Documents · Daily operations · 7 min read

Review and approve disposals

Find files past their retention, propose their disposal and have a different person approve it.

Before you begin

• Retention and disposal must be switched on (Administration > Applications > Documents > Features). If it is off, the Disposal review, Retention register and Retention policies menus are hidden.
• You need dms.dispose. Two different people are always needed: the proposer and the reviewer.
• The file's type must have a retention policy. A file with no policy is never eligible: 'This file is kept until its type has a retention policy; it is not yet eligible.'

How the eligible date is worked out

The date is the filing date or the document's expiry, plus the policy's years. It appears as Eligible on the document's Retention card. The date is worked out when you look at it, so changing a policy changes it.

If the end date falls on 29 February in a year without one, it moves to 28 February.

Propose a disposal

1. Open Documents > Operations > Disposal review. The lower table Past their retention lists library files whose date has passed and that are not held.
2. Open the file and choose More > Propose disposal.
3. Enter a Reason (up to 500 characters).
4. Click Confirm.

The message is 'Disposal proposed. Somebody else must review it.'. A second proposal on the same file returns the open one. A file not yet eligible is refused: 'This file is kept until 2031-10-02; it is not yet eligible.'

Review a proposal

1. A different person with dms.dispose opens Documents > Operations > Disposal review.
2. For the proposal, click Approve and dispose and confirm the browser prompt, or Reject.

The proposer sees 'Awaiting another reviewer' instead of buttons. If they try through another route: 'Somebody other than the person who proposed it must review a disposal.'

What happens next

• Approve and dispose. The file's content is deleted from storage. The record stays as a tombstone with its name, checksum and version list, and appears in the Retention register under 'Disposed - tombstones'. Downloads are refused: 'This file's content has been disposed of; only its record remains.' If another file shares identical content, that file still opens, because the stored bytes are kept while anything points at them.
• Reject. The file is unchanged and a new proposal may be made later.

Disposal cannot be undone.

Good to know

• A disposed file cannot be edited, given new versions, archived or proposed again.
• If someone else decided the proposal first, you get 'This record changed. Reload it before saving.'
• Retention periods are starting points, not legal advice. Confirm each with counsel before relying on it.