Document Retention and Deletion

By default, documents are retained within AlphaTrust® e-Sign. There are several ways to control document deletion.

Completed Transactions

General File Deletion Options

• Transaction-Level: For each document, you may specify an absolute date for its files to be purged from the system. This is the Document's DeleteDate property. Once a Transaction is completed and the Document's DeleteDate has been passed, all files pertaining to that document will be deleted.
• Group-Level: If the Transaction-level DeleteDate is not set, the Group-level Document Retention setting—maintained through the Control Panel UI in the Groups section—is used. This is an integer value which gets used to compute a DeleteDate.
  • Server-Level: The following settings determine the Group-level Document Retention settings' minimum, maximum and default values:
    • MinimumDocumentRetentionDays: Sets the minimum number of days for Document Retention. Default value: 0.
    • MaximumDocumentRetentionDays: Sets the maximum number of days for Document Retention. Default value: "" (blank). If left blank, documents are kept indefinitely.
    • DefaultDocumentRetentionDays: Specifies the initial value for a Group's Document Retention Value in Days, used if the DeleteDate is not set at the Transaction level. Default value is not set.
    
    *Note: on-premise only. In SaaS environments, set to 0, "", null respectively*

Specific File Deletion Options
The system stores multiple document files for every document included within a Transaction. To conserve file space, you are able to delete subsets of these files, prior to the ultimate DeleteDate, using the following settings:

• CleanUpCompletedTransactionSourceFiles: Setting to true enables cleanup to delete all Transaction Source.pdf files for completed Transactions.
• CleanUpCompletedTransactionVersionFiles: Setting to true enables cleanup to delete all Transaction <DocumentID>_v#.pdf files for completed Transactions.
• CleanUpCompletedTransactionDocumentIDFiles: Setting to true enables cleanup to delete all Transaction <DocumentID>.pdf files for completed Transactions if using an HSM for sealing documents.
• DeletePageImageFilesOnDocCompletion: Setting to true will delete PNG files used in the PDF "PageImage" UI. If enabled, PNG File Deletion occurs 72-96 hours after Transaction completion. See here for more information.

*Note: on-premise only. In SaaS environments, set to false, false, false, true respectively*

Failed Transactions

General File Deletion Options
The following settings control the deletion of document files when Transactions are closed, cancelled or expire:

• DeleteFailedTransactionFiles: If a Transaction has failed (i.e., status is Closed 7, Cancelled 8, or Expired 9), then the Transaction directories and document files will be deleted if this setting is true.
• DeleteFailedTransactionFilesWaitInDays: Number of days to wait before deleting failed Transaction files if DeleteFailedTransactionFiles is true. Minimum is 1 day; default is 7 days.

*Note: on-premise only. In SaaS environments, set to true, 1 respectively*

Expiration Settings: For transactions that fail, document files are not purged until after the transaction moves to a failed status. As such, for transactions that expire, document file retention time will implicitly depend on the expiration date for the Transaction. The following settings determine a Transaction's expiration date:

• Transaction-Level: For each Transaction, you may specify an absolute date for the Transaction to expire. This the Transaction's ExpirationDate property.
• Server-Level: If the Transaction-level ExpirationDate is not specified, the Transaction_Expiration setting determines the default expiration time in hours.

*Note: on-premise only. In SaaS environments, set to 720.*