicable to one group only, with remaining users having no policy)? Could you possibly tell me about your approach?
2) For universities, how long would you keep interactions between staff and students in Teams chat?
3) Any other advice on the issues raised below will be much appreciated!
We were intending to implement a retention policy of something like 6 months on chat messages for staff in Teams (not channel messages), with guidance given that chat is for informal conversations only and anything important that is said there should be moved to a more appropriate location within the 6 months. This was prompted by concerns about the chat messages otherwise being retained forever, which, in addition to just getting unwieldy, has implications for things such as Subject Access Requests.
However, we’re a university and our students will soon be getting access to Teams. As well as students chatting to other students, they would also be able to interact with staff. Andrew Warland very kindly tested for me what would happen when a retention policy is applied to one person in a chat conversation (ie if we apply a short chat retention policy to staff, but not students). Alas, what happens is that the chat messages are removed for both sides of the conversation – that is, neither staff nor student can see either the messages they sent or the messages they received.
Therefore, in order to retain interactions between staff and students for longer, we couldn’t apply the short chat retention policy to any members of staff who interact with students. But, because chat retention policies are based on the user and not the purpose, this would mean that all their informal chats with other staff were also retained for that extended retention period.
On a related note, we are also uncertain about how long to retain interactions between students and staff in Teams chat in any case. The intention would be that Teams chat messages were only used for informal discussions and formative feedback (as might have occurred in person), but with the whole idea of using Teams for teaching being so new, it is very difficult to be certain about what staff and students may find useful and what practices they might want to adopt. Would we therefore need to retain staff/student chats for completion of student’s programme + 6 years? We would really appreciate information on what other universities may have chosen to do.
My feeling is that retention policies based on the user are less than ideal. Retention policies should be based on the purpose/content of the messages, not who sent/received them. However, I’m not sure how that would ever be possible without the user have to select the retention policy themselves for each chat, much like applying a retention label. I wonder if the limited options for chat retention is something that could be raised with Microsoft as part of the roundtable discussions that have happened/are planned, but I’m not sure what the solution would be.
Please reply either on- of off-list; to email me directly, use s.astill at hud.ac.uk.
Thank you very much
Sian
Sian Astill
Assistant Records Manager and Archivist
University of Huddersfield
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