Allow workspace-level or capacity-level configuration of retention periods in Microsoft Fabric

[vvargasv]

Description

Current behavior

In Microsoft Fabric, workspace retention and recovery settings are configured at the tenant level through the Fabric Admin Portal.

• The retention period for deleted collaborative workspaces can be configured between 7 to 90 days.
• This configuration applies uniformly across all workspaces in the organization.
• There is currently no supported capability to define different retention policies per workspace or per capacity (based on the available documentation and admin settings scope).

Additionally:

• Personal workspaces (“My workspace”) have a fixed 30-day retention period that cannot be modified.

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Problem statement

This tenant-wide configuration introduces limitations for organizations with diverse governance, compliance, and operational requirements.

Examples:

• Some workspaces (e.g., production or regulated environments) require longer retention periods for compliance or auditing.
• Other workspaces (e.g., dev/test environments) may require shorter retention periods to optimize cost and lifecycle management.
• Large enterprises operating multiple business units or environments cannot apply differentiated policies aligned with their governance models.

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Impact

• Lack of flexibility in governance and compliance enforcement
• Increased operational overhead (manual processes or workaround strategies)
• Difficulty aligning Fabric retention behavior with enterprise data lifecycle policies
• Potential risk of either:
  • Data being deleted too soon, or
  • Data being retained longer than necessary

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Suggested improvement

Provide the ability to configure retention policies at a more granular level, such as:

• Workspace-level retention configuration
• Capacity-level retention configuration
• Priority-based or tag-based retention policies (e.g., Prod vs Dev)

This would enable:

• More flexible governance models
• Better alignment with enterprise compliance requirements
• Improved lifecycle management of Fabric assets