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How to create an Auto Archive/deletion policy to delete

certain file types or reports

Technote (FAQ)

Question
It is important to have a policy in place to delete files in the Encyclopedia
after a certain amount of time. Report .roi and .doi files will get generated
from running reports and queries and if these files don't get deleted
periodically, the actuate server will run out of space eventually.

Answer
There are three levels of policies: Volume, folder, and file. At the Volume and folder levels, the policies
can be applied to either all file types (by making a policy for the file type " < Default > ") or to
individual file types.
A policy set at the Volume level will apply to all files and folders in the Encyclopedia unless the policy
is overridden at the folder level or the file level.

The most common way of doing this is at the Volume level. To do this:

1) Log in to the Volume as Administrator through Management Console.

2) Choose Volume from the left-hand menu.
3) Click the Properties... button.
4) Choose the Auto Archive tab.
5) Choose the desired File Type from the drop-down list.
6) Choose "Delete when older than..." and enter your desired values in the fields. e.g. 2 days
7) Click the Apply button to add more policies to other file types, if desired. To view the
policy on a file type, choose the file type from the drop-down list.
8) Click the OK button to exit.

This will cause all files of a certain file type to be deleted after the specified amount of time. This is
useful if, for example, you want all ROIs in your Encyclopedia to be deleted after a certain amount of
days.

NOTE: if you choose to have the policy set at volume level, then the folder and file level can use the
default/inherited policy:
Files and Folders > rpt > properties > Auto Archive Tab > select File Type > click the "Use the
default/inherited policy from the documents file type" radio button

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However, you may want to make some exceptions to this general policy. Perhaps you have a folder of
ROIs that need to be retained for a longer or shorter period of time before they are deleted. This can be
accomplished through archive policy inheritance.

To change the policy at the folder level...

1) Log in to the Volume as Administrator through Management Console.

2) Choose Files & Folders from the left-hand menu.
3) Mouseover the blue and white arrow to the left of the folder name.
4) Choose Properties from the drop-down menu.
5) Choose the Auto Archive tab.
6) Choose the desired File Type from the drop-down list.
7) Choose the desired deletion policy.
8) Click the Apply button to add more policies to other file types, if desired. To view the
policy on a file type, choose the file type from the drop-down list, or choose the "View
Policy..." button.
9) Click the OK button to exit.

To change the policy at the file level...

1) Log in to the Volume as Administrator through Management Console.

2) Choose Files & Folders from the left-hand menu.
3) Mouseover the blue and white arrow to the left of the file name.
4) Choose Properties from the drop-down menu.
5) Choose the Auto Archive tab.
6) Choose the desired deletion policy.
7) Click the OK button to exit.

The default policy for any file is to inherit the policy of the level above it. The file-level policy will
inherit from the folder-level policy, which will inherit from the Volume-level policy. Thus, a policy set at
the Volume level will trickle down to all folders and files in that Volume unless you override it at the
folder-level or the file-level. If, for example, you specifically set the policy for ROIs on a particular
folder, the archive policy for an ROI in that folder would use that folder-level setting rather than the
Volume-level policy because you have overridden the policy that had been set for the ROI file type at
the Volume level.

Likewise, if you then wanted to change the policy for a particular file within that folder, the file would
then ignore both the Volume-level setting and the folder-level setting, because it has been overridden at a
lower level.

The default policy for all file types at all levels is not to delete. So if nothing is done, no files will ever
be deleted. Note that for each policy you can also set "Delete after date..." instead of "Delete when

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older than X days and Y hours". You also can set the policy to "Do not automatically delete this file"
which could override an inherited policy which is set to delete the file.

Additionally, these options are under Auto Archive because you have the option to use a third-party
archiving tool to archive the files before deleting them, but if that option is not checked, then the Auto
Archiving policy merely becomes a deletion policy.

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