Until this summer, Purview retention policies didn't reach Planner. There was no way to say "keep these tasks for seven years" or "delete these after two." That has changed. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management now applies retention and deletion policies to Planner tasks. The roadmap lists it as launched, general availability July CY2026 (ID 486828), and Message Center post MC1384412 put the worldwide rollout between mid-July and early August 2026.
A second change arrived in October and pulls the other way. Planner plans created from Teams meetings now expire and are deleted after 180 consecutive days with no task activity (MC1479508, roadmap ID 571392).
One feature keeps. The other deletes. Both run on Planner, and neither knows which plans matter to you.
What the retention policy does
Per MC1384412, a Planner retention policy keeps or deletes each task based on its own creation date or last modified date, and it can be scoped to user plans and group-backed plans. Nothing changes for users until a policy is configured and enforced.
Two details from Learn's page on Planner in Purview shape the design. Attachments on tasks live in SharePoint and comments live in Exchange. So a hold that has to keep the whole task needs the group's SharePoint site and mailbox as well, not just the Planner tasks box. And eDiscovery doesn't support every plan type: personal (roster) plans, plans in Loop components, premium plans, and shared and private channel plans are listed as unsupported for search and hold. Retention support and eDiscovery support aren't the same list, so check both for each plan type you care about.
One documentation gap to know about: Learn's Planner security and compliance page still says retention policy isn't currently supported. The Message Center post and the roadmap are newer. Check the Planner location in your own Purview portal before you plan around either.
What the meeting plan expiry does
Per MC1479508, the clock applies only to new plans created from Teams meetings; plans that existed at rollout are out of scope, and no plan can be deleted earlier than 180 days after rollout. Activity means creating, editing or deleting a task. Viewing a plan doesn't count. The meeting organizer gets email 30 days and 7 days before deletion and can select Keep plan for another 180 days, as many times as needed. Tasks in Loop and the meeting notes stay. A deleted plan can be recovered for 30 days, but only through an admin request to Microsoft support.
Microsoft's own compliance note on the change answers yes to "does this modify retention policies, holds, or deletion workflows?" It doesn't say what happens when a retention policy covers a meeting-created plan that then expires. Test that in a pilot group before the first deletions can happen, which by the rule above is the spring of 2027.
Which plans are records?
Most plans aren't. A sprint board or a team's weekly to-do list can go when the group goes; our site lifecycle post covered what happens to a group's Planner data when it expires. Some plans are evidence, though. An audit remediation plan shows who agreed to fix what, and when. A plan tracking a regulatory filing, a safety action list or a contract's obligations can be the only dated record of who was assigned. In those, the task history is the record.
For those plans, three decisions:
The clock. Creation date suits a fixed retention period from when the work was assigned. Last modified suits "keep until the work stops changing."
The scope. Name the groups whose plans hold records, and add their SharePoint site and mailbox where attachments and comments must be kept.
The meeting plans. If a plan that matters was created from a meeting, its organizer needs to know about Keep plan, or move the tasks to a group plan the policy covers.
Who decides
The records owner names which kinds of plan hold records and for how long. Site and plan owners say which group plans those are. The compliance administrator builds the policy and checks the eDiscovery coverage for each plan type. Meeting organizers answer the 30-day and 7-day notices.
Planner was never meant to be a records system. Some of your records ended up there anyway.
