Some documents have expiration dates that allow you to ensure that out-of-date documents do not stay in lifecycle states like Approved for Distribution. For example, your configuration could have promotional pieces that are in the Approved for Distribution state move to the Expired state after one year if they are not re-approved. Document expiration is simply an automated state change with associated notifications. Note that Vault cannot change the lifecycle state of documents that are currently in a workflow.
Note: This article refers to workflow tasks. Vault also includes a User Task object class to track unplanned work. For information on user tasks, see Working with User Tasks.
Expiration Date
In default configurations, the Expiration Date field is required when you approve a document through an approval workflow. Vault uses this document field to determine when to change the document lifecycle to Expired and send expiration notifications. Note that an Admin may configure Vault to use any date field as the basis for document expiration.
If an Admin has set the default expiration period for the lifecycle, Vault automatically calculates and sets the expiration date for the document when the date is included in a workflow task. When you start the workflow or complete the workflow task, you can modify the default value.
Expiration Time
Vault begins the job to change lifecycle states and send notifications at 8AM GMT. These tasks may be delayed if other tasks are running in the Vault.
Notifications
Vault monitors the Library for documents that are approaching their expiration date or have expired and sends out the appropriate notifications. Vault sends notifications by email and displays them in the notification bell panel.
By default, notifications are sent to the document owner and coordinator at 60, 30, and 7 days before the document’s expiration date and on the expiration date. Both the notification recipients and the timing of notifications are configurable.
The number of days before the date is a maximum. There are some situations where Vault would send a notification fewer days before expiration, for example, if the notification configuration is for 60 days before, but a user resets the document’s Expiration Date from 90 days from today to ten (10) days from the current date.
Note: If there is no notification that occurs on the day that the document expires (zero day notification), the document will not expire. If an Admin configures document expiration, including a zero day notification, later, Vault processes any documents with an expiration date older than or equal to today for expiration.