Manage Data Retention

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe the impact of retention policies in Slack.
Identify who can adjust retention settings, and for what data.
Describe how to use data protection tools in Slack to meet specific compliance needs.

Message Retention

Message retention impacts messages sent by humans and bots in public channels, private channels, and direct messages. There are three levels of message retention settings.

Conversation—Messages in individual public channels, private channels, and direct messages.
Workspace—Messages in all channels and direct messages on a workspace.
Organization-wide–Messages across all workspaces in an Enterprise Grid organization.

Once a message retention system is set in place, all messages will be deleted after the specified period and cannot be recovered. When setting message retention policies, you will be able to choose from the following.

Message Retention Policy	Description
Keep everything, but don’t track revisions	This is the default retention setting for Slack. Messages will be kept for the lifetime of the workspace, but there will be no log of edits or deletions. This means if a member deletes a message, it will not show up in an export file.
Keep everything, including revisions	Messages will be kept for the lifetime of the workspace. If a member edits a message, the edits they made will still be visible in an export. If a member deletes a message, the deleted message can still be retrieved.
Delete messages and their revisions after a set period of time	All records of messages (including edits and deletions) will be completely deleted once they are beyond the defined retention period.

File Retention

File retention impacts posts, snippets, documents, and other files (photos, video content, and so on) uploaded into Slack.

File retention policies are set at the workspace level on every paid plan except the Enterprise Grid plan. On Enterprise Grid plans, it is not possible to configure workspace-specific retention settings. Any file retention policies will apply to all workspaces within an organization.

Once a file retention setting has been put in place, all posts, snippets, and uploaded files will be deleted after the specified date. It is important to note that once deleted, this data cannot be recovered.

All files are subject to retention settings, including pinned posts and files.

Files shared through third parties (Dropbox, Google Drive, and such) will be deleted from within Slack, but there will be no impact on the source file itself.

Manage Retention Settings

By default, only Organization Owners and Workspace Owners can edit retention settings for messages and files. However, they can choose to open the permission to edit message retention settings to all members.

If members are allowed to change their retention settings, they will be able to adjust how long messages are kept in private channels and direct messages they are part of. Personal retention settings can be shorter or longer than workspace or organization-level retention settings, and will override whatever broader message retention settings have been set.

Even if members are able to adjust their own message retention settings, this does not apply to files. Files will continue to be deleted in accordance with workspace or organization-wide retention policies.

Workspace and Organization Owners can also choose to adjust certain public channel retention settings to be shorter or longer than default settings as needed. As with individual settings, files will be subject to workspace or organization-level retention policies.

If all channels should follow the workspace or organization retention policies, you can disable the Allow Overrides option.

Still curious? Learn how to customize individual message retention settings and adjust file and message retention settings for workspaces on our Help Center.

Retention Considerations

Keep the following in mind when setting up your message and file retention policies.

If a retention period has been defined, a clean-up job is run every day to remove any data that has moved beyond it.
Retention settings will impact what can be exported through Slack itself but will not impact third party DLP/eDiscovery integrations. Data deleted in Slack but stored in an eDiscovery warehouse will still be available via your eDiscovery provider.
If a message is preserved by legal hold, any edits to a message will be saved, even if your retention policy doesn’t keep revisions.
If entire channels are deleted, these will not be retained anywhere and cannot be retrieved via export or 3rd party eDiscovery/DLP solution. To prevent this, a best practice is to encourage Owners and Admins to default to archiving channels rather than deleting them.
In an Enterprise Grid organization, multi-workspace channels will adhere to organization retention settings. Only Org Owners are allowed to override retention for multi-workspace channels.
In a Slack Connect channel, each partner in the channel will be able to set their own retention settings for each channel. This will only impact messages sent by members of that organization.

Stay Compliant

Slack can help regulated industries of all types meet their compliance needs. Since all of these won't apply to everyone, we've compiled some articles that address how to use Slack in specific compliance scenarios.

If your organization or industry isn’t represented above, don’t fret! Slack can be configured to help any number of organizations meet both external and internal compliance requirements.

Take a look below to see Slack security certifications and compliance features.

Slack Certification and Attestation

ISO/IEC 27001
ISO/IEC 27017
ISO/IEC 27018
SOC 2
SOC 3
CSA
FedRAMP Moderate

Slack Supports Customers’ Compliance With:

HIPAA
FINRA 17-a4 Configurable
GDPR
Data Residency

Data Residency

Data residency for Slack enables global teams to choose the region where certain types of data at rest are stored. Data residency is available on the Business+ and Enterprise Grid plans.

With data residency enabled, Slack stores the following in your data center region of choice.

Messages, posts, and snippets (including those posted by integrations or bots)
Files uploaded to Slack
Search indexing data

The following data may be stored outside the data residency location.

Workspace and channel membership lists
Membership counts for billing purposes
Anonymized customer logs for quality and reliability analysis
IDs and tokens generated by Slack on behalf of the customer

Slack data can be stored in the following locations.

Data residency Region	Data Backup Region
Frankfurt, Germany	Paris, France
Paris, France	Frankfurt, Germany
Tokyo, Japan	Osaka, Japan
Sydney, Australia	Sydney, Australia*
London, United Kingdom	London, United Kingdom*
Montreal, Canada	Montreal, Canada*

*Slack will replicate data in order to keep the data residency and data backup in the same region.

If a specific data residency location is not selected, data residency will default to residency within the United States.

Both GDPR and CCPA have stringent requirements for how companies can store and use customer data, and what data consumers can request to see. Slack meets these requirements on all plans (Free, Pro, Business+, and Enterprise Grid).

The Slack GDPR Commitment outlines how residents of the European Union can request and control their data in Slack.

Slack is also a service provider under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Want to Learn More?

If you’re ready to take your Slack data protection skills to the next level, check out the Protect your organization’s data badge on the Slack Certified site. Once you’re certified, you can show off your credentials to the broader community of professionals building on Slack.

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