Content Lifecycle Policies

When you need to specify document retention, deletion, and archival settings, Content Lifecycles in Secure & Govern can help you achieve this. Continue to find more information about the different policies, how to create them, and how to make changes.

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Create a Policy

Create Project-Based Policy

Edit, Delete, or Lock a Policy

Policy Types

Retention (Only Available for Egnyte Sources)

Retention policies let Administrators retain specific files automatically based on when the file was created (noted as Modified Time in Collaborate) or when it was last accessed. The policies cover files based on matches to classification policies or folder locations. Files covered by multiple retention policies are retained according to the policy with the most extended retention period.

Do nothing - leave the files in place.

Move file versions to Trash - moves the current file and all versions to Trash. This means that the files will be in Trash with no retention defined so that they will be deleted per the Trash Purge settings in the Collaborate settings.

Move files to archive domain - will copy the current file and all versions to the specified archive domain. Local versions will be moved to Trash.

Archival

Archiving policies allow Administrators to archive specific files automatically based on when each version of the file was created (noted as Modified Time in Collaborate) or when it was last accessed. The policies cover files based on matches to classification policies or folder locations. Files covered by multiple archiving policies are archived according to the policy with the shortest archiving period.

Deletion

Deletion policies let Administrators delete specific files automatically based on when the file was created (noted as Modified Time in Collaborate) or when it was last accessed. The policies cover files based on matches to classification policies or folder locations. Files covered by multiple deletion policies are deleted with the shortest deletion period according to the policy.

Create a Policy

Navigate to Settings, and select Content Lifecycle.

In the Content Lifecycle section, click Add Policy and select the policy type you want to create.

You will be walked through several configuration steps when creating a policy.

Step 1:

Create a name and description for the policy. Specify if the policy will apply to Files or Projects.  If you select files, for Archival or Deletion policies, you will additionally need to select whether you want to act on files individually as they meet the criteria or wait and act on all the files in a folder once all files in that folder meet the criteria

Step 2:

Select which Content Sources you want the policy to apply to. If Projects was selected in the previous step, only Egnyte sources will be available

 

Step 3:

Specify if the policy should match any or all of the criteria that you define.

Specify the criteria you wish the policy to match on. If you wish to choose what is contained in selected folders in the previous step, click the Configure icon and choose all folder locations with files that should be archived. When you select a folder, all sub-folders are included by default. Click Save when done. If you wish to match selected classification policies, click the Configure icon and choose which classification policies files that are affected must match. You can choose from built-in or custom policies. Classification policies are only available on Platform Enterprise.

Specify the time period when action should be taken on the files. If selecting Last Accessed as time criteria, you will also be asked to specify if that date should fall back to the version creation date or file upload date if no access events have occurred for that file. 

Specify if you want to leave a stub file in the place of the file that is archived or deleted. Stub files will retain the name of the original file with a .txt extension and will include information about when the file was moved.

If stub files are configured, you will be presented with additional options:

• Custom the stub file with your own text. Custom text can be up to 1000 characters long and include basic text characters (letters, numbers, limited special characters)
• Automatically delete the stub file after a certain period of time. You can choose never (stub files will not be deleted), one of the preset values or your own custom value.
• Whether or not the policy should prevent archival of any files that have been identified as probable ransomware.

Step 4:

For archival policies only, specify the location where the files should be archived to.

When creating an archival policy where the source and destination are the same domain, the system will prevent the Destination location from being archived. For example, a user creates an archive policy to archive anything in "/Shared" older than two years and sets the destination for "/Shared/Archive_Target" in the same domain. In this case, the system will prevent archiving the files in "/Shared/Archive_Target" so it doesn't get stuck in an infinite archiving loop.

Step 5:

After entering all of the details about the policy, you will be presented a summary of your configuration to review before saving or publishing the policy. From here, you can either save your policy as a draft or publish immediately.

Create Project Based Policy (Only Available for Egnyte Sources)

You can now create lifecycle policies for files residing within your project folders. Policies are based on the status of your project and the end date of the project. 

Follow the steps below to create a project folder:

In the Collaborate view, navigate to the folder location you wish to be treated as a Project folder.

Click on the More option on the top navigation and select Mark as Project.

Select the status of your project from the drop-down based on your project's actual status. Also, enter the start and the end date of your project.

Follow the steps below to create a project-based policy:

Navigate to Settings, select Content Lifecycle. In the Content Lifecycle Policies section, click Add Policy and select the policy type you would like to create. For example, click on Archiving to create a Project-based Archiving policy.

Step 1:

Enter a Policy Name, Description and choose the option to apply the policy on Projects.

Step 2:

Select which Content Sources you want the policy to apply to. If Projects was selected in the previous step, only Egnyte sources will be available.

Step 3:

Specify if the policy should match any or all of the criteria that you define.

Specify the criteria you wish the policy to match on. To choose which Project folders the policy should apply to, click the Configure icon and choose all folder locations with files that should be archived. When you select a folder, all sub-folders are included by default. Click Save when done. If you wish to match selected classification policies, click the Configure icon and choose which classification policies files that are affected must match. You can choose from built-in or custom policies. Classification policies are only available on Platform Enterprise.

Choose the time period when action should be taken on the files within projects. The file action period is based on the completion date of each project.

Specify if you want to leave a stub file in the place of the file that is archived or deleted. Stub files will retain the name of the original file with a .txt extension and will include information about when the file was moved. If stub files are configured, you will be presented the option to automatically delete the stub file after a certain period of time. You can choose never (stub files will not be deleted), one of the preset values or your own custom value.

For the lifecycle policy action to be taken, the status of the Project should be done. You can change the status of the project by navigating to Project Settings.

Step 4:

For archival policies only, specify the location where the files should be archived to.

When creating an archival policy where the source and destination are the same domain, the system will prevent the Destination location from being archived. For example, a user creates an archive policy to archive anything in "/Shared" older than two years and sets the destination for "/Shared/Archive_Target" in the same domain. In this case, the system will prevent archiving the files in "/Shared/Archive_Target" so it doesn't get stuck in an infinite archiving loop.

Step 5:

After entering all of the details about the policy, you will be presented a summary of your configuration to review before saving or publishing the policy. From here, you can either save your policy as a draft or publish immediately

Edit, Delete, or Lock a Policy

Once you've created an archiving, deletion, or retention policy, you can easily make changes to the policy.

Navigate to Settings, select Content Lifecycle. In the Content Lifecycle Policies section, click the three dots next to the policy you'd like to change and select the appropriate option from the drop-down.
Edit policy: Make changes to an existing policy, like which folders or classification policies the files must match.
Delete policy: When a policy is deleted, those files will no longer be subject to the policy.
Lock policy: This option is only available for retention policies. If a retention policy is locked, it cannot be edited or deleted by anyone. The only way to unlock it is to have a Secure & Govern Admin contact Egnyte Support. Any built-in or custom policies leveraged by the policy will also be locked and cannot be edited, disabled, or deleted.


If you've edited the policy, click Publish to apply any changes.

Learn more about Content Lifecycle Policies by watching a Quick Tip on Egnyte University: Adding Content Lifecycle Policies.