How Policies Interact

As an administrator, you can configure how policies interact with file objects and each other in the following ways:

Using the Enabled Setting to apply a policy to all files or only to keep it on existing files
Using the Effective property to manage multiple policies attached to a single file or folder

Enabled Setting

Using the Enabled Setting, policies can interact with new and existing files differently.

This setting determines whether new files and folders that meet ANY of the policy conditions will have the policy assigned.

If enabled, the policy is assigned to files and folders

If not enabled, FileCloud will:

Stop applying the policy to new file objects
Keep the policy in place for file objects already attached

This option is available for all policy types
By default, it is selected

The Enabled setting does not stop any currently assigned policies from being in effect, it only stops the application of the policy to any new file objects (files and folders).

For example, The Cherry Road Brokerage company creates this folder structure in FileCloud Server:

The administrator creates a retention policy to stop any file from being deleted in the RealEstate Holdings folder.
The file for 2367 W Main Building is added to the RealEstate Holdings folder, and the retention policy is applied to it.
Now, the administrator wants to allow any new files added to the RealEstate Holdings folder to be deleted.
The administrator edits the retention policy, and clears the checkbox for Enabled, thereby disabling the policy.

How does the original retention policy interact with files when DISABLED?

A new file called 98675 E Orchard Drive is added to the RealEstate Holdings folder, and the retention policy is NOT applied.
Since the new file, 98675 E Orchard Drive does not have the retention policy applied, it CAN be deleted.
However, the 2367 W Main Building file still has the policy applied and CANNOT be deleted.

How does the original retention policy interact with files when RE-ENABLED?

The administrator edits the retention policy, and selects the checkbox for Enabled, thereby re-enabling the policy.
FileCloud re-applies the policy to all files in the RealEstate Holdings folder.
The 2367 W Main Building file still has the policy applied and CANNOT be deleted.
The new file, 98675 E Orchard Drive now has the policy applied and CANNOT be deleted.
Now, another new file is added to the RealEstate Holdings folder for 3654 S Blossom Road, and the policy is applied and the file CANNOT be deleted.

To determine if a specific file has a policy applied to it:

In the USER Portal

In the ADMIN Portal

When using the Admin portal, you will need to know the name of the policy that the file belongs to.

Then you can view all files for the policy to check if it is attached.

Log in to the Admin Portal.
From the left navigation pane, select Retention.
On the Manage Retention Policies screen, select the policy row.
In that row, click the Edit Policy icon ().
Clear the checkbox for Hide Policy from Users.
Log in to the User Portal.
Browse to the file.
Look in the Details tab for the Assigned retention policies.

Log in to the Admin Portal.
From the left navigation pane, select Retention.
On the Manage Retention Policies screen, select the policy row.
In that row, click the View Files icon ().
The View files for the policy screen displays.

Effective Property

You can attach multiple policies to a single file or folder, however, only one policy will be in effect at a time. You can tell which policy is active by the Effective label.

Since you can create different types of policies and attach multiple types of policies to one file or folder, policies will interact with each other.

To manage this, FileCloud ranks retention policies by what best protects and retains the digital content.

If a file or folder has more than one policy applied to it, only one policy will be in effect.
This is determined by policy rankings and is displayed on the Retention dashboard as Effective.

The Effective Property

The following table describes what will happen if multiple policies are applied to a file or folder. Once a policy expires or is removed, the next policy in order of rank, will become effective. However, some policies can never be removed and will block the other policies from becoming effective.

For example, The Cherry Road Brokerage company adds the file called 2367 W Main Building.docx to FileCloud Server.

Let's see what happens when different policies are attached to it.

	Admin Hold	Legal Hold	Retention No Deletion	Archival	Retention with Deletion	Trash Bin Retention	Which Policy is Effective?
Rank	1	2	4	5	6	7	Which Policy is Effective?
Attached?	Yes	Yes expires = Indefinite	No	No	Yes expires = Indefinite Renew on Access is not selected	No	Admin Hold - until it is removed Legal Hold - set to never expire Retention with Deletion - will never take effect unless the Legal Hold is removed by the admin
	No	No	Yes expires = 90 days Renew on Access is not selected	Yes expires = 30 days	No	No	Retention No Deletion until it expires in 90 days Archival, although it was set to move files in 30 days, must wait for the Retention No Deletion policy to expire first, so it will actually take effect in 91 days
	Yes	No	No	No	Yes expires = 30 days Renew on Access is selected	Yes set to permanently Delete in 30 days Renew on Access is not selected	Admin Hold - until it is removed Retention with Deletion - deletes files on next Cron run unless a file or folder with this policy attached is accessed, and then the expiration date is moved out 30 more days Trash Bin Retention - permanently deletes files off the system when the Retention with Deletion policy actually expires