Microsoft’s Priority Cleanup V2 will drastically speed up Exchange Online deletions, cut approvals, and simplify workflows for IT admins.
Although Exchange Online is the backbone of the email infrastructure used by tons of Microsoft customers, it is typically invisible to the end-user. However, that does not make it any less important for IT admins who are responsible for managing it. For this set of users, Microsoft regularly rolls out new Exchange Online features such as High Volume Emails, auditing capabilities, and more. Now, the company has announced an upcoming feature that could significantly change how mailbox content gets permanently deleted.
Priority Cleanup is an extremely powerful tool in Purview that allows IT admins to permanently delete mailbox content in Exchange Online. This is typically done in two cases: privacy requests from former employees who request the erasure of their data after a specific period of time, or data spillage when sensitive information gets leaked and the mailbox needs to be deleted, regardless of any preservation holds placed on it.
Now, Microsoft has announced that Priority Cleanup V2 is currently in the planning stage, and the company is taking feedback from existing customers about how to shape this product. The idea is to solve some limitations of V1, particularly those related to speed and simplicity of workflows. To that end, the following enhancements are planned for V2:
- Policy enforcement approval when moving from simulation to active mode (requires approval from a different Priority Cleanup admin).
- We’re proposing to minimize approval overhead by removing unnecessary review stages. Disposition review by eDiscovery admins will be required only for mailboxes under eDiscovery hold. For other mailboxes, items will be permanently deleted soon after the Priority Cleanup policy is applied to speed up processing from days to hours. This would reduce the number of required users with admin privileges from four to two.
Apart from this, IT admins will be able to configure batch deletions for substantial mailbox purges as an additional safeguard.
In terms of deletion speed, V1 took over six days even for small mailboxes, V2 will be “significantly faster” and instantaneous if the mailbox does not have a preservation hold. Similarly, approval workflows will now be 2-step instead of 3-step.
In addition, Microsoft is making it easier to manage policies, implementing new metadata information for the review interface, and proposing a Cleanup ID that contains the complete audit trail for any purging activities.
Microsoft hopes that Priority Cleanup V2 will make the lives of IT admins easier through accelerated deletion, reduced administrative overhead, better transparency, and support for complex security and compliance requirements. The tool should arrive later this year, but the Redmond tech giant is actively welcoming feedback through support channels or dedicated customer success agents.
