Authority

An authorizing employee, agency, statute, regulation, or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that permits a retention event.

Disposition

The impending fate of a record, such as destroy, discard, archive, or return to client.

File Part

A file part is a file plan node that represents a physical container. In this design, it's the same as a folder.

NOTE: The term file part is used throughout this document to refer to any record or record container within a matter.

File Plan

The organizational plan for each of the items in the client. In IRM, the file plan refers to all client, folders, subfolders, and electronic records as a complete set.

Media Type

Media types define the containment rules that govern how boxes and file parts are organized, and where in the hierarchy they can be placed.

Media types are an attribute of both file parts and boxes.

Record

Used generically to refer to any folder, subfolder, document, or electronic record in the file plan.

In IRM, all records are referred to generically as file parts.

Client

The base or root level of the file plan. In a legal implementation, this is analogous to a specific client.

Matter

Usually, the second level of the file plan, underneath client. Matters relate to ‌disposition, retention schedule, security policy, and other common metadata. In a legal implementation, this is analogous to legal matters.

Records Manager

An employee of an institution that is the responsible custodian of all records, or of some subset of records. Usually, this individual is a Certified Records Manager, as defined by ARMA, has a college degree-typically a masters degree-in library sciences, or is an attorney that specializes in records retention for a given discipline, such as the financial records necessary to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley legislation.

Retention Event

Retention Events define the specific action to be taken on a record, the trigger for the action, the authority controlling this event, and the disposition date. Retention events can be grouped together to define a complete retention schedule for a record. For example, three separate events could be grouped together to control the actions throughout the life-cycle of a specific record.

Retention Hold

Retention Holds let you override an existing retention schedule as a result of litigation, audits, or other unplanned actions. This prevents the affected records from being destroyed or otherwise tampered with until the hold expires.

NOTE: The term hold is used throughout this document and refers to Legal Hold or Freeze.

Retention Policy

The complete set of guidelines that define how long records should be kept, and how long and where they should be stored, archived, and destroyed.

In IRM, the Retention Policy is a collection of all retention schedules, individual retention events, and retention holds.

Retention Schedule

Retention Schedules are a collection of retention events, which define the archiving, destruction, and other actions for a record.

Sarbanes-Oxley

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is a US federal statute that dictates how public companies must handle disclosure of quarterly and annual financial results, and must attest to their validity. Some of the statutes have implications that point to the implementation of electronic records management systems.

SOP

Standard Operating Procedure

Standard

A SOP relating to how client of various types must be organized. In particular, standards provide centralized control over the naming and structure of the file plan at the matter level. Each matter that's created or edited must conform to the business rules as set out in the standards.

Template

A folder referenced within a standard that's used to specify information about the contents of a matter.