Document Actions
2.
Retention Schedules
Up one level
Retention Schedules are set site-wide by users who have either the Manager or Site Manager role for the site. To set the schedules, users should navigate to Site Setup, OpenEngagement DMS configuration, and then to the Retention Schedules tab.
Retention Schedules specify how long documents will remain in the archived state before they are deleted. Generally this is set to a value between 1 and 7 years. The deleting of documents at the end of their retention period is done once per day, overnight. That is, each night OpenEngagement will check if there are any documents which have reached the end of their retention period and will delete these.
It is possible to set a different schedule for each Section type. Retention applies only to Documents, which always appear within Sections. Note though, retention applies to all Document types: Engagement, File, Page, Image and Link. Where firms do not wish to subject Documents to retention schedules, they should either place these in a Section with no retention schedule or should ensure the Documents do not enter the Archived state, which may require also ensuring they do not enter the Completed state.
Most firms have a variety of document types with different retention schedules. To keep their retention system simple, it is recommended that the different document types be kept in different Sections. For example, for each Entity, the Documents with a one year retention period should be placed in one Section and those with a two year retention period in another Section and so on.
There is one retention schedule for each Section listed in the Settings tab, plus one for other sections. That is, if the Settings tab lists, for example three Sections to be automatically created in each Entity: Assurance, Tax, and General, then it will be possible to set four retention schedules: for Assurance, Tax, General, and Other Sections. Whenever the collection of Sections in the Settings tab is updated, the Retention Schedules tab will also be updated to match.
Note, with Hosted Solutions, backups are kept by CaseWare International for seven days, and are then scrubbed. This means, if a firm sets a retention schedule to, for example, five years, the documents will actually be kept in a recoverable form for five years and seven days. With Local Solutions, this is determined by the backup policy of the firm.