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Retention Rules

Retention rules archive or delete assets automatically once they reach a set age, or warn their owners when a date is coming up.

  • Archive sets the asset's status to Archived: it leaves the library and search results, but the file is kept. Setting another status brings it back.
  • Delete moves the asset to the trash, where it can be restored for 30 days before it is removed for good.
  • Notify only emails the owners and changes nothing, for example "warn me 30 days before the rights expire".

Assets tagged #legal-hold are never touched. An asset that someone restores is never taken again by the same rule. Rules run daily at 3:00 and every run is recorded in the Recent runs table on this page and in the Audit Log.

Creating a rule

  1. Click New rule and enter a Name and an optional Description.
  2. Choose Which assets: file type, tags (all of), album, asset status and keywords.
  3. Set Older than (default 3 years) and what the age is Measured from: the upload date, the capture date (assets without one are skipped), or one of your organization's custom date fields, such as a rights expiry or review date. For a date field the setting reads Due this long after the date, and 0 means on the date itself.
  4. Choose Then: Archive, Delete, or Notify only.
  5. Set how many days ahead to Email owners first (default 14; 0 for no notice). For a Notify only rule this is the only action, so it must be at least 1.
  6. Set the most assets to act on per run (default 500), the time zone, and who receives a summary email of each run.
  7. Click Preview to see the oldest matching assets without changing anything, then Create (paused).

New rules start paused. Click Activate to start a rule, or Run now to run it once; both show a preview and ask you to confirm. With a notice period, nothing is archived or deleted until the notice period has passed. Owners' emails list their files, the date the rule will act, and how to keep a file. Deleting a rule doesn't bring back assets it already archived or deleted. For rule ages, a month counts as 30 days and a year as 365.

The rules table shows each rule's scope, age, action, owner notice, last run and next run, with Preview, Run now, Edit, Pause or Activate, and Delete. Recent runs show, for each run, how many assets matched, were done, were notified, are waiting out their notice, were skipped for legal hold, or had been restored.