Classification
Use the words your organisation already uses. We are not going to ask you to adopt our labels instead of yours.
Content governance
What must be kept, what must be frozen, what can go.
Those three decisions only work if they are attached to the document rather than to a policy nobody reads. In Casewelt the label, the retention period and any hold live on the file itself, so when someone tries to delete it, the answer is already there.
Example
A supplier agreement moves from ordinary work into a dispute.
Procurement uploads the contract and labels it as a contract. A retention rule starts running from the date that matters to the business. Months later, a dispute begins and the document has to be frozen.
From that point, whether it survives should not depend on someone having read an email. The hold is visible on the file, and anyone who tries to delete it is stopped, until the hold is properly lifted by someone entitled to lift it.
PDF
supplier-msa-v4.pdfProcurement / Suppliers
- Classification
- Contract
- Retention
- 7-year policy
- Legal state
- Hold active
- Delete
- Blocked
Lifecycle controls
Where the rules actually live.
Retention
You set how long something must be kept, and which business event starts the clock: contract signature, last payment, end of engagement. That period is your obligation, not a Casewelt promise to host the file forever. While your organisation has an active Casewelt subscription, the product enforces the rule you defined, including refusing early deletion.
Hold
Freeze a document the moment a dispute or investigation starts, and lift it deliberately when it is genuinely over.
Rules that talk to each other
Sharing and deletion look at the label, the retention period and any hold before they go ahead, rather than each doing its own thing.
A trail behind it
Every one of those changes is recorded, so a later review can say what changed, when, and who did it.
Where it is stored
If your organisation has agreed a region, lifecycle decisions respect it too. Regional control →
A useful distinction
Classification is a language the organisation owns.
Teams already have meaningful terms: contract, restricted, internal, board, personnel, matter number, retention class. A content platform should carry that language reliably and make it available to policy.
Governance still depends on the customer’s policy, legal basis and operating model. Certifications can support assurance, but they do not define the organisation’s retention and hold rules.
The same split applies to how long a file must remain. A label such as “contract term + 7 years” is the organisation’s retention commitment. Casewelt applies and enforces that rule for as long as the organisation continues to pay for the service. Ending the subscription does not transfer the remaining retention years onto Casewelt as a free-hosting obligation; the organisation remains responsible for taking its records elsewhere if it still needs them.
Explore the wider governance modelThree clocks, not one
Keep, freeze, and delete are different verbs.
Keep: retention
You write how long this record must live, and what event starts the clock. While you subscribe, Casewelt refuses an early delete. That is enforcement of your rule, not a promise that we host the remainder for free after you leave.
Freeze: hold
A dispute starts this afternoon. The file can still be read by people who already may read it. Nobody can remove it, including people who could delete yesterday. Putting the hold on, and every blocked delete, is recorded.
Delete, when both clocks allow it
When retention has run and no hold is on, deletion is a decision someone makes. Hiding a file from a folder is not the same as destroying the sealed object. Those are different jobs, and the product keeps them apart.
When you try it
- See the label and the retention on the file row, not in a spreadsheet beside the product.
- Turn a hold on. Attempt delete. Read still works. Delete does not.
- Lift the hold deliberately, not by “emptying the recycle bin”.
- Ask what happens if the organisation stops paying while a retention period is still running. You should hear the honest split: the rule was yours; hosting while subscribed was ours.
Test a lifecycle
Test a lifecycle rule against a real document.
Bring the classification, retention or hold requirement and walk through the resulting product behaviour.