Retention period management

With Data Retention we refer to the process of maintaining records based on a pre-configured, automatic basis. This covers the deletion of conversations after a given amount of time, moving conversations to archive locations, creating backups of the stored media, etc.

The retention period refers to the duration for which a certain conversation needs to be kept after being recorded and must not be deleted. There are 3 main ways to configure this period in Verba, as shown in the sections below. Conversations that have a defined retention time can be configured to be deleted automatically when their period expires.

	User-based retention period	Policy-based retention period	Deletion policy
Set when recording is finished	Yes	Yes	No
Set on supported WORM storages	Yes	Yes	No
Storage target support	All	All	All
Recordings protected during retention period	Yes	Yes	No
AD sync support	Yes	No	No
User level configuration available	Yes	Yes, but complex	Yes, but complex
Requires retention policy	Yes (Upload, Move)	Yes (Upload, Move)	Yes (Delete)
Retention period can be increased	Yes	Yes	Yes
Retention period can be decreased	No	No	Yes
Manual delete during retention period	No	No	Yes
Deletion is executed by Verba	Yes	Yes	Yes
Legal hold support	Yes	Yes	Yes

Verba is not be able to protect content from system administrators having full access to a specific folder and delete conversations. If the drive should be physically protected as well, then we recommend using a WORM storage instead.

Deletion policies have an additional confirmation window showing the number of affected conversations, which helps ensure that only the intended users are covered by this policy.

Deletion policy based

Separate deletion policies can be configured to periodically delete conversations that are older than the specified value. The set up is very easy, but a misconfiguration can easily lead to the unintended deletion of certain calls.

There is no retention period configured for the conversations stored in the system, so an Administrator is able to delete conversations from the web interface if he has the right to do so.

Separate deletion policies should only be configured when the retention period (Policy- or User-based) cannot be set for some reason.

For configuration information refer to the Delete action article.

Policy-based retention period

The retention period setting in the upload and move policies allows setting the retention period right after the system compiles the recorded file. This protects the recording from accidental or intentional deletion attempts until the retention period expires.

The retention period is set on the supported WORM storages (EMC Centera, EMC Isilon SmartLock, Netapp SnapLock, Hitachi Content Platform) and enforced on ANY other storage target by Verba. Customers can use a simple SMB folder on the network and the Verba system will enforce the retention time.

The retention period setting in the upload and move policies should be used whenever possible, as shown in the image below. No separate deletion policies should be used in these cases to enforce retention time.

Once the retention period is over, a hidden background deletion process will delete the conversation, no separate policy configuration is required. The retention period cannot be reduced, it can only be increased by a separate data retention policy.

For configuration information refer to the Move Media action or Upload action articles.

User-based retention period

The retention period can be configured on a user level, that can be used to override any policy-based retention configuration. This simplifies configuration in large deployments.

The retention period setting is set on the supported WORM storages (EMC Centera, EMC Isilon SmartLock, Netapp SnapLock, Hitachi Content Platform) and enforced on ANY other storage target by Verba. Customers can use a simple SMB folder on the network and the Verba system will enforce the retention time.

The retention period setting should be used whenever possible, as shown in the image below. No separate deletion policies should be used in these cases to enforce retention time.

Once the retention period is over, a hidden background deletion process will delete the conversation, no separate policy configuration is required. The retention period cannot be reduced, it can only be increased by a separate data retention policy.

Legal Hold

Verba provides the ability to place conversations on Legal/Litigation Hold, ensuring that no automated policies or even people with the sufficient rights can delete these conversations. This option effectively overwrites the configured retention times in Verba and can also apply the Legal Hold on conversations stored on EMC Centera and Hitachi Content Platform.

For more information refer to the Legal Hold article.

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