Aggregation Based Disposal

Introduction

With the exponential growth in the volume of information created every day, dealing with individual records can quickly become overwhelming and impractical.

Every Records365 connector is flexible in allowing you to configure an aggregation level specific to the content source that you want to records manage. This empowers you to group records together in a way that best suits your organization. Each group of records appears in Records365 as an aggregation and you can manage each of these aggregations through a defensible disposal process.

Key Benefits of disposing by aggregation

• Reduced risk – assurance that no record for a business transaction will be missed.
• Improved efficiencies – millions of items can be disposed of in just few simple clicks.
• Consistency – when executed at the aggregation level all related items will be disposed of in a uniform manner.
• Improved ease of use – aggregates of information provide your users with more business context, allowing for more confident decision making from disposal approvals through to destruction.

Prerequisites

To perform aggregation based disposals, you first need to perform the following configuration steps. If the configuration has not been performed you will see the following message when navigating to the disposal page.

Once the above configuration has been performed the system will take a moment to get your data ready so that you can start disposing aggregations. The following message will appear whilst Records365 calculates the disposal due date and disposition action for each aggregation. This may take up to 24 hours.

How it works

The disposal section of Records365 displays record folders (also known as files) or boxes that have reached the end of their retention period. The retention information for aggregations are calculated using either one of the following methods.

• Roll-up, also known as contents based retention – This is where the retention and category/disposal class information is derived from the contents of the aggregation itself. Whereby the longest serving child item has its retention and classification information rolled up to the aggregation. This applies to electronic and physical aggregations. For an aggregation to be eligible for roll-up the following is to be satisfied
  • All child records have the same Next Disposal Action
  • All child records have a value set for the Next Disposal Due field
  • For an aggregation to have a Retain Permanently retention all child items need also to be Retain Permanently.
• Manually classified – This applies to physical aggregations only, and is where, upon creation or even modification, a record category/disposal class is assigned to a physical folder/file or box. Assigning a category/disposal class will then result in the appropriate retention schedule and period being applied. When a physical aggregation has been manually classified roll-up retention will not be applied. See the Categorization & Retention section under Manage Physical Records for more information.

Once the retention and category/disposal class information for an aggregation has been calculated, you can then see that information from the item details page of the aggregation. You can access the details page clicking the Title field from the Disposal, Browse or Search pages. Below is an example where an electronic record folder/file that has had roll-up applied, such that it carries the following meta-data;

• Record Category/Disposal Class
• Next Disposal Action
• Next Disposal Due
• Disposal Schedule Set By – When roll-up has been applied, it is the record number of the child item where the category and retention has been derived.
• Calculation Type – States how retention was calculated for the aggregation, values are either Rollup or Manual.

Disposing without additional approval

Now that all the configuration has been done and retention is calculated for all eligible record folders/files or boxes, the disposal page within Records365 will display those items that reached the end of their retention period and not subject to a freeze/hold.

In some cases, additional approval is not required for disposing items, and as such, the record manager can carry out the disposal. For items where additional approval is required, please see the information on the following page Aggregation Based Approval

Where disposal can be performed without additional approval, please follow the below steps.

1. Click on Disposal in the left hand navigation pane. The Unactioned view will be displayed, where all items that have reached their retention period and not subject to a freeze/hold will be displayed. You will notice that all fields selected at the configuration step are displayed in this view.

2. If you have a large set of aggregations to be actioned, you can use the filtering capabilities on the page to work with smaller units of work. See more on filtering here: filtering and working with datasets.
3. To change the view to display a different record type (for example Boxes), click the dropdown selector on the right side of the page to select the desired type. Note: The default type of records displayed can be set using Set as default view in the configuration page.
4. Select the items for disposal, and click the Dispose button. Note, by default the user performing the disposal will in addition be also tracked as the approver.
5. Enter Disposal Comments and tick the checkbox confirming that any physical records have been destroyed, then click ‘Dispose’. Disposal Comments are required to proceed with final disposal.

Disposing Items with additional approval

Records365 also supports items that require disposal authorization. This allows those users in your organization, who are the custodians of the content, to approve or reject the disposal for items that have reached the end of if its retention period.

For information on the disposal approval process please refer to the following page Aggregation Based Approval where the following areas are covered:

• sending items for approval
• tracking items that are pending approval
• how content custodians approve/reject the disposal of items
• resending items for approval to different users
• triaging those items that have been rejected and cannot disposed at the current time
• completing the disposal once authorization has been granted

Viewing disposal information

Disposing of aggregations and their respective child records can take time to complete in relation to the number of items involved.

To check the status and view the disposal details of a particular item, click the Disposals tab from within the item details page for the record folder/file or box. The status of the disposal is displayed in the right-hand corner. As it progresses you can check for updates by clicking the Refresh button.

Retrying disposals

Disposing an aggregation and all of its child records is a complex process due to all of associated actions required, like respecting holds or removing content in source systems. With all of these complexities, disposals can fail at a record or aggregation level. When disposing at the aggregation level and a child record fails, this failure will be reflected in the disposal status at the aggregation. Where possible you will be provided with an appropriate reason for failure so that you can remediate any issues encountered. Once remediated, you can retry disposing the record folder/file or box.

1. To view a list of items that have failed disposal, first click Disposal in the left hand navigation pane, followed by clicking the Disposal Failed tab.

2. From this view you can retry carrying out the disposal for one or more items at a time. To do so select those items and click the Retry Disposal button. See the above image for reference.
3. To view more information for a failed item, click the Failed text for the specific item. This will redirect you to the specified item, see the Events section for additional details.

4. From this view you can try disposing the item again by clicking the Retry Disposal button. This will retry all failed child records.
5. For more information on any of the failed child records, click the Details link in the Disposal Status column. This will redirect you to the child record. See the Events section for additional details.