Data Purging

 

Note: This feature is currently in a "partial release" state, and will be rolled out to all users over the coming months. Firms will be notified in advance and provided a date when the feature will be enabled for them.

 

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

 

 


 

How It Works

 

PensionPro does not purge data from any active Plans. Instead, PensionPro will only purge data from a Plan six months after the Plan has been marked Deactivated for all Activity.

 

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, but the date will be reset to the full 6 months if the Plan is subsequently deactivated again.

 

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 Is Deleted

 

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:

 

  1. Navigate to Reporting > Plans > Deactivated Plan Data. The grid on this page contains prepared data backups for all inactive Plans.
  2. Locate the desired Plan within the grid, then select the link in the Data column to download.

 

Note: An inactive Plan's data may also be exported from the Moremore_options.png menu located in the Plan tab header.

 

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

 

Note: The JSON format is a common technical standard regarded for its ease of use when working with raw data. However, data in this format can be difficult to read without a specialized application. Mozilla's Firefox web browser includes an easy-to-use interface for viewing JSON file contents.

 

Prepared backup data will be retained in PensionPro for 6 months, at which point it will be irrevocably deleted. This deletion date is tracked independently from the Plan's purge date; in the event that a Plan is reactivated, the backup data will remain available, but will be deleted 6 months following the original deactivation. If this same Plan is made inactive a second time, a new data export will be created, even if one already exists.