Many modern risk management standards recommend—if not require—the deletion of any data that is no longer relevant to day-to-day activities. Retaining data that isn't needed for standard business operation presents unnecessary liability to any entity that handles sensitive information. In light of this, PensionPro will automatically remove old Plan data after the Plan has remained inactive for some time.
Tier Availability: Track, Team, Business
Article Contents
- Overview of Plan Data Purging
- What Data Is Purged
- Backing Up Plan Data
- Customizing the Data Retention Period
Overview of Plan Data Purging
PensionPro does not purge data from any active Plans. Instead, PensionPro will only purge data from a Plan that has been marked Deactivated for all Activity. This purge does not occur immediately; once the Plan is made inactive, PensionPro will delete its data after a period of 6 months, unless a custom retention policy has been set (refer to the section Customizing the Data Retention Period).
A Plan is considered inactive when it has been deactivated for all activity, per the instructions found in the section Deactivating a Plan within the article Adding, Reassigning, Deactivating, and Deleting Plans.
When saving the General Plan Information window after selecting the Deactivate For All Activity field, an alert will be shown confirming the date that Plan data will be purged. The Plan is not made inactive until Save is selected again.
After the Plan is made inactive, all of its views—such as Employee Roles and Projects—will become inaccessible; only the General Plan Information will be visible. The Plan can be reactivated at any time prior to the purge date to view the hidden information; if the Plan is then once again deactivated, it is given a new purge date based on the retention policy.
Once the purge date is reached, all Plan data will be deleted and cannot be recovered. The Plan record itself will be retained, but all data associated to the Plan will be removed. A message will be added to the Plan tab displaying the date that the purge was performed.
The Plan may be reactivated after the purge date, but previous data will not be available and must be recreated if desired.
What Data Is Purged
The following Plan items are irrevocably deleted once the purge is performed:
- Projects
- This includes all Workflow data, as well as any other Project items such as Notes, Files, Time Slips, Project Fields, and Distribution data.
- Plan Interactions
- Document Specifications
- Services Provided
- Investment Providers
- Fee Schedules
- Files
- Notes
The following items will not be deleted; however, they will no longer be accessible from the Plan tab:
- Employee Plan Role & Plan Contact Role assignments
- Interactions linked to Contacts
- To-Dos
Backing Up Plan Data
Immediately after a Plan is deactivated, PensionPro will begin to prepare its data for backup. This data backup will be the only way to export and preserve Plan information following deactivation.
The backup may take some time to complete; the user who deactivated the Plan will receive an email notification once the data is ready. Once the backup is complete, the data can be exported by performing the following steps:
- Navigate to Reporting > Plans > Deactivated Plan Data. The grid on this page contains backup data files for all inactive Plans.
- Locate the desired Plan within the grid, then select the link in the Data column to download.
The export will be saved in JSON format and includes the following Plan data:
- General Plan Information
- Employee Plan Roles
- Plan Contact Roles
- Interactions
- Notes
- Investment Providers
- Projects
An inactive Plan's data export file will be available in PensionPro until the Plan purge date, at which point it will be irrevocably deleted. In the event that a Plan is reactivated before it is purged, the backup file will remain available until its original expiration date. If this same Plan is made inactive a second time, a new data export file will be created, even if one already exists.
Customizing the Data Retention Period
Requires Security Rights: Account Maintenance
Although PensionPro sets a default 6 month retention for inactive Plans, firms can customize this time frame to suit their needs. Data for inactive Plans can be held for as long as 8 years before the automatic deletion takes effect.
The retention period can be set via More > Account Maintenance, in the Firm Data Retention view. For more information, refer to the article Firm Account Maintenance.