How Policies Differ

Indefinite

• Admin Hold

• Legal Hold

• Retention

• Trash Retention

A policy never expires.

For example, if you are required to retain accounting records for the entire length of your company's existence, you can never delete your accounting records

Fixed Date

• Legal Hold

• Archival

• Retention

• Trash Retention

The date a policy expires with no exceptions.

This means you are locked out of the policy at 11:59:59 PM on that calendar date.

Policy expiration is end of day (midnight), UTC adjusted.

The ACTUAL expire time is the time of the next Cron run. 

• If the next Cron run isn't for another 24 hours, the policy will expire 24 hours later at midnight

• If you want the policy to expire exactly at midnight, you can always force a Cron run

Time Period - not Renewed on Access

• Archival

• Retention

• Trash Retention

A set number of days or years that is used to calculate when the policy expires based on the creation date. 

For example, if a file is created on March 1, 2019 and you select 30 days, the policy on that file will expire on April 1, 2019.

You can select from:

• 30 days

• 60 days

• 90 days

• 1 year

• 2 years

• Custom 

Time Period - Renewed on Access

• Archive

• Retention

• Trash Retention

A set number of days or years that is used to calculate when the policy expires based on the last access date. 

For example, if on March 2, 2019, for an X-ray, you set expiry to:

• Time Period = 60 days

• Renew on Access = selected

Then the policy will expire on May 2, 2019 UNLESS: 

• If a doctor previews the file before May 2, say on May 1, 2019

Then the 60-day time period will be reset to July 1, 2019. 

The ACTUAL date is reset by a user every time they access the file.

Admin Hold

An administrative hold is designed to help an administrator block access to files and folders so that they can determine what should happen next.

An Admin hold only blocks user access, it does not block other policies from expiring. However, if an Admin Hold is in place, any other policies will expire gracefully without completing any move or delete expiry options. 

• For Admin Holds, a policy expiration date cannot be set

• The policy can only be removed by an administrator

• Since the policy does not expire on a specific date, there are no automatic actions on expiration

For example:

1. An administrator looks at the Governance dashboard and sees that a Retention with Deletion policy is about to expire on files that have been kept for 3 years.

2. The Retention with Deletion policy will delete 200 files when it expires in 2 days.

3. However, the administrator notices that some of these files have been recently updated.

4. The Administrator puts an Admin Hold policy in place on the files in the Retention with Deletion policy that is about to expire.

5. The Administrator can now investigate the files without worrying about users updating them at the same time.

6. However, it takes the Administrator 3 days to identify which files should not be deleted and which can be deleted.

7. During this time, the Retention with Deletion policy expires, but because of the Admin Hold, no files are removed.

8. The Administrator removes the Admin Hold from the files.

9. The Administrator removes the files that don't need to be saved from FileCloud. 

10. A new Retention with No Deletion policy is created for the remaining files that need to be saved.

Legal Hold

A Legal Hold is designed to retain data, therefore, there is no deletion or move option available when the policy expires.

  Legal Holds cannot be reversed once applied unless they are set to expire after a fixed number of days

Retention

Retention policies are designed to keep digital content around for a specified amount of time.

When a retention policy expires, it can automatically:

• Allow users to access the files again and delete them if they want (No Action)

• Delete all the files that have this policy attached from the system, without retaining them in the Trash bin (Permanently Delete)

  Retention policies cannot be reversed once applied

Archival

An Archival policy type is designed to help you create a more cost effective systems for long term.

Therefore, you can create a policy to move and store old organizational content in the following ways:

• If you choose No Action, you will see an error that it is not supported and you will not be able to create the policy

• After the specified time period is reached, content gets moved to a specific folder or location (Archive)

This type of policy helps an administrator plan for the future by setting up a process to run automatically when the time comes.

For example: 

1. If phone records only have to be accessible in the system for 5 years, but stored for at least 10 years, then the Administrator doesn't have to just remember to move the current phone records in 5 years into storage.

2. The administrator can just create an Archival policy to move them automatically in 5 years.

This also allows a process to run independent of an employee's length of service.

For example: if the same employee is no longer an Administrator in 5 years, but the old records still need to be moved, they will be. 

Trash Retention 

The Trash Retention policy is designed to help you control if files in the Trash Bin can be permanently deleted from FileCloud.

• You can allow the policy to automatically and permanently delete all files in the Trash bin when the policy expires

• You can allow the policy to expire with no actions - thereby using this policy to control how long files and folders are retained in the trash before being completely removed

Admin Hold

1

• Outranks all other policies

• Is outranked by no other policy

• Prevents any update or delete of digital content for an indefinite period of time

• Admin Hold policies applied to folders can be removed

• Admin policies applied to files can be removed

 Create an Admin Hold policy

Legal Hold

2

• Outranks policies 3,4,5,6,7

• Is outranked by Admin Hold

• Freezes digital content to aid discovery or legal challenges

• During a legal hold, file modifications are not allowed

• Holds cannot be reversed once applied

 Create a Legal Hold policy

Retention - Indefinite

3

• Outranks policies 4,5,6,7

• Is outranked by Admin and Legal Holds

• Allows an organization to identify specific content that is required to be stored for a specific period of time before it can be disposed.

• During the retention period, the content cannot be deleted.

• Retention - Indefinite keeps the content indefinitely

• Retention policies cannot be reversed once applied

 Create a Retention policy

Archival

4

• Outranks policies 5,6,7

• Is outranked by Admin Hold

• Is outranked by Legal Hold

• Is outranked by Retention -Indefinite

• Moves and stores old organizational content, for example, to a more cost effective systems for long term

• No Deletion is allowed until a specific time period is reached

• After the specified time period is reached, content gets moved to a specific folder or location

 Create an Archival policy

Retention - No delete on expiry

5

• Outranks policies 6 and 7

• Is outranked by Admin Hold

• Is outranked by Legal Hold

• Is outranked by Retention - Indefinite

• Is outranked by Archival

• Allows an organization to identify specific content that is required to be stored for a specific period of time before it can be disposed.

• During the retention period, the content cannot be deleted.

• Retention - No delete on expiry doesn't delete the content upon policy expiration 

• Retention policies cannot be reversed once applied

 Create a Retention policy

Retention - Delete on expiry

6

• Outranks policy 7

• Is outranked by Admin Hold

• Is outranked by Legal Hold

• Is outranked by Retention - Indefinite

• Is outranked by Archival

• Is outranked by Retention - No delete on expiry

• Allows an organization to identify specific content that is required to be stored for a specific period of time before it can be accessed.

• During the retention period, the content cannot be deleted.

• Retention - Delete on expiry deletes the content upon policy expiration

• Retention policies cannot be reversed once applied

 Create a Retention policy

Trash Retention

7

• Outranks no other policies

• Is outranked by all other policies

• Controls if files can permanently be deleted completely from FileCloud

• Can be configured for automatic and permanent deletion of all files in the Trash bins or to expire with no actions

 Create a Trash Retention policy