Purging Old Attachments

[Ray Alvarez]

How are you all handling the purging of old attachments?  We have many clients that have over 10 years of attachments.  We don't want to purge the client just the attachments over 7 years old.  How do you do that?  We can't find a utility for that.  Thanks!

[Gene Foraker]

I would not want to do a mass purge only by date.    We are required by our companies to retain a signed app for as long as the policy is in effect.   I would also want to retain signed rejections indefinitely. 

[Ray Alvarez]

Our concern is that if we don't clean up our old files, we are not following our file retention policy.  If this were a paper file, anything over 7 years old gets shredded.  We would like to do the same with our electronic files.

[Jeff Zylstra]

Would it be possible to use the "custom date" feature and date the apps and rejection forms for a future date?    Just a thought, but I don't believe it is even possible to purge attachments, is it?  The other "issue" is that the activities associated with these attachments would still be left, and so would the "links" that allow you to "drill down" between activities and attachments.  Don't know.

[Gene Foraker]

Our concern is that if we don't clean up our old files, we are not following our file retention policy.  If this were a paper file, anything over 7 years old gets shredded.  We would like to do the same with our electronic files.

But that is just my point.   You can't just choose to shred all paper over 7 years old, either.   When transactional filing paper, we kept a "core" file for 7 years after the policy was in effect.   For no other reason than company contracts required it.

[Jim Jensen]

They really should have a utility or options in purge that would allow us to choose categories to include/exclude (exclude all applications and appraisals) for purging of attachments. There are letters to keep too, I suppose, which would take more careful reviewing. I wouldn't want to purge a letter explaining that something wasn't covered, unless I sent it again (which isn't a bad idea anyway).

[Lance Bateman]

If I remember correctly - the problem with the "activity purge" is that it would not purge anything with an indicator that there is an attachment, whether the attachment exists or not.  You would have to identify those remaining after running an activity purge, then you could delete the activities one at a time - depending on what version you are on, and rights.  That at least should remove reference to the attachment.

I believe, at least on versions prior to 10.x, you'd have to individually delete attachments.

[brinkerdana]

Time for a PMR!   
AS might like this one since clean-up is a big part of the conversion to EPIC.

[Ray Alvarez]

Thanks everyone for your responses.  I guess we'll just have to keep them in the system indefinitely.

[Jeff Zylstra]

Time for a PMR!   
AS might like this one since clean-up is a big part of the conversion to EPIC.

The other attachment issue that kind of goes along with this is the ability to either print, export of copy all of the attachments from a given customer as part of the discovery process in an E&O suite.  I've seen a number of these frantic requests on the newsgroups after someone had been subpoenaed for their entire customer file.  Funny how it happens, but it always seems to be some mega account that has thousands of attachments on it.   Applied's imaging and E-Filing is pretty good, but there are also some serious gaps like this one too.

[Alice]

Time for a PMR!   
AS might like this one since clean-up is a big part of the conversion to EPIC.

Been there...done that...along with one for allowing experation dates beyond 2029 (submitted 5 yrs ago I believe), and a few others that I never called in because I requested through the old ASCnet request system (showing my age again!) and basically gave up.

[Andrew Carrick]

We've had a UK PMR outstanding for years - in some text boxes e.g. email within TAM, the £ sign isn't recognised. Just a small thing but then we're only a small country after all....   

[Lance Bateman]

Do they know something, about the UK going to the Euro?  Or do they even allow that one? 

We've had a UK PMR outstanding for years - in some text boxes e.g. email within TAM, the £ sign isn't recognised. Just a small thing but then we're only a small country after all....   

[Matthew Udovich]

I've thought about acquiring this little tool.

http://www.teichdataservices.com/RTApps.aspx

[Judy Means]

Pretty expensive but what a nice looking program.  Sure gives you some flexibility.



Judy