Summary

We are occasionally asked about archiving data from the Pentana database.  This document explains our current position on this functionality.

Archiving in Internal Audit

Background

Ideagen’s experience with Internal Audit's predecessor (PAWS), which did have an archive process, was that a vanishingly small number of clients used it.  Hence, Internal Audit does not have an archive function.

Removing historic audits from your Audit system means that you remove the ability to analyse and report on historic data.

Audit states and screen decluttering

The audit life cycle starts at Draft with the initial planning.  On Open, default steps and ORCT are populated allowing audit work to start.  Completed is a signal that an audit is ready for approval.  Approved makes the audit read only apart from the outstanding actions.  Only when all actions have been approved can the audit be Closed.  (see summary table in the help, reproduced below).

It is a good idea to exclude Closed audits from screens to reduce clutter.  Because they do not appear on any screens, this is a good way to make them appear to be archived.

One reason for wanting to remove audits from the Pentana system entirely is to reduce the size of the Pentana database to reduce cost.  Unless you do huge numbers of audits per year, it is unlikely to be required for performance reasons. 

If archiving is required

A standard customisation that deletes audits is available, should you want to remove historic data (for example at the end of a three-year audit cycle, to remove all audits more than four years old*).  Therefore, you can 'archive' data in the following way:

• make a backup of the current data
• run the customisation package against the current system, to delete the old audits
• your database backup then becomes a snapshot of the system at the time the work was done.  In order to access it, you need an instance of Ideagen Internal Audit (Aura) set up to run against it

Note that there is no way to undelete data in Pentana, so if data is removed from the system then it is permanently gone.

* The four year old audits provide the Last Audit Date for the first year of the next three year cycle.    Similarly, in a five year cycle, the six year old audits provide the Last Audit Date for the first year of the next five year cycle.