How to Implement Hold and eDiscovery in a SharePoint Site

Adding a Hold to a Record

1) Browse to the Site Settings

2) Manage Site Features -> Hold and eDiscovery -> Activate

3) This will display the Hold and eDiscovery section in Site settings now.

4) Browse to Holds list and create a new item (Hold)

5) Now browse to a document library and select a document, right click and choose Compliance Details.

6) This will show the Hold status of the document. Choose Add/Remove from hold

7) Select Add to a hold and Save. Use the drop-down selection box to choose the relevant hold to apply to this record.  The ‘Comments’ field is not required.

8) Now check the Compliance Details. This shows that the document is On hold.If you noticed, now the Delete option is not available( and will not be available as long as the Hold is in place)

Note:

a. This means this record cannot be deleted and will not be destroyed through its Information Management Policy until the new hold is removed.

b. Please note that SharePoint allows you to apply multiple holds to the same record.  If a record has multiple holds applied to it, SharePoint will not allow the record to be destroyed until all the holds are removed.

Removing a Hold from a Record

1) Browse to a document library and select a document, right click and choose Compliance Details

2) This will show the Hold status of the document (On hold). Choose Add/Remove from hold

3) Select Remove from a hold and Save. Use the drop-down selection box to choose the relevant hold to apply to this record.  The ‘Comments’ field is not required.

4) Now you should be able to delete the record

SharePoint Hold and eDiscovery feature

The Hold and eDiscovery feature of SharePoint sites prevents items such as documents, images, pages, from expiration policies. This feature is typically used for items that are subject to events such as litigation, audits, or investigations.

Organizations use holds to prevent items that may be relevant to ongoing litigation or investigation from expiring or being destroyed before the event to which they are relevant has been resolved. Also , when an item is placed on hold , it cannot be edited or deleted.

How Hold works

To use the Hold feature, Hold and eDiscovery feature must be activated in that site.You can add a Holds list to any site by accessing the Site Settings page for the site and activating the Hold and eDiscovery feature.

Note: By default, every Records Center site has a Holds list (feature is already activated)

A new entry is added to the Holds list for creating a new hold. The Holds list provides tools for finding and holding relevant items, viewing items that are currently on hold, or releasing a hold when it is no longer required. When an item is added to a hold, its hold status is updated to indicate that it is on hold, and the application prevents this item from expiring or being deleted. An item can have multiple holds at the same time. If an item is put on multiple holds, it is suspended from its original information management policy until all of the holds to which it has been added are released.

I have detailed the implementation of Hold and eDiscovery feature here.

Reference