Record Based

Introduction

Disposal in RecordPoint is managed in a few steps:

1. Records Managers identify records that are due for disposal in the Unactioned view.
2. The records are sent for disposal, either by direct approval from the Records Manager or by sending them to a separate Disposal Approver as required.
3. Once approved for disposal, Records Managers execute the disposal of the records and the content is Destroyed in the relevant source system.

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. Use the column chooser (wrench) on any tab 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.

Unactioned View

The default view of the Disposal page is the Unactioned View, which provides a view of all items that have reached the end of their retention period and have not yet been actioned. Once items have been sent for Disposal Approval or directly disposed by a Records Manager, the items will no longer appear in this view.

Within the different views of the Disposal page, you can click on the Search filter to perform powerful searches within the records due for disposal to assist working with large volumes of records to be disposed. The search experience is consistent with Advanced Search and allows searching on record properties from both RecordPoint and the content source. 

Dispose

For smaller organizations or exceptional cases, approval by additional users may not be required for record disposal. In this case a Record Manager may wish to proceed to disposal without approval. When the approval step is skipped the user performing the Dispose operation will audited as the approver.

Select items to dispose and click on Dispose.

Enter Disposal Comments (and tick the check-box confirming that any physical records have been destroyed, if applicable) then click ‘Dispose’. Disposal Comments are required to proceed with final disposal.

A message will appear confirming that the Records have been submitted for Disposal.

Bulk Disposal

You can dispose of up to 500,000 items at a time. To access this use the Advanced Search feature from within the Disposal page and use the Dispose action.

Tracking approvals and disposals

Once records have been sent for approval, tracking and managing them happens across the Approval Pending and Ready for Disposal tabs. Some common scenarios include:

• An item was sent for approval months ago and no action has been taken, how do I follow that up?
• What items have been rejected for disposal, and what reason was recorded, so that appropriate actions can be taken.
• As a Record Manager, I have been assigned items for approval, how do I see just my items.
• The Approver has left the organization, how do I send their items to someone else for approval?

These tabs provide a few features to help manage the scenarios described above.

Filtering and Sorting – Each item can be tracked by its Disposal Approval Status throughout the disposal process, the available statuses are:

• Pending – Has been sent for approval, and has not been approved or rejected yet. These items appear on the Approval Pending tab.
• Approved – Has been approved for disposal. The Approver column will display the user that approved it. These items move to the Ready for Disposal tab.
• Rejected – The item has been rejected for disposal, the reason can be found in the Disposal Rejection Comments. Rejected items return to the Approval Pending tab with their Disposal Approval Status set to Rejected, so you can review the reason and decide what to do next.

Other columns that may be useful to sort on are:

• Last Approval Action – The date the Disposal Approval for an item was last actioned, which includes sending for approval. This may be helpful for triaging outstanding approvals.
• Approver – The email address of the user who approved/rejected the item for disposal. When multiple people have approved it, the last user is displayed in this column. When no value is present, it indicates that it has not been actioned for approval.

Quick Summary – To get a visual representation of an item throughout the disposal process flow there is a Quick Summary available for every item by clicking on the row in the results grid for that item.

My items – By default, the Approval Pending tab displays all items that have been sent for approval. Records Managers can also have items assigned to themselves for Disposal Approval. To filter down to just these items, use the My items filter. The filter updates the result count, and does not require you to change roles.

Resend for Approval – Some items will need to be re-sent for approval – for example if an outstanding approval has taken too long, the approver has left the organization, or if rejected items have been re-mediated and are ready for disposal. ‘Resend for Approval’ will reset the list of approvers for these items and re-send the disposal approval email.

Dispose – Approved items can be disposed from the Ready for Disposal tab using the ‘Dispose’ button. Enter disposal comments and confirm that any physical records have been destroyed, then click ‘Dispose’. When disposing items that are either in ‘Pending’ or ‘Rejected’ states, you will be recorded as the Disposal Approver.

Reschedule – Items waiting for Disposal can also be Rescheduled/Reclassified to another Record Category/Disposal Class. Please note that this may mean they are no longer eligible for disposal if they are rescheduled to a Record Category/Disposal Class with a different Retention Schedule.

Note: Sending a record for disposal does not lock it. The record remains Managed until destruction completes, and continues to receive updates as it normally would, including metadata, record category and retention schedule changes.

This is intentional. A disposal schedule is not a commitment to destroy. It can be cancelled, placed on hold, rescheduled or extended, and the approver relies on the record's current details to make a defensible decision. A record's details become immutable only once destruction has completed.

Disposals View

After records have been sent for disposal, you can check the status by clicking the Details link on the Disposal Status column as shown here. Alternatively, you can click on the document and navigate to the Disposals view.

The Disposals view displays a range of information, such as:

• Disposal Status: None, In Progress, Completed or Failed.
• Record Information: Disposal Related information for your record.
• Events: A table with post disposal submission events. This allows greater visibility if there is a failure, as well as being able to track the progress of submissions.

Retrying Disposals

Due to the complex nature of disposals and all of the moving parts, like respecting holds or removing content in source systems, disposals can fail for a record.

Click the Retry Disposal button from the Disposal View for a record. Note an Events section will be displayed in this view with all additional information.