When you protect a phase, you cannot modify or delete the documents or records that fall under that phase in a retention policy, but you can transfer or accession them.
You can accession items in a protected phase, meaning that you transfer the physical custody of an item to a new owner, such as an archival institution. By default, phases are unprotected. When a phase is unprotected, you have the ability to modify item keys or custom properties for items that fall under that phase.
If the first phase of a policy is protected, all items under the policy are automatically protected even if those items do not meet the conditions for any of the paths in that policy.
For example, the Admissions department wants to retain a student's transcript for thirty years after the end of the calendar year in which the student graduates. After fifteen years, because the need to access a student's transcript diminishes, a transfer to offline storage can occur. The manager creates an advanced policy that contains three phases.
The first phase of the policy is set to begin on the student's graduation date, but remains unprotected until the second phase. The second phase begins at the end of the calendar year of the year the student graduates. When the transcript enters the second phase, it is protected and cannot be modified. After fifteen years from the start date of the second phase, the transcript is transferred to offline storage. The third phase retains the transcript for an additional fifteen years. The disposition action for this last phase is destruction. To complete this policy, the manager assigns the document type, “Transcript,” to the policy.