A new way to solve offboarding, data retention, and archiving headaches

For all of the benefits and bonuses of the digital workplace, it also introduces some new challenges.

One of the most taxing of them is the proper management of user data, especially once they have left your organization. Up until now there have been workarounds, expensive alternatives, or time-consuming manual methods. None of these offer the security, economy, and efficiency that a modern business demands.

That’s why we have built Archive - a new set of features within the CloudM platform, that properly and finally solves this challenge.

Archive is a new data retention and recovery capability within CloudM. It allows you to automatically and securely retain data for employees who have left your organization, for a time period of your choosing, and the data remains indexed, searchable, and restorable throughout this period.

It’s designed to be part of your offboarding workflow, which means that it joins all of the existing steps you’ve set up for offboarding users. In the same single click of a button that already removes their licenses and revokes access to your systems, your offboarded user’s data is now migrated into a cloud storage bucket of your choosing.

Archive also seamlessly integrates into the platform you know and love. It uses the same interface and processes, so that it feels like a natural extension of the product. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3, 4:

1. Create a storage bucket (owned and controlled by you)

2. Create and assign a custom role to view and use Archive features

3. Connect your storage to CloudM, and test that it’s working correctly

4. Add an archiving step to your offboarding policy

Complying with regulations (like GDPR, HIPAA, or FOI requests) has traditionally been a manual and time-consuming process. With Archive you don’t need to worry about the headaches of sifting through old files, or even whether you have kept the data in a compliant manner. If you need to recall the emails of a previous employee, and it’s within the legal retention policy period which you’ve set, you can easily search and restore the data that you need.

Maintaining security is just as important for current employee data as it is for those who have since left. Archive’s processes are protected with the same robust cyber security as the rest of the CloudM platform, but what’s more, the storage of your employee data for Archive is held in your own cloud storage bucket.

Keeping license costs down is an important part of good practice in the digital workplace. This becomes doubly true for organizations with high staff turnover, or high numbers of employees overall. Some businesses have maintained their leavers’ licenses for ease-of-use, but that means paying full price for as long as you’re legally obliged to retain the data. Other methods of retention, like eDiscovery, can be equally as expensive. Archive within CloudM gets you off the hook for the cost of the license, but gives you the functionality of having kept it in place.

Solving disputes and conflict within your organization is always challenging. But it can be frustrating when you know the answer is in an email somewhere, buried within an old system, accidentally deleted, or indexed in a product you have to pay to unlock. Archive allows you to search the metadata of every file and email of every offboarded employee. It also allows you to restore single files or emails to your live environment, meaning you can consult past conversations to solve disputes between colleagues, or support any legal battles dependent upon data.

Relieving the administrative burden is the key to efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The more people you have undertaking manual and time-consuming tasks, the higher your salary and the lower your productivity. All of Archive’s functionality can be completely automated, including the retention and deletion of data at scheduled time points. The only thing you’d need to click once the policy is in place is the Restore button, should you ever need to. The universal automation of Archive will give you back hours of staff time across your IT and HR departments.