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What retention does

Retention is the part of Nobly Insight that deletes documents on a schedule, so you can meet GDPR and other regulated retention rules without anyone deleting documents by hand. You describe which documents to delete and how long to keep them as policies; Nobly Insight evaluates those policies on a recurring schedule and deletes what’s eligible. This section explains how retention works end to end: how to configure policies, how processing is scheduled, and how to check a policy before it goes live. Every retention screen also carries inline help in the same shape as the rest of the platform.
Retention performs recoverable deletion under a Soft delete policy and irreversible deletion under a Permanent purge policy. Turn it on deliberately: create the first policy disabled, simulate it, review the result, and only then enable it. Never go straight from creating a policy to enabling it.

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The document lifecycle

Each document a policy is tracking moves through a series of states. You’ll recognise these states when reading a document’s retention status.
StateMeaningHow it’s reached
ActiveThe default — no policy is acting on the documentInitial state for every document
TaggedA policy has matched the document and the grace-period clock has startedScheduled processing
Pending approvalThe policy requires approval and the document is in an open approval batchScheduled processing
ApprovedApprovers have signed off; the document is ready for deletionAn approver acts
DeletedSoft-deleted under a Soft delete policy — recoverable through normal document recoveryScheduled processing
Pending purgeSoft-deleted under a Permanent purge policy, awaiting permanent removalScheduled processing
PurgedContent and metadata permanently removedScheduled processing (second stage)
RescuedPulled out of a policy’s retention flow before deletionAn operator rescues it
ExcludedExempted from a specific policyAn operator excludes it
QuarantinedProcessing couldn’t complete and the document needs manual reviewError during processing
A document is tracked per policy, so the same document can be at different states for different policies. Rescue, Exclude, and Legal hold are the three ways to stop a document from being deleted — see Approvals, holds & quarantine for which to reach for when.

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The dashboard

The Retention section opens on a Dashboard that gives an at-a-glance view of retention activity:
  • Document lifecycle — counts across the retention states
  • Active policies — the enabled policies and what they’re tracking
  • Pending approvals — open batches still waiting on approvers
  • Last processing run — when processing last ran and what it did
Alongside the dashboard, the section has dedicated views for Policies, Documents, Approvals, Legal Holds, Simulation, and Quarantine. Every retention action — tag, approve, reject, rescue, exclude, hold, delete, and purge — is recorded with a timestamp and the responsible user, for compliance. Retention reuses the platform-wide audit and governance described in Administration & governance.

Policies & simulation

Build policies, write matching criteria, and preview their impact with a read-only simulation.

Setup & troubleshooting

Stand retention up on a new tenant, step by step.