Compliance with legal and regulatory requirements regarding data retention is a critical responsibility for organizations across various industries. OWLdocs, within the OWL platform, offers robust capabilities to assist organizations in setting and automating data retention policies effectively. This functionality not only ensures adherence to legal obligations but also optimizes data storage practices, leading to enhanced operational efficiency and reduced compliance risks.
Steps to access Retention Policies:
1. Click Administration.
2. Click Data Access-Classification & Retention Policies-Compliance within the OWL Admin menu.
3. Click Retention Polices.
4. This will open the Retention Polices page.
5. The retention policy page has two flags on the screen.
• Enable Retention Policy:
This flag is used to enable the retention policy under the Organization. When this flag is enabled, all the record type compliance sections will show Retention Policy fields with the policies created for the respective record type.
• Make the Retention Policy Field Mandatory:
Making the Retention Policy Field Mandatory flag enabled will make these policy fields mandatory during the record creation and updates.
6. The Retention Policy page in OWL includes a critical field called Compliance Precedence, which determines how conflicting compliance rules are resolved.
When Conflicts Occur: If a record is subject to both Retention Policy compliance and 28 CFR Part 23 compliance. Then the OWL system cannot automatically determine which rule to apply for archiving or deletion.
Admin Decision Required to resolve this, organization administrators must set a precedence flag indicating which compliance takes priority. Once defined, OWL will apply the selected compliance rule consistently across affected records. This ensures clarity, consistency, and regulatory alignment in record lifecycle management.
7. Click on the edit button of the precedence field. This will open a pop-up to set the compliance precedence between the Retention policy and 28CFR Part 23. Select one of them and click on the button. It can be edited later by the same process.
Create Retention Policy
Steps to create a retention policy:
1. Click Administration.
2. Click Data Access-Classification & Retention Policies-Compliance within the OWL Admin menu.
3. Click Retention Polices.
4. This will open the Retention Polices page.
5. Click the Add button present on the top right corner of the page.
6. This will open a new entry under the Retention Polices table.
7. Provide the policy code, retention policy name, and classification information. These are required fields.
8. Select the record type for which the policy is being created.
9. Choose the archive and delete durations in years and enable the corresponding flags.
10. Add a policy description if needed.
11. Once all required information is entered, a green tick mark will appear in the action menu. Click it to save the retention policy.
12. Ensure that both the policy code and policy name are unique; the system will validate and prevent duplicates.
13. Now the policy will be added to the retention policy table and will be accessible from the create and update records compliance page.
Edit and Delete Retention Policy
Steps to Edit a retention policy:
1. Click Administration.
2. Click Data Access-Classification & Retention Policies-Compliance within the OWL Admin menu.
3. Click Retention Polices.
4. This will open the Retention Polices page.
5. Click the action menu of any policy that you want to update.
6. From the action menu option, select the Edit option.
7. The respective policy will open in an editable view as shown below.
8. All fields of the retention policy can be edited. Once changes are done, click on the save button to save the changes.
9. You can delete any retention policy that is not in use by clicking on the Delete option from the action menu.
10. A pop-up will open to reconfirm the deletion. Once confirmed, the policy will be deleted.
Records without Retention Policies
When the Retention policy feature is enabled in OWL, administrators gain the ability to monitor and manage records that were created without an assigned Retention Policy. This ensures compliance and proper data governance across the organization.
Steps to view records without retention policies:
1. Click Administration.
2. Click Data Access-Classification & Retention Policies-Compliance within the OWL Admin menu.
3. Click Retention Polices.
4. This will open the Retention Polices page.
5. On the retention policy page, we have the section name number of records without retention policies.
6. The system displays a count of records without assigned retention policies, organized by record type (e.g., Cases, Subjects, Forms).
7. Clicking on any of these counts opens a pop-up window specific to that record type, showing the list of records currently missing retention policy assignments.
8. Click Edit from the action menu. This opens the record with editable compliance fields.
9. Select the appropriate retention policy and update the record.
10. Once updated, the record will be removed from the list, and the count of records without a retention policy will decrease accordingly.
11. If the retention policy is marked as mandatory, a red flag will appear in the column. If it's optional, a yellow flag will be shown instead.
View Records with Retention Policies
View Records with Retention Policies is a feature inside OWL to help administrators go through the records that have the policies and review them. This ensures compliance and proper data governance across the organization.
Steps to view the records with retention policies:
1. Click Administration.
2. Click Data Access-Classification & Retention Policies-Compliance within the OWL Admin menu.
3. Click Retention Polices.
4. This will open the Retention Polices page.
5. Click on the View All Records button.
6. A pop-up window will appear with all record types separated by tabs. Each tab has the specific record type records with having Retention Policy.
7. From this pop-up, administrators can review the records by using the option View Record Dossier. This will open the dossier view, where you can see all the record details along with the associated records.
8. Using the option Launch Data Visualization, you can launch the data query searches and review the search results.
9. The Edit Status option can be used to update the record status as required.
10. There are filters available for each record type tab, and they can be filters based on the available filters and retention policies.
11. If you wanted to access the records directly based on both record type and policy, then you can access those records by clicking on the Number of Records showing for each policy.
12. Clicking on it will open a pop-up window like View All records, but here you will see all the records coming from a particular policy and record type.
13. As shown in the screenshot below, all 5 forms are coming from a single policy associated with each form.
Related to