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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:

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

TIP

Unless specified otherwise, the file repository cleanup tasks run at the time and schedule specified by your VersionCleanupTimerService settings.

Note: on-premise only. In SaaS environments, set to run Daily at 22:30

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.