Quality teams can identify documents reaching their retention end dates, initiate retention review workflows, and archive documents in bulk in Veeva QualityDocs, supporting proactive compliance and reducing the time and effort required to manually manage documents and document archival.
Note: You must enable document archiving in your Vault before configuring this feature.
Creating Retention Schedules
You can set up global or local policies to enforce document retention periods automatically using Quality Retention Schedule records. These reusable records define retention periods in years and can be assigned to documents by document Owners. Quality Retention Schedule records are governed by the Quality Retention Schedule lifecycle. Quality Retention Schedule records must be in the Approved state to be available for selection by users.
To create Quality Retention Schedule records:
- Navigate to Business Admin > Objects > Quality Retention Schedule.
- Click Create.
- Enter a Name.
- Enter a Retention Period in Years.
- Optional: Select a Country.
- Optional: Enter a Description.
- Click Save or click Save + Create to create additional retention schedules.
When users assign a retention schedule to a document, Vault creates a Quality Document Retention Schedule join object record.
Updating Quality Retention Schedules
To update a Quality Retention Schedule record, move the record back to the Open state. Once you update a Quality Retention Schedule record and move it to the Approved state, Vault runs the Sync Quality Document Retention Periods job to cascade the updated Retention Period in Years value to any linked Quality Document Retention Schedule records.
Configuring Retention Schedule User Actions
Add the following user actions to the appropriate states in the Draft to Effective lifecycle:
- Assign Retention Schedule
- Remove Retention Schedule
- Start Retention Period
Once configured, users can perform these actions on individual documents or in bulk.
Configuring Document Jobs & Workflow
The Document Retention Job and Document Archival Job are asynchronous and run daily by default.
Document Retention Job
The Document Retention Job identifies all documents with an upcoming retention end date, excluding documents under legal hold.
By editing the job definition, you can activate the job and optionally configure the following settings:
- Enable Document Retention Review & Approval Workflow: Select this checkbox to automatically initiate the Document Retention Review & Workflow on the Quality Document Retention Schedule join object.
- Select the number of days before the Document Retention End Date that the Document Retention Review & Approval Workflow should be initiated: Enter a number between
0and366. This determines the number of days before the Retention End Date of a target document that Vault should initiate the Document Retention Review & Approval workflow. This setting is available only when the Enable Document Retention Review & Approval Workflow checkbox is selected.
- Select the number of days before the Document Retention End Date that the Document Retention Review & Approval Workflow should be initiated: Enter a number between
When the Enable Document Retention Review & Approval Workflow checkbox is selected, and you enter a number of days between zero and 366, the Document Retention Job identifies active Quality Document Retention Schedule records where the Retention End Date minus the configured number of days is today or earlier. If these settings are not configured, the Document Retention Job identifies active records where the Retention End Date is today or earlier. Vault then sets the Targeted for Archival and Ready for Archival fields on these identified records to Yes.
If Vault is unable to process a Quality Document Retention Schedule record, it populates the Error/Not Started Reason field with an applicable error message. Users must clear this field for the Document Retention Job to identify and reprocess the record in the future.
Doc Retention Schedule Review & Approval Workflow
If your configuration leverages the Enable Document Retention Review & Approval Workflow checkbox setting on the Document Retention Job, you must also add an Update Field step to the Doc Retention Schedule Review & Approval workflow to update the Ready for Archival field to Yes to allow the job to process the Document Archival Job to process the document. If the document is not approved using the workflow, we recommend also configuring an Update Field step to set the Targeted for Archival field to No and to set a new Retention End Date in the future, allowing Vault to process the document in the future, once conditions are met.
Document Archival Job
The Document Archival Job identifies and archives all documents where the following conditions are true:
- Ready for Archival (
ready_for_archival__v) equals Yes - Targeted for Archival (
targeted_for_archival__v) equals Yes - Retention End Date (
retention_end_date__v) is in the past - Error/Not Started Reason (
error_not_started_reason__v) is blank - The document is not under legal hold
You can activate the job by editing the job definition. The Document Archival Job inactivates Quality Document Retention Schedule records when archiving the corresponding target documents by moving the record to the Completed state type.
Enabling Document Deletion
You can optionally navigate to Admin > Settings > Application Settings and select the Allow system to delete Quality Document Retention Schedule records when the corresponding target document has been deleted checkbox to enable Vault to delete the records rather than inactivate them. Once enabled, you cannot disable this setting.
Related Permissions
The following permissions control access for archiving documents and working with archived documents:
| Type | Permission Label | Controls |
|---|---|---|
| Security Profile | Object: Quality Retention Schedule: Create, Read, Edit, Delete | Ability to manage Quality Retention Schedule records. |
| Security Profile | Object: Quality Document Retention Schedule: Create, Read, Edit | Ability to view the Retention Schedule pane in the Quality Relationships panel, and to execute the user actions. |
| Security Profile | Jobs: Edit | Ability to edit the Document Retention Job and Document Archival Job definitions. |
| Document Role | Edit Fields | Ability to assign Quality Retention Schedules to documents. |