Content Lifecycle Policies

When there is a need to specify document retention, deletion, and archival settings, Content Lifecycles in Secure & Govern can help achieve this. Continue reading 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 allow administrators to automatically retain specific files based on their creation time (referred to as Modified Time in Collaborate) or last access time. These policies apply to files that match classification policies or are located in specific folders. If a file is covered by multiple retention policies, it will be retained according to the policy with the longest retention period.

Types of Actions after Retention Expires:

• 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 automatically archive specific files based on their creation time (referred to as Modified Time in Collaborate) or last access time. These policies apply to files that match classification policies or are located in specific folders. If a file is covered by multiple archiving policies, it will be archived according to the policy with the shortest archiving period.

Deletion

Deletion policies allow administrators to automatically delete specific files based on their creation time (referred to as Modified Time in Collaborate) or last access time. These policies apply to files that match classification policies or are located in specific folders. If a file is covered by multiple deletion policies, it will be deleted according to the policy with the shortest deletion period.

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.
  
  

Creating a policy will consist of the following configuration steps. 

Step 1:

When creating a name and description for the policy, specify whether the policy will be applied to Files or Projects. If Files Individually is chosen for Archival or Deletion policies, files can be handled individually as they meet the criteria or files in a folder can be handled all together when they meet the criteria. If Files of a folder together is selected, the user has the option whether to include only the files directly in the folder or to include all files in all subfolders.

Step 2:

Select which Content Sources the policy needs to be applied to. Note that only Egnyte sources will be available if Projects was selected.

Step 3:

1. Specify if the policy should match on ANY or ALL of the criteria that are specified.

   1. If ANY is selected, the policy will match if any specified criteria are met. For example, if user selects the single folder /Shared/Files and also the PCI-DSS classification policy, matches will be for both files in /Shared/Files and also files in other folders that match the PCI-DSS classification policy.

   2. If ALL is selected, the policy will match only if all of the specified criteria are met. For example, if user selects the single folder /Shared/Files and also the PCI-DSS classification policy, matches will only be for files in /Shared/Files matching the PCI-DSS classification policy.

2. Click the Configure icon against Select folders option to match with the criteria Contained in any of the selected folders. 
   
   
3. Choose all folder locations with files that should be archived. Selecting a folder includes all the subfolders by default. Click Save when done.
   
   
4. Click the Configure icon against Select classification policies to match with selected classification policies.
   
   
5. Choose the classification policies for the files that are affected shall match with. The user can choose from built-in or custom policies. Classification policies are only available on Platform Enterprise.
   
   
6. Specify the time period when action should be taken on the files. If selecting Last Accessed as time criteria, the user 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. 
7. Specify whether 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.
8. If stub files are configured, there will be additional options showing up:
   
   1. Custom the stub file with personalized text. Custom text can be up to 1000 characters long and include basic text characters (letters, numbers, limited special characters)
   2. Automatically delete the stub file after a certain period of time. The user can choose never (stub files will not be deleted), one of the preset values or own custom value.
      
   3. Whether or not the policy should prevent archival of any files that have been identified as probable ransomware.
   
   

Step 4:

1. For archival policies only, specify the location where the files should be archived to.
2. 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 an infinite archiving loop does not occur.

Step 5:

After entering all of the details about the policy, a summary of the configuration will be presented for review before saving or publishing the policy. From here, the policy can be saved as a draft or can be published immediately.

After creating a policy, each policy has counts and details of the number of files affected by the policy.

For Draft Archival and Deletion policies, the value you see in Matched Files indicates the number of files under management for that policy, not the number of files affected by the policy once implemented.  For Draft, Archival, and Deletion policies, the Impact in the Next 30 Days value is the number of files that will be affected as soon as the policy is published.

For Active Archival and Deletion policies, the Impact in the Next 30 Days value is the number of files that will be affected in the near term.

For Retention policies, the value for Governed Files indicates the number of files under management for that policy, not the number of files under retention. The Retained Files value is the number of files that currently are under retention (or will be when the policy is published) and the post retention impact indicates if any files will be deleted or archived after retention end, based on the policy configuration.

For more details about when the policy will actually take action on the files, view and export the list of files subject to the policy by clicking on the number values listed.

Create Project Based Policy (Only Available for Egnyte Sources)

Lifecycle policies can be created for files located within the project folders or document rooms. These policies are determined by the project's status and its end date.

Follow the steps below to create a project folder:

• In the Collaborate view, navigate to the folder location that can be selected as a Project or Document room folder.
• Click on the More option on the top navigation.
• Select Mark as Project or Document Room.
  
  
• 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.
    

Creating a policy will consist of the following configuration steps. 
Step 1:

Enter a Policy Name, Description and choose the option to apply the policy on Projects or Document Rooms

Step 2:

Select which Content Sources the policy needs to be applied to. Note that only Egnyte sources will be available if Projects was selected.

Step 3:

1. Specify if the policy should match on ANY or ALL of the criteria that are specified.

   1. If ANY is selected, the policy will match if any specified criteria are met. For example, if user selects the single folder /Shared/Files and also the PCI-DSS classification policy, matches will be for both files in /Shared/Files and also files in other folders that match the PCI-DSS classification policy.

   2. If ALL is selected, the policy will match only if all of the specified criteria are met. For example, if user selects the single folder /Shared/Files and also the PCI-DSS classification policy, matches will only be for files in /Shared/Files matching the PCI-DSS classification policy.

2. Click the Configure icon against Select folders option to match with the criteria Contained in any of the selected folders. 
   
   
3. Choose all folder locations with files that should be archived. Selecting a folder includes all the subfolders by default. Click Save when done.
   
   
4. Click the Configure icon against Select classification policies to match with selected classification policies.
   
   
5. Choose the classification policies for the files that are affected shall match with. The user can choose from built-in or custom policies. Classification policies are only available on Platform Enterprise.
   
   
6. 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.
   
7. Specify 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, an option will appear to automatically delete the stub file after a certain period of time.
8. The available Options can be never (stub files will not be deleted) or a 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:

1. For archival policies only, specify the location where the files should be archived.
2. 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 an infinite archiving loop does not occur.

Step 5:

After entering all of the details about the policy, a summary of configuration will show up to review before saving or publishing the policy. From here, the user can either save the 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 a policy is edited, click Publish to apply any changes.
  

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