Disposal Approval (Record Level)

Introduction

Disposal Approval takes place in three stages in Record Point: first, the Records Manager assigns an Approver for one or more records that reached the end of their retention period. Second, the Disposal Approver signs off on the disposal by either approving or rejecting the items assigned to them. Finally, the Records Manager completes the destruction of approved items.

The Disposal page

The Disposal page is organized into four tabs, so you can see where each record sits in the disposal workflow:

• Unactioned — records that are not on hold and have reached the end of their retention period and have not yet been sent for approval or disposed.
• Approval Pending — records that have been sent for approval and are awaiting a decision from a Disposal Approver.
• Ready for Disposal — records that have been approved for disposal and are awaiting destruction.
• Disposal Failed — records where the disposal did not complete successfully.

Each tab has its own column configuration and search, so you can set up each stage of the process to show the metadata that matters for that stage.

Send for Approval

Many organizations require approval from one or more users prior to destruction. You can select one or more items in the Unactioned View and Send for Approval, assigning Approvers by their email address or by their Security Profile in Record Point. When sending Unactioned records for Approval, the process is as follows:

A draft email is created using the default mail client for the currently logged in user to all of the specified approvers. The draft can then be refined and tailored to meet the Records Manager’s needs. A link will be included in the draft to take the Approvers directly to the My Disposal View in order to complete the Disposal Approval process.

All of the selected items will be assigned the specified approvers and will only be available to those users for approval. Record Managers can override the approval – this will mean that they will then be tracked as the Approver.

You can approve up to 500,000 items at a time. To access this use the Advanced Search feature from within the Disposal page and use the Send for Approval action.

1. Ensure you select the items that should be sent for approval.

   

2. Click on the Send for Approval button.
3. The dialog will open for you to select:
   • Whether you wish you send only the selected items or all items.
   • The Approval process: you can choose to let any user approve the records for disposal or choose a predefined order for users to approve. If you don't have multi-stage disposal approval functionality on your tenant, please speak to your account manager.

4. Add approvers by either an email address or a Security Profile for the Disposal Approver. To fill out additional approvers using an email address, click Add Approver again. Any of the Approvers listed by email address or any member of a Security Profile listed can complete the disposal approval process for these records.

   
   

5. Click Send. An approval email will be sent to the users specified.

   

6. A copy of the message is also sent to the Disposal Requestor.

   

In Record Point, a success message will appear showing the status of the records you have sent for disposal approval.

My Approval View

Once a Record Manager has assigned items ready for disposal to a Disposal Approver, they will receive an email containing a link to the Disposal page. This page contains the My Approval View which lists out all the items assigned to the currently logged in user that require action for Disposal Approval.

Manage Approval

Upon selecting one or more items, the user can then approve or reject all of those items for disposal. When rejecting a selection of items, comments must be provided so that records manager can take the appropriate next steps. Once items have been either approved or rejected they will no longer appear in the user’s My Approval View. Approved items move to the Ready for Disposal tab, where the Records Manager will take the next steps in the disposal process.

Searching and Browsing Records

By default Disposal Approvers do not have access to browse or search the entire catalogue of records in Record Point, however these features can be enabled by selecting the Search Records permission in the associated users Security Profile. For more information see the Security Profiles page.

Record Information

The record Quick Summary is available for Disposal Approvers by clicking on any row in the My Approval View grid, and is tailored to their context such that they can see who was the original author and which content source the records were submitted from. The Location field also allows a Disposal Approver to view the content (if available) in its original location in the Content Source. Finally, the full record details are available by clicking on the link in the ‘Title’ column in the grid for any record.

To approve or reject items for Disposal Approval:

1. Select the items using the check boxes at the left hand side of the My Approval View page.
2. Click on Manage Approval.
3. Select the approval decision to be recorded and enter comments as required. Comments are mandatory when rejecting records for disposal.

Ready for Disposal

Once a Disposal Approver has approved an item, it moves out of the Approval Pending tab and into the Ready for Disposal tab. This tab lists all records that have been approved for disposal but have not yet been destroyed. Completing the destruction of these records is the final stage of the Disposal Approval process, and is carried out by the Records Manager.

Before destroying records, you can confirm exactly what is in scope:

• Click the column chooser (wrench) to add, remove and reorder the metadata columns shown in the grid. Your selection is saved against your user for that tab, and will be applied the next time you visit.
• Use Advanced Search and the field filters to narrow the list to a subset of records. The total count updates to reflect your filters.
• Click the Disposal Approval Status value on any row to open the Disposal tab of that record’s details, where the full approval history is available.

To dispose of approved records:

1. Navigate to the Ready for Disposal tab.
2. Select the items using the check boxes at the left hand side of the page.
3. Click on the Dispose button.
4. Enter your Disposal Comments. Comments are mandatory in order to proceed with final disposal, and are retained against the record.
5. Select the check box to confirm that any physical records have been destroyed.
6. Click Dispose to confirm.

If a record fails to dispose, it will move to the Disposal Failed tab, where you can select it and click Retry. You can also track progress and diagnose failures from the Disposals view of an individual record, which shows the disposal status and a log of events.