📦 Dataverse Long-Term Retention in Dynamics 365 CE: Simplify Data Management & Cut Costs

 


Managing ever-growing datasets in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE) can become a challenge for businesses. To help organizations stay compliant and reduce storage costs, Microsoft introduced Dataverse Long-Term Retention (LTR).

🚀 What is Dataverse Long-Term Retention?

Dataverse LTR provides a way to archive inactive or historical data securely within the Dataverse environment. Instead of deleting old records or keeping them in costly active storage, LTR shifts them to a cold storage tier for read-only access.

This ensures:

  • Regulatory compliance.

  • Lower storage costs (thanks to compression).

  • Continued data availability for reporting and analysis.

✨ Key Features of Dataverse LTR

✅ Active vs. Inactive Data
Records are classified as active or inactive. Inactive records can be archived without affecting active datasets.

✅ Cost Optimization
Compression reduces archived data size by 50–80%, minimizing storage expenses.

✅ Comprehensive Archiving
When a parent record is archived, all related child records are included automatically.

✅ Safety First
If data transfer fails, LTR rolls back changes to prevent partial archiving or data loss.

✅ No Extra Licensing
LTR is included in Dataverse but requires admin permissions to configure and manage.

⚙️ How Does It Work?

  1. Define Retention Policies

    • Create views (e.g., cases before a specific date) to target records for archiving.

  2. Apply Policies

    • Policies specify parent tables and associated child tables, including lookup relationships.

  3. Schedule & Run

    • Policies can run at defined frequencies. Processing takes ~72–96 hours per batch.

  4. Monitor Statuses

    • Each job moves through stages like scheduled, in-progress, pending reconciliation, completed, or failed.

📌 Best Practices

  • Always Verify Before Archiving
    Run queries to validate selected records and avoid accidental data removal.

  • Use Model-Driven Apps
    Build admin tools to manage and monitor LTR policies efficiently.

  • Educate Stakeholders
    Help clients understand compliance timelines and storage cost implications.

  • Handle Errors Proactively
    Check retention failure details in logs and use Fabric queries to troubleshoot.

⚠️ Limitations to Note

  • Only 5 concurrent users and 100 daily queries per environment.

  • Advanced Find lacks support for joins and personal views.

  • Power BI connectivity has restrictions for archived data.

  • Deletion of AI data from LTR requires SDK—not supported in the UI.

🏁 Why It Matters

With Dataverse LTR, organizations:
📉 Reduce costs by avoiding bloated active storage.
🛡 Stay compliant with industry data retention regulations.
🔍 Maintain visibility into archived data for business insights.

Once records move to LTR, they’re read-only and no longer counted in active storage usage.

✅ Takeaway

Dataverse Long-Term Retention is a powerful feature for Dynamics 365 CE admins aiming to balance performance, compliance, and costs. By archiving intelligently, businesses free up primary storage while keeping historical data accessible and secure.


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