In principle, iPassport is designed to retain all information to ensure traceability of all the documents and records held within it. For this purpose, unwanted records can be inactivated so they move out of the way but don’t disappear altogether. Sometimes records have no purpose (present or historical) or they have been created in error and it’s desirable to completely remove them. Users with required permissions within the system can permanently delete the following types of records from their account:
Quality Management | Laboratory Records | Competency | Laboratory Management | Administration |
---|---|---|---|---|
Internal Audits | Controlled Documents | Skilled Groups | Distribution Lists | User Groups |
External Audits | Equipment | Training Events | ||
Non-Compliances | Materials | |||
Complaints | Reagents | |||
Incident Reports |
Delete actions cannot be undone.
To revert documents to a previous state, one of two conditions must be met:
- the user must have ‘authorise’ permissions (e.g., Documents: Authorise Documents, SOPs: Authorise SOPs, etc) in the OU where the document resides, or
- the user must be the document owner AND an OU preference must be set to allow it (please see Settings below)
Authorisation permissions are included in ‘editor’ system roles like, Global Editor (excluding admin) or SOP Editor.
Te delete documents in draft state, inactive documents and other types of records, the permission, Records: Delete Records is required. This permission is only included in the system role, Administration Editor.
A document owner with permissions enabled (as described below) can also delete a document in draft state.
For document owners to be able to delete or roll back documents, the OU preference, “Allow Document Owners to perform any action on their documents, regardless of permissions” must be enabled.
To allow users full authority over documents they own:
Documents in draft state can be deleted at any time. This action will revert the previous version from under review to authorised state.
When a document is under review, it means a new version has been created to perform any changes required. Once a document has successors, it can’t be deleted until these are removed. This is also the case for superseded versions of documents - they can’t be deleted before any newer versions have been deleted first.
Authorised documents can be deleted in a roundabout way. It is necessary to revert them to draft status first. This allows properly handling the tasks and records generated during the period they were authorised.
If any controlled prints of an authorised version of a controlled document are still in circulation, the system will impede reverting it to draft. It will request that all controlled prints be marked as destroyed first.
To revert an authorised document to draft state:
In the lightbox that pops up, select one of the following options (they only show if a document has associated skilled staff members):
Comments can be entered in the available field (not required)
Click Revert to Draft
When an authorised document is reverted to draft state, if there was a previous version, it will once again become the released authorised version, switching from superseded to under review. The draft version will revert to the previous version number or to ‘null’ if it’s the only version. Any tasks associated with the version reverted to draft will be invalidated. In all cases, completed skill tasks become ‘unconfirmed’ for the document version reverted to draft. All actions are registered under the History and Log tabs of the document’s respective versions.
If an inactive document can be deleted, it will display the option Delete this Inactive Document in the Actions dropdown menu of the record.
As mentioned above, only inactive documents that are not superseded can be deleted.
All other types of records listed at the top of this article can be deleted by users with the permission, Records: Delete Records.
To delete a record:
A lightbox will pop up to inform the user that the record is about to be permanently deleted.
All related tasks, actions and reviews are automatically removed together with records that hold any of them.
If an internal audit is being deleted, a checkbox is available to confirm if any related non-compliances should be deleted too.