In this chapter, we describe Enhanced Retention Management, which is a feature of IBM Content Manager OnDemand.

In this chapter, we cover the following topics:

The Content Manager OnDemand Enhanced Retention Management feature helps you manage and enforce the retention of documents in a Content Manager OnDemand system. In a Content Manager OnDemand system, you retain documents for a specific period. Retaining documents for a certain period is commonly referred to as retention management. Records management describes the process of retaining and deleting documents under a set of circumstances that are not necessarily bound by time, for example, until the end of litigation. Consider the following important points when you select the correct retention solution:

To overcome these limitations, implement the Content Manager OnDemand Enhanced Retention Management feature. With the Enhanced Retention Management feature, you control individual documents by introducing holds. Holds are a way to identify the documents that you want to keep for a period of time. To expire the document, you must remove the hold. Holds give you the flexibility to choose when to delete documents because you control when to remove a hold. You can manage holds through any of the following interfaces:

The Enhanced Retention Management feature requires that you disable the expiration processes that the Content Manager OnDemand storage manager has on the documents that you want to hold. Disabling the expiration process prevents the Content Manager OnDemand storage manager from deleting these documents.

You must configure Content Manager OnDemand to identify documents in application groups that you want to retain (hold) and also identify the users who can manage holds. You must disable expiration processes by the storage manager so that it cannot expire data. You must also convert application groups with an expiration type of DOCUMENT, SEGMENT, or STORAGE MANAGER to an expiration type of LOAD.

To configure Enhanced Retention Management, you must perform the following tasks:

These items are described in more detail in the following sections.

To enable Enhanced Retention Management, modify the ars.cfg file and add the following line:

In Content Manager OnDemand for Windows, you can enable Enhanced Retention Management by using the Content Manager OnDemand configurator, as shown in Figure 16-1. Select the Enable Enhanced Retention Management check box.

Clearing this configuration setting has no effect on any documents that were placed on hold by Enhanced Retention Management. Documents continue to be held until all holds are removed.

By using the Content Manager OnDemand Administrator, you specify whether you want to use Enhanced Retention Management at the application group level, as shown in Figure 16-2 on page 356.

When you create an application group, the default for Enhanced Retention Management is No. By selecting Yes, you can also define whether you want to define implied holds. By selecting an implied hold, all of the data that is loaded into the application group is inherently held. The implied hold on the documents within the application group can be removed only by calling either ARSDOC or the ODWEK Java API to remove the implied hold. Implied holds are used in solutions where the retention of documents is maintained outside of Content Manager OnDemand.

When you use Enhanced Retention Management, you must define an application group field, as shown in Figure 16-3 on page 357. This field must be marked as Lockdown, and it is used to maintain the hold status of individual documents. To mark the field as the Lockdown type, you must select Small Int (2) for the Data Type of the field.

The Lockdown field is used to maintain a count of the number of holds on the document. If no holds exist, its value is 0. If an implied hold exists for the document, the value is 16384. Any additional holds that are applied or released increase or decrease this number by 1.

To apply a hold to a document or to release a document, you must have the appropriate permissions. A new permission of type Hold exists under the permissions for a document in the application group permissions, as shown in Figure 16-4 on page 358.

To manage holds in Content Manager OnDemand, you must have the appropriate permission. Figure 16-5 on page 359 shows you how to define a user type of Hold Administrator and to provide an authority type of Create Holds.

Hold definitions can be created and removed by using the Administrator Client. To define the hold definition, go to the Administrator Client, select the Holds tab, and provide a name and description for the hold that you are creating under the General tab (see Figure 16-6 on page 360). Select the Permissions tab to grant the permissions that are required for your hold.

At the folder level, a new check box was added so that you can specify whether you want to see an icon in the client that indicates whether a document is locked down. Figure 16-7 on page 361 shows you how to configure a folder for hold capabilities.

Use the Enhanced Retention Management feature to apply and release holds quickly and efficiently. When you apply a hold to a document or multiple documents, they cannot be expired. If your documents are part of a large batch load, only the documents in a hold status are expired when they reach their expiration date. After a document is released from a hold status, it can be expired based on its original retention management policy.

You can apply and release holds by using the Windows client, Content Navigator, WEBi, the ODWEK Java API, and ARSDOC. As shown in Figure 16-8 on page 362, when you select documents from the hit list and right-click, the options for applying, releasing, and showing holds display.

Users can apply holds to a document or documents that are defined to an application group with the enabled Enhanced Retention Management feature. To apply a hold, select a document and click Actions → Holds → Apply Hold, as shown in Figure 16-8 on page 362. This action prevents the deletion of documents in Content Manager OnDemand regardless of the documents’ expiration dates.

Users can assign previously created holds to documents or create a hold that can be used privately or publicly, as shown in Figure 16-9.

When you want to remove a previously enabled hold, highlight the documents and click Actions → Holds → Remove Hold, as shown in Figure 16-10 on page 363.

Hold capabilities were developed as part of the Content Manager OnDemand database structure as a field that can be indexed. Users can use this capability to search on selective holds that might be applied by another user, as shown in Figure 16-11.

Enhanced Retention Management provides two methods that allow users to place documents in a hold status:

The following sections present two use cases that provide examples of these methods.

A healthcare firm receives frequent ongoing requests to find documents that must be gathered and protected from deletion because of a legal case that involves the firm’s customers. Historically, retention management was a paper-based world of file folders, filing cabinets, and off-site warehouses with elaborate and costly storage requirements. Retention management changed dramatically with the rapid proliferation of digital information.

The challenges of locating and retaining documents quickly was a problem for the firm until they set up Content Manager OnDemand as its standard tool for capturing documents. Content Manager OnDemand can capture high volumes of content and quickly search and retrieve documents with multiple client solutions for both desktop and standard web browsers. By using Content Manager OnDemand, the firm was able to enable the Enhanced Retention Management feature and have a business solution to select, hold, and prevent expiration of documents easily within seconds. The return on investment (ROI) easily justified the investment in the Enhanced Retention Management feature.

A financial firm has a business requirement to review transactions for the day before they release the transactions for viewing by their customer base. Content Manager OnDemand is used as the enterprise report capture solution. The firm wants to use Content Manager OnDemand to build a simplistic workflow. The solution also must be able to put the documents back in a hold status quickly to prevent any expiration rules that are assigned by the Content Manager OnDemand application from running.

By enabling the Enhanced Retention Management feature and its “hold on store” capability, the firm has a solution that meets its business requirements. By placing every document on hold in a specific application group in Content Manager OnDemand, the process is controlled by entitlements. User A (the reviewer) has administrator rights to apply and remove holds on documents. After the document is reviewed, User A releases the hold, which signifies to User A’s application area that the document was reviewed.