With ShareGate, you don't have to worry about losing important documents when you want to clean up inactive teams and groups.
Set up an Azure storage account in Settings so all the files and folders of unused teams and groups can be archived using ShareGate.
Index
What is archived
Files and folders in libraries.
Files and folders that were shared in Teams private channels (if present).
Documents sent by the group mailbox (if set to save in the SharePoint library).
Documents shared on Planner or Yammer.
List attachments.
SharePoint's hierarchy (transformed into folders).
The SharePoint site.
Teams and their content.
Conversations.
Channel structure, tabs, and apps.
Permissions.
Note: Your document version history---including creation and modification dates---is preserved during an archive. ShareGate does not preserve who made the modifications.
What is not archived
SharePoint-related metadata, including list items and document properties.
Storage options
You can use the default Azure storage solution provided by ShareGate or your own custom Azure storage for your archived content.
For more details, see Azure storage options for archiving.
How to archive
Choose how you want to archive: set up ShareGate's automated features so archiving decisions are delegated to team and group owners as needed or use a do-it-yourself approach and archive manually.
For a summary of the different archiving techniques, see Ways you can archive with ShareGate.
Access and manage your archive
Select Archive from the sidebar to view all archived teams and groups. From here, you can do different tasks, such as fully restoring a team or group within 30 days of its archival.
For more information on what you can do with archived teams and groups, see Access and manage your archived items.
Considerations
The option to archive is only available if you have set up an Azure storage account to store your data. If you have not yet set up storage, inactive teams and groups can only be kept or deleted.
When a team or group is archived, and its contents are successfully in storage, the associated site collection and apps are deleted.
The associated site collection and apps are only deleted once the team or group is successfully archived. The behavior changes when you have Microsoft retention settings in place. For more information, see What is the relationship between Microsoft retention settings and archiving with ShareGate?
ShareGate stores some file metadata, such as file names and ownership information, in an Azure search service index. This allows you to search through your archived content. The information collected is only accessible through ShareGate Protect.
If an owner opens a team or group after receiving an inactivity detection notification but does not take action, that team or group will be considered active (i.e., it will not be considered inactive until the next cycle has passed).
To preserve the integrity of your data, an archive will fail if ShareGate detects any errors in your files. For more information on troubleshooting archive issues, see Retry failed archives.
ShareGate cannot archive lists with column names that contain SharePoint reserved words. This includes internal column names.