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The ideas behind folio
Most of folio comes down to six ideas, and once they’re familiar the rest of these pages will read quickly.
Records
A record is one document you’ve filed, along with its details: the folder it sits in, the matter or person it’s about, its retention class and its receipt.
Filing will give you the receipt straight away, with the file’s fingerprints, and the file itself won’t change after that. If something goes in by mistake, you’ll file the right document alongside it rather than editing the first one.
Folders
Folders are where you’ll organise records, usually one for each matter, client, person or property, nested however suits you. Give a folder a matter or a subject and everything filed into it will carry the same one.
You’ll be able to protect a folder so that every view inside it needs a reason, even if your organisation doesn’t ask for reasons on views in general.
Retention classes
Each record is filed under a class, which will say how long it’s kept and what will happen when that time is up.
A Retained record will be kept until retention ends, and deleted early only by two people with a reason.
A Locked record will be write-once: nobody, including you and us, will be able to change or delete it before its retention ends.
Reasons
Every view, change and deletion will be recorded with a reason. Your organisation will choose whether views need one; changes and deletions always will.
A reason will be a code from your own list, such as a client request or an audit, with a few words of detail where your settings ask for them.
That’s an auditing feature you set for your organisation, not something the law asks of you.
Holds
A hold will stop records being disposed of while a dispute, claim or investigation is open, even if their retention ends in the meantime.
You’ll be able to place one on a single record, a folder, a matter or all the records about one person, and anything filed into it later will be covered too. Releasing it will take two people.
The ledger
The ledger will record who did what, to which record, when and why, but never the contents of your documents. Reading the ledger will go in the ledger too.
Every event will be chained to the one before it and time-stamped by an outside authority. You’ll be able to export the ledger for your auditors, and a changed or missing entry will show up when it’s checked.