An archive is a collection of documents with associated metadata. Each archive belongs to an organization and has a name. It also has a specific base URL that can be used for accessing it through the E-Archive REST interface.
Each archive has a specific metadata configuration that each entry in that archive needs to adhere to. This configuration is resemblant to, but not equal to, a table in an SQL database. It specifies a number of metadata fields (also sometimes called "indexes" (not to be confused with database indexes)), which are named values with certain properties. The properties associated with a metadata field are:
Metadata field properties
name | The name of the field |
| minimum/maximum length | The number of characters that a value can contain |
| mandatory | A field is mandatory if at least one value must be specified when storing a document |
| modifiable | A field can be edited if it is marked as modifiable |
| searchable | A field can be searched if it is marked as searchable |
Special fields
documentId
This is the id of a document in E-Archive. It has a length of exactly 26 characters. It is globally unique (across E-Archive customers and archives). To maintain this uniqueness, it has the following naming structure:
| Source | 1 | A letter indicating the input source. Valued values are: X: External T: Trust (E-Signing) D: Data capture W: Web (Portal) |
| Organization | Variable | The organization number of the organization owning the document. |
documentGroup and documentType
These are a herarchical classification of documents, with documentGroup representing a category of documents, and documentType a specific type of documents within that category. Each documentType belongs to exactly one documentGroup.
Both documentGroup and documentType are defined as a numeric id and an associated title.
documentType can also be used for access control and deletion configuration.
deleted, deleteDate and purgeDate
These are used for logical and physical deletion.
customerId
This is a predefined multivalue index, used for storing customer id's. It is preconfigured to support up to 50 values.
mimetype
This indicates the format of the document.
customerRef
This is a regular field, meant to be used for connecting the document to a record in the customers system. If the source of the document is E-Sign, this field will contain the order id.
Deletion
The archive operates with two step deletion. The first step is that the document is marked as deleted, but otherwise it is available in the archive, and can be accessed (provided that a user has the rights to view it).
The second step is when the document is physically removed from the archive. These two steps can (and typically are) be years apart.
When a document is marked as deleted, the following metadata fields are automatically set:
| deleted | 0 | 1 |
| deleteDate | (not set) | date of deletion |
The following configuration parameters can be configured for an archive, or for a documentType within the archive (the most specific will be used):
| document lifetime | The number of days the document will be available before it is automatically physically removed. |
The document will be physically removed when the first of these periods expire. As an example, if a document type is configured with a document lifetime of 100 days, a purge after delete of 50, and it is marked as deleted after 70 days, then it will only remain in the archive for 30 more days before it is physically removed.
Note: There is a safety margin of some days for physical removal. It is not possible to perform an operation that will cause documents to be instantly removed.
