Record Retention

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VisualVault allows you to define the retention period for groups of documents. It is a common practice to have 2, 5, 7, or 10 year retention periods due to various regulatory requirements. The two functionalities with document retention are Review and Expiration. Both types have their own function and setting for the default number of days that a document must age before triggering the function. After configuring the review and/or expiration settings, every new document uploaded into a folder will assume these rules and an independent timer will start for the document.

With the folder tree structure in the Document Library, Retention Rules can be inherited from parent folders. This means that you can configure a set of retention rules on a first level folder properties that can then be inherited by some or all of the sub-folders created under the parent folder. To configure inherited retention rules from the parent folder, check the "Inherit Retention Rules from Parent Folder" setting on the subfolder's properties page. If you want to customize retention rules, remove the check from the "Inherit Retention Rules from Parent Folder" setting and set the review and expiration days as required for the folder.

Document Review allows administrators to specify the default number of days from the time of creation until a document needs to be reviewed. This default number of days will be automatically populated into the Document ID Card by VisualVault during the upload process. The document review date can be modified by owners of the folder or on a document-by-document basis after upload. When a document has reached 10 days before its review date, an alert is sent to the owner(s) of the document or the Review Approval workflow is initiated if it is configured and enabled. Refer to Folder Workflows for more information.

Document Expiration allows administrators to specify the default number of days from the time of creation until a document expiration date. The default number of days will be automatically populated into the Document ID Card by VisualVault during the upload process. When setting the default number of expiration days administrators can also select an expiration action to be performed by the background service. Possible actions are None, Archive, and Delete. Archived documents are flagged as archived and can be viewed by any user. Deleted documents are flagged as deleted and can only be accessed by editors, owners, and administrators using the Recycle Bin (deleted documents can be purged from the system only by an administrator). An expiration workflow may also be configured. Refer to Folder Workflows for more information.

All deleted items are kept in a state where the actual document is still available. A VaultAccess member can see the list of deleted files, and select the actual files for purging from the database. A purged document is completely removed from the system given that the actual database record is deleted.

Folder Retention View

Record Retention Rules can be applied from a parent folder (top level or subfolder) to children subfolders. In order to do this a user must have VaultAccess or Owner rights to the folders where the change will be applied. If a user does not have sufficient rights at the parent folder, the change to the Retention Rules will not be applied. To change the retention rules to all subfolders, right click the parent folder in the Document Library, then select Retention Rules and Apply Record Retention Rules to All Subfolders.

Refer to the rules below on how this type of modification might effect the subfolders and documents in those subfolders, and for how retention rules and documents are handled in various situations.