What the feature actually archives
Microsoft’s release plan describes a new Project actuals staging scenario in the Archive with Dataverse long term retention workspace. It covers processed cost actuals and related cost-transaction relationship records where those exist. Cost actuals without related unbilled-sales connections are also supported. The feature is off by default.
The eligibility boundary matters. Microsoft’s preview documentation excludes sales transactions, unprocessed records, and cost records associated with integration journal lines that have not been posted. It explains that standard business logic no longer uses these cost staging records after integration journals are created and posted. This is therefore completed integration data—not permission to sweep unfinished financial work into storage.
September preview, March 2027 target
The roadmap metadata for item 573238 lists the capability as In development, with September 2026 as the preview date and March 2027 as the general-availability target. It identifies the platform as Web and the cloud instance as Worldwide Standard Multi-Tenant.
Those dates need careful interpretation. Microsoft’s older release-plan page also lists September 2026 for public preview, but leaves general availability blank. That page was archived in October 2026 and explicitly warns that it may no longer reflect current plans. The March 2027 entry should therefore be treated as a roadmap projection, not a guaranteed delivery date; Microsoft’s roadmap states that its dates are estimates and subject to change.
The date filter administrators should not overlook
The documented workflow starts at System administration > Archive with Dataverse long term retention. Administrators select Project actuals staging, create a retention job, choose Cost, and specify dates and legal entities. Each selected legal entity produces a separate job. Crucially, eligibility uses the record’s modified date and time.
The practical implication: do not assume that selecting an old accounting period selects every transaction belonging to that period. A historical record modified later could fall outside the chosen window. That is an inference from Microsoft’s documented filter behavior—and a good reason to validate a small archive scope before scheduling a larger run.
Prepare the service, then verify completion
Microsoft’s broader archive setup guidance requires a Managed Environment and the Dynamics 365 Archive with Dataverse long term retention app. It also advises checking archive tables for custom fields before scheduling jobs, so extensions are included correctly rather than overlooked.
Scheduling has another important wrinkle: an allotted daily window limits the move-to-history stage, not all asynchronous Dataverse retention processing. Only one archive job across supported scenarios runs at a time, so other archive workloads can delay the start.
For validation, Microsoft distinguishes an individual stage finishing from the entire job reaching Complete. Administrators can inspect progress and detailed logs; the Project Operations scenario also provides View history data to inspect records moved into its history table.
The useful takeaway is precision: this capability offers a supported way to manage accumulated cost staging data while preserving historical access. Its value depends on selecting eligible records, understanding the modified-date filter, and confirming the whole archive process—not merely its first stage—has finished.