Retention
Document retention periods
Retention dates come from rules your managers define. They are applied when a document arrives or changes, rules only ever extend them, and while one runs nobody can delete the document — not even a manager. When it ends, nothing disappears on its own: the document is listed for a person to decide.
Rules you define
A rule sets a keep-until date from the creation date, the last modification or a date in the document's own fields — invoices ten years from their issue date, for example. When several rules match, the longest period applies. Documents already in the archive come under a new rule when a manager re-applies the rules.
Nobody deletes early
A document under retention cannot be deleted by anyone, managers included, and neither can a folder that holds one.
A person decides at the end
When a term ends, nothing is deleted automatically. The document appears under Due for disposal and in the Expired documents report, which filters by type, rule and end date and explains where each date came from.
Dates set by hand are recorded
A manager can set a new date for every result of a search. Each date set by hand is recorded in the audit trail, against their name.
Read from the text, decided by a person
A period a document states about itself — “Retention period: 10 years”, “Termen de păstrare: 10 ani” — is proposed for review with its quotation. It never sets a retention date on its own.
Retention wins over erasure
A request to erase someone's data never deletes a document under retention: its personal data is anonymised and the original sealed until the term ends.
What retention does not do
- It brings no statutory schedule. The periods are the ones your organisation sets; there is no built-in legal schedule or nomenclator.
- It does not freeze content. Retention blocks deletion. Metadata and new versions can still change.
- It does not dispose of documents. There is no disposal workflow, second approval or destruction record: a person deletes what has expired.
- It does not announce a term's end. Expired documents are listed, not notified; deadline notifications follow dates in a document's own fields.
- It does not audit the rules themselves. Dates set by hand are recorded; creating or changing a retention rule is not.
See Archystream with your own documents
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