Records Management is a systematic approach for data management in your organization. Records Management allows you to save, store, and access your data through a central repository. At the same time, as a large amount of data becomes redundant over a period of time, you may need to dispose of a specific set of records or data that no longer needs to be in the system. The Records Management System allows you to decide how long you want to keep a document in your repository based on policies created by you. You can declare or un-declare records, place legal holds on them, set up destruction dates, and view reports.
Example: To prepare for compliance of future audits of their Human Resources files, a records manager wants to create a record series to dispose of any I-9 stored in their FileBound system for more than 3 years. Using FileBound’s Records Management, he can set specific classification rules to find all I-9s in the system and a disposition schedule that satisfies the Human Resources regulations of his company’s state.
Note: You must have Records Management licensing in order to use Records Management.
Important terms and concepts
The following are some of the important terms and concepts that you need to understand before you start using Records Management in FileBound.
Record: Something that represents proof of existence and can be used to recreate or prove state of existence such as a document. A record differs from a document. A document can be modified; whereas, a record cannot be modified.
Record Series: A group of related records filed/used together as a unit and evaluated as a unit for retention purposes. For example, a personnel file consisting of an application, reference letters, benefit forms, etc.
Disposition: The disposal action taken regarding records that are no longer needed for current business.
Legal Hold: A process that an organization uses to preserve all forms of relevant information when litigation is anticipated.
Retention Schedule: The length of time that a record must be kept to meet administrative, fiscal, legal, and/or historical requirements.
- When a record is destroyed, it will also remove the physical document that existed as the record from the document storage location, all the renditions of the record, any OCR data of the record, and all revisions of the record.
- If the "Retain record file Information after destruction" check box is cleared for the record series the record belongs to, the file containing the record is also deleted if no documents are available in the file after deleting the record.
- The calculation of date when the record goes for approval is based on the destruction date and number of notification days selected for the policy.
Records management process
The following are steps in the records management process:
1. Assign records management rights
You must have records management rights in order to perform operations on records. Records Management rights are assigned by a System Administrator or Access Administrator. See User settings - Security tab for more information.
2. Set up record series
A record series is configured for a project by a Record Administrator in Project Settings. See Project Settings - Retention Tab for more information.
3. Configure automation processes
A records declaration process and a records destruction process are configured by an Administrator. See Automation Processes for more information.
4. Declare records
When viewing a document in the Web Viewer, a Record Administrator or Record Manager can declare it as a record and place it under a record series. See Document Actions for more information.
5. Disposition
The next steps in the process differ based on what disposition type was selected for the record series:
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None: The document is declared as a record and will remain in the database.
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Auto-Destroy: Once the destruction date has passed, the document is removed from the database.
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Destroy With Approval: Once the destruction date has passed, the document goes for approval and can be approved for destruction or dismissed on the Disposition Notification page.
Click here to see a flowchart of a records management process.