If your organization has set up data retention policies for documents, Personio automatically notifies Administrators by Inbox about documents that need a review. Administrators can choose to delete or keep each document. During the review, Admins must select all documents they want to delete. 

Before you start

• When you create and run retention policies, Personio automatically runs them every 28 days. 
• If you skip an execution, Personio does not delete any documents. To delete documents later, you must run the policy again and review the eligible documents.
• During a review, you must select all documents you want to delete. After you confirm deletion, Personio keeps any documents you didn't select. 
• You can recover deleted documents for 30 days. To recover documents, contact Personio. 
• The activity log doesn’t save the policy settings that were used at the time of deletion. If you need a clear audit trail, create a new policy instead of editing an existing one.

View documents eligible for deletion

You can view documents eligible for deletion in two ways: 

• Open the Inbox notification after Personio automatically runs a retention policy and finds eligible documents. 
• Run a policy manually at any time during the 28 day cycle.

Review documents eligible for deletion

1. Open your Inbox and select the notification for the policy's results.
2. Click Review.
3. If you don't want to delete any documents, skip the execution. To delete documents, select the checkbox next to each one you want to delete. Click Delete. 
4. Confirm the deletion.

You receive an Inbox notification once the deletion is completed. Documents not selected for deletion will reappear the next time the policy runs. 

Manually run a data retention policy

1. Go to Settings.
2. In the Data Governance section, click Data retention.
3. Select the policy you want to run, then click Run policy.
4. Decide what documents you want to delete:
   • To not delete any eligible documents, click Skip execution.
   • Choose specific documents to delete by selecting the checkbox next to each relevant document. 
   • Click Delete and confirm the deletion. 

Skip the deletion of eligible documents

If you don't want to delete any eligible documents, click Skip execution. Personio keeps all documents. 

• The documents stay eligible for deletion.
• Personio notifies Admins again every 28 days.

To stop repeat notifications for documents you want to keep, you can:

• Update the policy to exclude certain document categories or people.
• Exempt specific employees from one policy or from all policies.
• Temporarily pause the 28-day schedule by changing it to a draft. 

View activity for data retention policies

Admins can view a log of policy activity, including when policies ran, who ran them, and what actions were taken. To see the activity, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings.
2. In the Data Governance section, click Data retention.
3. Click the Activity tab.
4. Review the details for each policy (for example: No documents found, Number of documents deleted, Skipped review).

To learn more about deleted documents, use the details in the Activity tab to search Personio’s Audit Log (like the user who ran the policy and the timeframe) and review the related deletion entries.

Review a data retention policy's rules

To review the details, rules, and people included in a data retention policy, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings.
2. In the Data Governance section, click Data retention.
3. Select the policy you want to review.
4. Click the Overview tab.