Objective:

• To understand how to retire a policy
• To understand how to retire policies in bulk

Environment:

• PolicyStat

Additional Information:

As a part of the Approval Workflow process, when a new version of a policy completes the approval process, the previous version moves to an archive.

In some instances, it may be preferable for an Owner to retire the previous policy rather than update it.

Please note that this option may not be available for all sites, as Site Administrators can also remove this function for Owners. For more on that process, see this article.

• The option to retire is ONLY available for active approved documents.  Pending and draft documents must be go through an approval workflow and be made active to be able to be retired.
• Retiring a policy is not reversible, a new version of the policy can be created and approved and the version history will be retained.  For more information, see this article.
• Once a policy is retired, only Site Administrators can view it under the Admin tab.
• If any users were assigned to acknowledge the policy, they will no longer see it under Policies Awaiting Acknowledgment list after it is retired. 

Procedure:

How to Retire a Policy (Single)

If a policy is no longer needed, it can be retired and removed from the general view by the policy's Owner, Area Manager, or Site Administrator.

1. Open a policy to be retired.
2. Locate the retire option in the blue bar at the top right.
   
   If this link is not visible, the Site Administrator may have removed the ability to retire or the account being used may not have appropriate permissions to retire. Policies that havve pending versions are not able to be retired until the pending version completes the workflow, or the pending version is deleted.
   
3. After clicking the Retire link, a prompt will ask for a summary of changes. In other words, describe the rationale for retiring this policy (1). 
   
   • When retiring, if a draft version exists it will be deleted permanently.  A warning will appear if a draft version exists when the retire button is clicked.
4. When completed with the summary of changes, click the Retire Policy button (2).

How to Retire Policies In Bulk

Site Administrators have the ability to retire policies in bulk using the Bulk Admin Override interface.

1. Click the Admin tab to view the Administrator Menu.
   
   
2. Locate the Bulk Admin Override link from the Site Data list.
   
3. Locate the polic(ies) to be retired. If necessary, use the search box (1) and/or Owner (2), Area (3)m or Reference Tag (4) filters to narrow your search.
   
4. Check the box at the top of the table (5) to select all displayed policies or the boxes prior to each policy title (6) to select on a one by one basis.
   
5. Provide a Summary of the Changes. In other words, describe the rationale for retiring this policy (7).
   
6. Click the Retire button (8).

How to Restore a Retired Policy (Site Admins)

If a policy was accidentally retired, policies can be restored via the Retired Policies report by a Site Administrator. For more information, see this article.

This article applies to the following user roles: