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<ManualTopic ID="/baanerp/archiving/Archivingconcept" xml:lang="en">
   <Header>
      <Title>Archiving Concept</Title>
      <Keyword type="header" order="d1e814">
         <Level1>Archiving</Level1>
         <Level2>concept</Level2>
      </Keyword>
      <Keyword type="header" order="d1e819">
         <Level1>Concept</Level1>
         <Level2>archiving</Level2>
      </Keyword>
   </Header>
   <AimSection>
      <Paragraph>Companies spend time developing procedures for entering data
		into an ERP system. They also spend time developing procedures for archiving
		manuals, drawings, specs, and other hard-copy documents. However, in many cases
		they do not spend time on procedures to store historical electronic
		data.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph>This document creates an awareness of archiving electronic data,
		not as a technical solution, but as an integral part of your business
		processes. You can use this document to guide you through the complete
		archiving process.</Paragraph>
   </AimSection>
   <GeneralSection>
      <SectionTitle>What is archiving?</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph>Generally, archiving is the process of moving historical data
		from the operational environment to a special archive environment. At home, you
		might move old bank statements from a closet in your study to a box in the
		attic. At the office, you might store old hard copies of purchase orders in a
		room far from your own desk. Just because you no longer need the information in
		your daily work, does not mean you can dispose of the information. In terms of
		electronic data in your LN system, archiving means moving historic data from the operational
		company to a special archive company; in that way, the historic data will be
		out of your way and safely stored. To free up disk space on your machine after
		you have archived the data, you can also move the historic data to an external
		medium, such as a tape, DVD or CD-ROM.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph>LN contains standard archiving sessions in all major modules. These sessions are
		designed to copy historical data to the archive company, and then delete the
		data from the operational company. For more information on these archiving
		sessions, see <Link href="/baanerp/archiving/ArchivingLogisticalData" role="manual">Archiving Logistical Data</Link> and <Link href="/baanerp/archiving/ArchivingFinancialData" role="manual">Archiving Financial Data</Link>. However, before you archive data, you must define an
		appropriate archiving strategy and plan, which must be a team process. The
		result is that a documented strategy and plan must be communicated throughout
		the organization.</Paragraph>
   </GeneralSection>
   <GeneralSection>
      <SectionTitle>Archiving strategy</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph>Archiving historical data is an irreversible process. After data
		is moved to the archive company, the data can no longer be uploaded back into
		the operational company. Archiving has a direct effect on the accessibility and
		availability of information; therefore, you must define a robust archiving
		strategy which addresses three major topics: What, When, and Who.</Paragraph>
   </GeneralSection>
   <GeneralSection>
      <SectionTitle>What data can be archived or deleted?</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph>Various parties related to your company use information based on
		logistical and financial transactions occurring in the past. Before you archive
		or delete this information, you must investigate the need for the information.</Paragraph>
      <List>
         <ListIntro>Usually, you have three options:</ListIntro>
         <ListItem>Archiving and deleting (1)</ListItem>
         <ListItem>Deleting (2)</ListItem>
         <ListItem>Archiving only (3)</ListItem>
      </List>
      <Paragraph>Using option 1 or 2 makes archiving irreversible. For example,
		if you archive only because you want to preview the results, the archiving can
		be done a number of times.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph>In addition to archiving logistical and financial data, you can
		archive <Link href="/baanerp/tc/glossary/glossary#000453" role="glossary">general data</Link>. For more information, refer to <Link href="/baanerp/archiving/ArchivingGeneralData" role="manual">Archiving General Data</Link>.</Paragraph>
      <GeneralSection>
         <SectionTitle>Business requirements</SectionTitle>
         <Paragraph>Your business requirements determine what must be stored and
		  for how long. For example, if you have a warranty situation on your projects
		  for five years, you might be required to keep your project open during this
		  time, or you may keep the project in an archive company. Therefore, if the
		  project must remain open, no project-related information, including orders and
		  integration transactions, can be archived.</Paragraph>
         <Paragraph>Every business manager must decide how long what data must be
		  stored in an operational environment for quick access. Reporting requirements
		  must also be listed.</Paragraph>
      </GeneralSection>
      <GeneralSection>
         <SectionTitle>Legal requirements</SectionTitle>
         <Paragraph>In most countries, legal requirements apply to financial data.
		  Tax authorities may require financial data to be stored for a minimum number of
		  years. Additionally, in specific lines of business such as food and beverages
		  or aerospace, governments maintain specific legal requirements, which impact
		  your archiving strategy.</Paragraph>
      </GeneralSection>
      <GeneralSection>
         <SectionTitle>User requirements</SectionTitle>
         <Paragraph>Users also depend on historical information. For example, a
		  customer service employee may need to have shipment information of up to one
		  year in the past to accurately address customer queries. These requirements
		  must also be taken into account when you define what can be
		  archived.</Paragraph>
      </GeneralSection>
   </GeneralSection>
   <GeneralSection>
      <SectionTitle>When can data be archived?</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph>Based on the answers to the previous question, you can now set a
		term of retaining relevant historical data in your operational environment, and
		a term of keeping data available in the archive environment.</Paragraph>
      <GeneralSection>
         <SectionTitle>Who can archive data?</SectionTitle>
         <Paragraph>Because archiving is an irreversible process, a certain risk
		  is involved. For example, what if one of your employees starts up an archiving
		  session by mistake? For this reason, you must determine who is authorized to
		  archive and delete data, and then set up these authorizations with the
		  functionality LN offers.</Paragraph>
         <Paragraph>Because no further changes must be made to archived data,
		  access to the archive company must also be restricted to read-only
		  authorization for most users.</Paragraph>
      </GeneralSection>
      <GeneralSection>
         <SectionTitle>Match strategy with LN functionality</SectionTitle>
         <Paragraph>After you list all your requirements, the next step is to
		  verify whether the standard LN functionality is sufficient to facilitate your needs. Usually, LN provides the
		  functionality to meet all of your needs, but must not force you to compromise.
		  We recommend that you avoid customizing your software, however, because we are
		  looking for long-term operational-data storage, customizations must not be
		  ruled out entirely. An example is the requirement to show, in one report, the
		  data from the live company and archive company. In the current version, this is
		  not standard functionality, but this can be important to manage your business.
		  What can be even more important, if you are using customized software, is the
		  question of whether the archiving sessions have been included. Do you take into
		  account the fields and tables you have customized? Customized tables and fields
		  may have to be included when performing delete/archive runs.</Paragraph>
      </GeneralSection>
   </GeneralSection>
   <GeneralSection>
      <SectionTitle>Archiving plan</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph>After you define an archiving strategy that suits your
		requirements, you can define the archiving plan. In this plan, you translate
		the strategy to a more operational level.</Paragraph>
      <GeneralSection>
         <SectionTitle>Archive environment</SectionTitle>
         <Paragraph>Based on the current operational company structure, available
		  disk space, and the defined strategy, you must decide how your archive
		  environment must be set up. How many companies do you need? Do you want to
		  store the archived data on an external medium? Do you want one archive company
		  for each fiscal year, or one archive company for several years?</Paragraph>
         <Paragraph>If you want to archive data the right way, you need to have
		  enough storage space available. Your archive environment setup must match that
		  of the operational environment. Therefore, if you have a multi-logistic –
		  single-finance structure, the archive company structure must also be
		  multi-logistic – single finance.</Paragraph>
      </GeneralSection>
      <GeneralSection>
         <SectionTitle>Test plan</SectionTitle>
         <Paragraph>In the archiving plan, you must consider testing. Testing can
		  be extremely helpful. For example, it is one way to train regular users and key
		  users to check whether your archive setup is correct, to check whether the data
		  is consistent, and ensure functionality of archiving sessions meets your
		  expectations. For best results, you must perform the testing in a test
		  environment, rather than in the operational environment.</Paragraph>
         <Paragraph>Your test plan must at least contain what you want to test,
		  who will perform the testing, and when. Additionally, you must define
		  validation parameters: what must be checked before the test results are
		  accepted.</Paragraph>
      </GeneralSection>
      <GeneralSection>
         <SectionTitle>Operational plan</SectionTitle>
         <List>
            <ListIntro>In operational plan, you must address the following
			 issues:</ListIntro>
            <ListItem>Preparation of data.</ListItem>
            <ListItem>Frequency and sequence of archiving/deleting data (for each
			 session).</ListItem>
            <ListItem>Incorporating archiving in procedures (day-to-day
			 business).</ListItem>
            <ListItem>Creation of a backup before archiving a large quantity of
			 data.</ListItem>
            <ListItem>Impact of customizations: Do you need to change the archiving
			 sessions or develop new sessions?</ListItem>
            <ListItem>Check for latest solutions to implement.</ListItem>
         </List>
         <Paragraph>Include a schedule for these types of activities and assign
		  activities to functions or individual users.</Paragraph>
      </GeneralSection>
   </GeneralSection>
   <GeneralSection>
      <SectionTitle>Implementation</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph>The next step in the archiving process is the implementation of
		the archiving plan. In this phase you will implement the plan you defined in
		the previous steps. The result of this step will be the actual movement of
		historical data from your operational company to your archive company, not as a
		technical solution to a problem, but as a new process as part of your
		day-to-day business.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph>The following sections discuss the technical setup and
		functional archiving sessions in more detail, and help you archive data in a
		correct and safe way.</Paragraph>
   </GeneralSection>
</ManualTopic>