Document Retention

Signority’s document retention feature lets you apply your organization’s data retention policies to all your eSign documents. On Enterprise plans, if you are an admin, you can edit your team’s document retention policy from under Branding. As an individual user, if your admin has allowed users to create their own retention policies, then under My Account -> Profile Settings -> Document Retention. There are three types of document retention policies you can define.

1. Retain only
2. Retain and purge
3. Purge only

Retention period

This is the number of days for which a finalized document should be retained, or the number of days before a finalized document should be purged. In the screenshot above, the retention period 365 days, meaning that all finalized documents will be retained or purged 365 days after the day the document is finalized.

Retain only

This option disables documents from being deleted from Signority for the number of days defined under Retention period. This retention policy ensures that Signority keeps all signed documents in your Signority accounts for a period of time.

Retain and purge

This option keeps users from deleting finalized documents from Signority for the number of days defined under Retention period. In our example, that period of time is 365 days. So 365 days after a document is finalized, Signority will move the finalized document to the Purge queue. 14 days after a document enters the Purge queue, Signority permanently deletes the document. During this 14 day period, you can download the document and/or save a copy if needed.

Purge only

Under this option, a finalized document is deleted after the number of days defined under Retention period. For example, if the retention period defined is 365 days, then 365 days after a document is finalized, the document will be moved to the Purge queue. 14 days after the document enters the Purge queue, Signority permanently deletes the document. Note that before the document enters the Purge queue, the user can still delete the document if needed.

Purge Queue

The Purge queue contains a list of finalized documents that are to be purged by the system. Finalized documents get moved to the Purge folder under the Retain and purge and Purge only retention policy, if they have been in the Completed status for longer than the defined retention period. Once moved to the Purge folder, Signority will automatically permanently delete the document after 14 days.

Saving documents to the cloud

If you want a copy of all signed documents saved to your own cloud storage platform, the “Save finalized documents to the cloud before purging” option lets you do that. This ensures that Signority uploads a copy of all signed documents to a cloud storage platform of your choice. Before turning on this option, you must first set up integration with a storage solution. You can do this by going to My Account -> Integration.

Lock document retention settings

Leaving the “Enable user to set document retention” checkbox unchecked removes access to document retention settings for individual users. If this option is on, then users can go to My Account -> Profile Settings -> Document Retention to set up a custom retention policy.

Email Notifications

Seven days and three days before Signority deletes a document permanently, you will receive an email notifying you that Signority will purge the document. Before Signority purges a document, you have the option of downloading the document, or disabling the retention policy if needed.

Important notes

Increasing the number of days in the retention policy

If you increase the number of days in the retention policy, any documents that are in the Purge queue will have their deletion date extended. If the increase is greater than the number of days that a document has been in the Purge queue, then Signority will remove the document from the Purge queue, and update its expiry date. For example, suppose. today is November 1, 2021. There is currently a document that has been in the Purge queue for four days, meaning that in 10 days, on November 10, 2021, the document will be deleted permanently. If you increase the retention period by 16 days, the document will be removed from the Purge queue. It will be moved back to the Purge queue in 12 days on November 12, 2021. Signority will delete the document permanently 14 days after this, on November 26, 2021.

Decreasing the number of days in the retention policy

If a user shortens the retention period by X number of days, then any signed documents not yet in the Purge queue will have their expiry date shortened by the same X number of days. If the updated expiry date for a finalized document has already passed, the document will be placed in the Purge queue, where Signority will permanently delete them after 14 days. However, for documents that are already in the Purge queue, shortening the retention period does not change how much longer a document will stay in the Purge queue before being permanently deleted.

Turning off the retention policy

If you turn off the retention policy for your account or team, then all documents in the Purge queue will be removed from the Purge queue, and all signed documents will be displayed and accessible as usual. All documents will continue to remain in your Signority account until explicitly deleted.

For any feature requests or assistance, please contact us at https://www.signority.com/contact-us/.