🗂️ Retention Policy Best Practices

Slate’s Retention Policy Editor is available as a way for schools to remove data from Slate and comply with the record retention policies for their campus. The primary resource for schools when considering building out retention policies will be their campus-specific policies regarding record retention. This document serves to provide best practices for areas where campus policies don’t provide specifics regarding implementation, but readers should consult with their school’s legal counsel before implementing any of the policies discussed. The opinions expressed by ReWorkflow are for educational purposes only and are not given as legal advice.

Person Records

Person records in Slate can be separated into three categories for the purposes of retention policies. Many campus policies only speak directly to data for applicants, leaving admissions, recruitment and marketing teams on their own to develop policies regarding records in Slate for those without applications.

Prospect Records

For records that are “pure” prospects, such as purchased name buy lists, a common practice is for schools to keep those records in Slate for one to three years. Often the majority of these prospects have had little to engagement with your institution, which rapidly diminishes their value for marketing and reporting. Schools with an undergraduate focus and/or large and slow databases should consider a shorter timeline for these records, while graduate admissions offices may want to keep them longer knowing that people may stay in the prospect stage longer.

If there is reluctance at your institution to remove these records in a timely manner, please consider the following: Are you marketing to this population? If you’re emailing them and they’re not opening your emails, or worse, they’re reporting them as spam, then you are risking your deliverability across all audiences in an attempt to communicate with a population that has shown they do not want to hear from you right now.

If you aren’t marketing to this audience, then what purpose does this information serve? If one of these people does end up applying 4 or more years after you bought their name, you want their origin source to be whatever made them raise their hand and actually apply, not that ancient name buy. Don’t sacrifice your system resources for a population that isn’t making it worth it.

Inquiry Records

Inquiries are a step up from your prospects, so there may be value in keeping these records longer. They transition from a prospect because they have either communicated with the institution, filled out a form, and/or attended an event. They know your school and won’t be surprised to be the audience for your marketing efforts. In some ways, this is the hardest group to determine the timeline for, since they have shown interest, but they haven’t applied. Many schools keep these records longer than prospects, but not as long as applicants. Like prospects, most schools are not pushing inquiry data to their student information system (SIS), so Slate is the sole resource for this data. When determining policies regarding this set of records, schools will want to consider retention policies for related areas in Slate such as form responses. Marketing and reporting concerns tend to determine how long these records are kept. There are schools that reach out to inquiries to offer them the opportunity to opt-in to future marketing, keeping those records in Slate, but removing those that don’t respond.

Applicant Records

Most schools will have written policies regarding applicant records. This will be your starting point, and if detailed enough, your end point for this type of record. For applicants who don’t submit their application, some schools may follow the same policy they have for inquiries. For applicants who submit, but are not admitted, schools vary on how long these records are kept. In general, schools tend to keep admitted applicant records for as long as someone is an active student at the school. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the record must remain in Slate. Schools exporting applicant data to their SIS could be more aggressive in purging data from Slate to keep their instance streamlined.

Other Items

Applications

Schools typically follow the same policy for applications as they do for applicant person records. 

Form Responses

Social Security Numbers

If collected on the application and used for record matching, some schools then move these to their SIS and remove them from Slate as part of cycle prep.

📈 Query Runs

Some institutions store query runs to an excessive amount and this can be catastrophic for your Slate instance. Let the comments on this post from the Community Forums prompt you into action. 

Inactive Fields and Prompts

When a field is inactivated, typically because of some process change, the field definition, values, and prompts (for fields that use prompts) remain in Slate indefinitely. We recommend reviewing Slate every year or two for such fields and, if they are truly no longer in use, purging them completely.

Resources

Retention Policy Editor (Knowledge Base)

Retention Policy Editor Object Types (Knowledge Base)